Some thoughts on Number 17, Easy Virtue and the giallo

Last night I watched a couple of early Hitchcock films, Easy Virtue and Number 17.

As a thriller whose first act takes place in an old dark house and whose second is an extended chase sequence, Number 17 probably is the more obviously relevant from the giallo fan's perspective, with weaknesses of plot and narrative significantly also meaning that it works better in terms of expressionist atmospheres and montage-driven set-pieces.

When a strong wind – nicely captured in a long tracking shot of billowing leaves – blows our stiff-upper lipped hero's hat into the garden of Number 17, he notices a to let / for sale sign and, finding the door to the property open, decides to have a look inside. He soon finds – and is found by – a tramp, with the pair then finding a body.

Left alone, the tramp searches through the dead man's possessions and finds a gun – leading to a suspenseful if implausible sequence as the tramp examines the weapon and almost shoots himself in the process – handcuffs, a telegram, a necklace and a ticket.




The effect is certainly striking, but whether the shadow and hand correspond is debatable

Exploring further, the two men then find a girl, who literally falls into their arms after crashing through the roof. Having revived her with some alcohol – one of the staples of both films and a factor that seems to indicate their Britishness at a time when the USA was in prohibition – attention turns to the telegram, which indicates that the dead man was involved with a robbery and that the house is the rendezvous point for the gang.




The telegram and mysterious ticket


Some black glove action

At this point other members of the gang arrive. They seem not, however, to have all met one another previously and, as a result, confusion ensues as to who is actually in on the conspiracy, even more so when the 'dead' man, who turns out only to have been unconscious, disappears then reappears but could be either a cop or a robber.


Another expressionist moment

The hero and heroine get tied to the bannister, allowing for some typically Hitchcock bondage bonding between them along with a moment of suspension suspense, before the dynamic, tense climax; also, alas, unfortunately marred by some poor model work.




Beauty in Rope Hell, Hitchcock style


Hitchcock as "ferry service" for German Expressionism to Britain?


The chase, predating The French Connection by nearly 40 years.


A finale not unlike Foreign Correspondent?

In sum, imagine George Hilton in there and you might have something akin to a 1932 version of The Devil Has Seven Faces or The Case of the Scorpion's Tail – not a classic, but with moments that register.

As a melodrama, there is less – at least on the surface – to say about Easy Virtue. Based on a Noel Coward play, the plot sees Larita Filton named in a divorce case after her artist lover shoots and wounds her brutal, drunken husband and then kills himself.




The Judge...




... and what he sees; justice is blind, indeed

Following this traumatic sequence of events, the “notorious” woman then goes to the south of France to get away from it all. There she meets John Whittaker, who is immediately smitten by her beauty and charm and proposes marriage. Larita accepts, the pair marry and then return to England.

Larita's problems have only just begun, however, as John's mother takes an immediate dislike to her and, worse, has the ill-defined sense that she has seen Larita somewhere before...

Presumably quite controversial in its day, Easy Virtue, now seems hopelessly of its time at a narrative level. It has considerably more to commend it on a technical level, with Hitchcock doing what he can to make the material more cinematic through such devices as the defamiliarising opening shot, a close up of the top of a judge's bewigged head; a succession of POV shots through the judge's monocled and near-sighted eye; and cutting from a swinging monocle to a pendulum.


Beauty and the beast, in the manner of Victorian melodrama



A montage moment

Thematically, meanwhile, the initial scenario has clear affinities with the director's later Blackmail while the dishonoured woman (“Shoot – there's nothing left to kill”) is perhaps a forerunner of Ingrid Bergman's character in Notorious; one would also not be surprised if the Hitchcock scholar could work in the “transference of guilt” as well via to the “stain” that Larita spreads onto the Whittaker family.


Another repeated image, as the end answers the beginning




The bite of Coward's dialogue still comes through

The film's most famous moment, meanwhile, is interesting in terms of the mechanics of suspense: when John proposes to Larita, she tells him she will give her response via telephone later that day, with the ensuing conversation and answer being conveyed not through an intertitle but via the expressions on the switchboard operator's face. Whereas normally suspense is about something bad – will the tramp accidentally shoot himself, for example – here it is about something good.

While this reversal also perhaps sees a reversal of the probabilities of different outcomes that is less successful, in that suspense has also been argued to depend on the worse outcome being the more plausible / likely, this also fits with the reverses that pertain in the film as a whole. Thus Coward and Hitchcock beautifully expose bourgeois hypocrisy and the differences between appearance and reality in a way that is ultimately perhaps is not too far removed from the world of the telefono rosso.

Perhaps the difference between the swinging red sign at the start of Blood and Black Lace and the swinging red telephone handle at its close is then that the former belongs more to the world of appearances – the glamorous house of Cristian – and the latter to that of reality – the material baseness behind denizens that leads them to conspire against and murder one another.

Everything is indeed connected – or at least can be made so...

What's in a name

One of the things in The Stendhal Syndrome that I don't like is Anna Manni's confusion when she learns that the French guy is named Marie. Now, I know it fits with the general theme of gender confusion that runs through the film, and also allows Dario Argento and Franco Ferrini to make a further allusion to the titular Stendhal, whose real name was Marie-Henri Beyle, but it also seems to forget about Italians like Gian Maria Volontè and Enrico Maria Salerno whose names seem to follow a similar pattern.

Is there a difference between the French and Italian naming conventions here, an attempt at writing something multi-layered that does not quite come off (at least as far as I am concerned) or a generational / regional / other thing? After all, Asia Argento's 'real' first name is Aria, because of the rules of what a child could or could not be named that pertained in 1975.

Ascenseur pour l'échafaud

One of the staple locations in the giallo filone is the elevator. Yet, the more you think about it, the more you realise that not all elevators are created equal and, indeed, how they express different things about their distinctive worlds, much in the same way as human character might – the way in which, for instance, the Edwige Fenech protagonists of Sergio Martino's The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh and All the Colours of the Dark convey a very different model of the modern woman than the Susan Scott protagonists of Luciano Ercoli's Death Walks on High Heels and Death Walks at Midnight.

Thus, for example, the elevator in a film like Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage – and, at this level at least, its many imitators – operates according to an impersonal and mechanistic logic, in accord with the scientifically understandable modern world in which it is squarely situated.

It simply does not care whether a maniac awaits a passenger at the other end; whether a passenger is a maniac, perhaps about to spatter its confines with his / her victim's blood; or indeed if it will subsequently open up a chasm for the killer to fall into or remorselessly descend to crush them.

In Argento's more fantastical films – and here subsuming them within the giallo because of the presence of black gloved killer and amateur seeker protagonists – elevators seem however to have personalities and minds of their own, subordinate to the occult powers they serve and operating according to their rules.

Note how, for instance, following her sojourn into the basement of the witch-house Rose Elliot must take the stairs after the elevator fails to arrive and she hears some of its other inhabitants coming in Inferno, or the way in which the distinctive design and décor of the building in which Sonia lives retrospectively signal it to be part of Mater Suspiriorum's domain and thereby no place of safety for the fleeing Pat Hingle in Suspiria.






Still in the belly of the beast (the Tanzacademie building is actually called 'The Whale')




Like the rest of the building the lift obeys its mistress's logic

The finale of Deep Red perhaps presents the tipping point here, the moment when the scientific logic of the Animal Trilogy transforms into the associational / magical logic of the Three Mothers films, as the lift “conspires” with Marc Daly to decapitating Martha, but perhaps only so that he can gaze into the pool of her blood and recognise his own irrevocably altered being.




Again, albeit probably coincidentally, triangular formations






How did she produce such a perfect pool of blood; a deep / shallow reflecting surface of hidden profundity?

The French Sex Murders

From the sublime to the ridiculous – there is really no other way to summarise the difference between Death Occurred Last Night and this 1972 giallo which, lacking style, substance or budget, throws everything it can at the audience in hope that something will connect in that all-but-patented Dick Randall way.

The big gimmick, as signalled by the alternative The Bogeyman and the French Murders title is the presence of professional Humphrey Bogart lookalike Roberto Sacchi as the detective investigating a series of call-girl murders. He cannot really act – or more kindly is not given the opportunity to show that he can – but does seem to have his model's look and mannerisms down pretty well.

His case, introduced via flashback to allow for some 1940s film noir style voice over from Sacchi's English dubber and some quick scene setting via a Citroen DS pulling up beneath the Eiffel Tower, from which an unidentified silhouette then plunges – an undeniably effective opening, with the animated silhouette a refreshing departure from the more usual dummy and probably used because they could not get away with throwing one off the structure – at first seems open and shut.






Bogey lookalike in Paris

Following the theft of some jewels Gottvales (Peter Martell / Pietro Martellanza) retreats to the brothel belonging to Madame Colette (Anita Ekberg) to see his favourite girl, Francine (Barbara Bouchet). He wants her to leave with him, but she declines, causing him to get violent.

The next thing we see is Gottvalles leaving the scene in a hurry as American writer Randall – confusingly played by Raf Valentu / Renato Romano rather than Randall, though the producer does have one of his customary cameo roles later – who is researching for an article on the place, finds Francine's bloody corpse.


There are two things wrong with this picture - Bouchet is not naked and her character is already out of the film


A negative image like Alphaville, remembering that Howard Vernon was in Godard's film


or a cop out of A Bout de souffle; really any resemblance is purely coincidental

Inspector Bogart and his men quickly hunt down Gottvalles who protests his innocence. No-one really believes him, however, nor feels inclined to challenge the circumstantial nature of the evidence against him, and thus he is found guilty and condemned to be guillotined. Crazed, Gottvalles swears that he will have revenge on the judge and those who have betrayed him.

En route to what seems a hastily scheduled execution Gottvales seizes the chance to escape, but is then decapitated when his motorbike slams into a parked truck with an (in)conveniently positioned razor-sharp ledge.










The same person later did the effects on Alien and E.T., believe it or not

As Professor Waldemar (Howard Vernon) remarks it seems as if a kind of divine justice has intervened.

Then there is a second murder with the same modus operandi as the first. Either Gottvales has returned from the grave or they got the wrong man and the real maniac is still at large.

The list of suspects is, as usual, a long one. The Professor himself is distinctly of the mad scientist variety and was in possession of the dead man's head. Then there is his friend, the Judge; handsome assistant and beautiful daughter who – for good measure – are also carrying on a clandestine relationshp against his wishes. Then we have Gottvales's ex-wife Marianne (Rosalba Neri) and her current lover, a sleazy nightclub impresario with a wandering eye. And assorted other suspects / red herrings.


More of this, please

Only one thing is really certain: this list will be much shorter by the time Inspector Bogart delivers his summing up.

The French Sex Murders' co-writer and director Ferdinando Merighi – credited as F. L Morris – looks to be one of the forgotten me of Italian genre cinema, with only a fistful of other credits to his name. On this evidence, it is both understandable and probably for the best. Excepting some experiments with inverted and tinted images there is a distinct lack of visual flair to the proceedings, with insufficient dynamism and inventiveness to overcome the flat lighting and functional set-ups characteristic of Randall's low budgets.






La dolce morte of la dolce vita's Anita Ekberg x3


A piece of near-classic giallo imagery

Despite coming from future Academy Award winner Carlo Rambaldi the set-piece gore effects are marked more by enthusiasm than accomplishment. Again this seems more down to limited resources than anything else. The previous year Rambaldi had, after all, managed to create mutilated dogs on Fulci's Lizard in a Woman's Skin that were sufficiently convincing for him to have to produce them to prove he was not guilty of animal cruelty.

Although the cast looks good on paper and is further bolstered by some uncredited cameo appearances the ensemble nature of the piece prevents any individual from getting as much screen time, characterisation or – putting things squarely in exploitation terms – physical exposure as one might like. Rosalba Neri does at least deliver a seductive singing number, but Bouchet does not even get naked before her character is killed off. Likewise, while there is plenty of nudity and softcore fumbling amongst the rest of the cast, is it consistently – and unintentionally no doubt – subverted by the an all-pervading 70s porn ambience.


A nod to Fritz Lang's classic, remembering that Howard Vernon was his great friend in later life, post The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse

Bruno Nicolai's score is a definite plus, but also sounds suspiciously like it has been taken from other films; the kind of secondhand, mix and match approach that seems, in fact, to typify the entire enterprise. (Unless – and I suppose it is possible, given the sheer number of scores most of the usual suspects amongst Italian composers were turning out at this time and the sometimes questionable attribution of certain scores to one or another – the cues originated here or were of a more library nature to begin with.)

The French Sex Murders is available on a nice DVD from Mondo Macabro, released as part of their Dick Randall collection. For the more casual giallo fan, however, the same company has also released the far superior The Killer Must Kill Again, accompanied by better – and more giallo-centred – extras.

La morte risale a ieri sera / Death Occured Last Night

The key words that sum up this 1970 giallo from Duccio Tessari are downbeat, depressing and disturbing – and I mean those as compliments.

At the same time, one can easily appreciate how this would not help its recognition by closed-minded genre fans – good time, trashy entertainment it is not – while the same fact of being made by someone previously responsible for sundry pepla, spaghettis and superspies likely meant it tended to go under-appreciated by mainstream critics; as evinced by Tom Milne's Monthly Film Bulletin review of the time, wherein he argued that the film seemed “to be wrestling with ideas rather above its station”.

If only it were a case of 'their loss being our gain', but with only grey market sources available – and here I must thank Paul for giving me the opportunity to at least see the film – it is another instance where the limitations of the presentation mean that a certain degree of dedication to the cause, above and beyond what should really be required is necessary; this is a film which deserves a top-notch official release from the likes of Blue Underground, Noshame or Mondo Macabro.

Though the seriousness and character-driven nature of the film makes it of a piece with the director's other equally impressive gialli, I also wonder whether some of Death Occurred Last Night's particular qualities might also be attributed to co-writer and producer Artur Brauner.

While better known as a purveyor of lowest common denominator fare like his (Bryan) Edgar Wallace adaptations and for giving Fritz Lang the opportunity to make another Dr Mabuse film before then subjecting the character to the indignities of becoming little more than a franchise figure, Brauner was also someone who had also long striven to re-establish the artistic credibility of his adopted homeland's cinema. He had, for example, written and produced one of West Germany's first films about Nazi atrocities, Morituri and advocated a “risky wave” of more challenging cinema in advance of the Oberhausen Manifesto; if he was guilty of producing the kind of crass, conservative, commercial cinema the Oberhausen signatories criticised, he was also someone who saw that a healthy cinema could and should support a diversity of production – indeed, the same year as he produced this film he also had a credit on Vittorio De Sica's Garden of the Finzi-Continis.

In terms of Death Occurred Last Night specifically the Italian and German sides of the co-production seem to emerge in the contrast between the official / krimi police procedural investigation that dominates the first half of the film and the subsequent shift into more private / giallo / poliziotto quests as the inadequacies of the law in the face of widespread social weakness, corruption and indifference become all-too evident.

The film opens with distraught widower Berzaghi (Raf Vallone) paying a desperate visit to high-ranking policeman Dr Lamberti (Frank Wolff). Berzaghi explains that his daughter Donatella has been missing for the past month. Thinking he has heard it all before, Lamberti asks how old the missing girl. On hearing the answer 25, he thinks he knows it all too.

Then Berzaghi explains: Donatella has the mental age of a three-year old. She is also physically attractive, trusting and if not necessarily “nymphomaniac” - a term that I think would imply a more 'adult' awareness of things – certainly flirtatious.

Deciding that Donatella has most likely been abducted for use as a prostitute, Berzaghi and his colleague Mascaranti (Gabriel Tinti) call on an ex-pimp contact, Salvatore, now working in a car showroom – in keeping with the pervasive mood, perhaps not really that much of a change of occupational direction; a sense again conveyed by the preceding scene in which a woman poses as a customer, takes a sports car for a test drive and leaves Salvatore with the vehicle once she has reached her destination.

Reluctantly Salvatore takes Lamberti and Mascaranti around Milan's brothels as they search for a lead. The undercover investigation seems, however, to be going nowhere, especially after the hot-headed Mascaranti reacts instinctively to the appearance of a couple of heavies and thereby alerts the underworld. Lamberti, however, also makes contact with an independent prostitute, Terrell, who indicates that one of her clients might have seen the missing girl and thereby provides a new avenue for investigation. Concerned for her safety, Lamberti takes her home with him, much to the consternation of his long-suffering wife (Eva Renzi).

A few days later, Salvatore contacts Lamberti indicating that he has heard that Donatella's abductors want to be rid of her, and agrees to help arrange a meet / sting operation. Unfortunately Salvatore is not being entirely honest and in trying a scam only succeeds in bringing about Donatella's murder, her horribly burnt body being found in a field...

Wolff's Dr Lamberti is a policeman who wears the weight of the world on his shoulders, his conscience and commitment to his job such that he cannot permit himself two weeks leave to have his sinus problems treated - it is not as if the criminals would also take a fortnight's holiday, he explains - while the torment and anguish Vallone's father goes through and the way he expresses them are heart-wrenching.

Tessari's direction is fairly straightforward for the most part, putting the camera at the service of story and performers rather than engaging in self-conscious displays of technique. At the same time, however, one of the most memorable moments sees him shoot a stairway from below in almost abstracted fashion as oranges rain down in slow motion. But crucially it is not gratuitous. Rather it stands out precisely because in the context of the narrative it comes at the moment when one of the conspirators reveals herself and drops her shopping.

Indeed, to return to an argument I made in relation to Puzzle, where I suggested that Tessari might be considered a master of the traditional thriller, it is a moment that seems distinctively Hitchcockian, in terms of Gilles Deleuze's notions of the Hitchcock “demark”- i.e. the thing that should not be; that does not belong there, and which which thereby stains or reveals the guilty - with the teddy bear Berzaghi is carrying functioning in a similar way to, for instance, the distinctive necklace forgetfully donned by Judy in Vertigo.

Although there is a nice moment early on as a flashback sequence showing the Berzaghi family's daily routine sees Donatalla put on a record - with forceful vocals by the inimitable Mina - which then plays diegetically over the scene, I cannot help feel that it often detracts from the sombre tone of the film, being too bold, brash and upbeat and insufficiently melancholy. Some of the cues even sound almost interchangable with those composer Gianni Ferrio provided for the very different - i.e. trashy fun - Death Walks at Midnight; not a good thing however enjoyable listening they are in their own right. Still, this is but a minor issue in a film otherwise distinguished by sensitive, thoughful - and thought-provoking - writing, direction and performances.

I Corpi presentano tracce di violenza forte: some notes on representations of violence in Torso and the Italian giallo

[Note that this post contains spoilers]

A “psychosexual maniac” is stalking the students of a Rome University class. First, Florence and her boyfriend are murdered by a peeping tom in a lover's lane. Next, Carol (Conchita Airoldi) leaves a party in a marijuana haze after giving a couple of her fellow students the brush off. Though pursuing, they prove all mouth and little action as one crashes his motorcycle and lands unceremoniously in the dirt. It is too late for their quarry, though, as she flees ever deeper into the woods and there encounters the killer. This time, however, at least there is a clue: the distinctive red and black patterned scarf used by the killer to strange Carol.

Another student, Daniela (Tina Aumont) receives a threatening telephone call, warning that to tell the police about the red scarf – which flashbacks reveal she saw around the neck of a fellow student, Stefano, whom the audience has already seen assaulting a prostitute he picked up – would be a bad idea.

The police, meanwhile, go to question the stallholder (Ernesto Colli) who sells the scarves. No friend of the police, he professes to know nothing but then attempts to blackmail the killer, with predictably fatal consequences.

Seeking to get away from the unpleasantness, Daniela and her friends Ursula, Katia (Carla Brait) and Jane (Suzy Kendall) decide to spend some time at Daniela's uncle's hilltop villa in the country. Unfortunately the killer is on their trail...

Taking his later Suspicious Death of a Minor to be more of a poliziotto, Torso / I Corpi presentano tracce di violenza carne was the last classic giallo to be directed by Sergio Martino. Released in Italy at the tail end of 1972, the film nevertheless also seems to indicate a growing dissatisfaction with the filone formula as then extant.

Torso features a different cast from Martino's usual, with the likes of Edwige Fenech, George Hilton, Ivan Rassimov and Anita Strindberg conspicuous in their absence, while the musical duties are assigned to the De Angelis Brothers rather than Bruno Nicolai. Perhaps the most interesting change, however, lies in the dynamics of the film. Though starting off very much as a traditional giallo, the second half of the film has been argued as moving more into slasher film territory by downplaying the traditional whodunnit and conspiracy aspect of the giallo and producing, in the figure of Jane, a prototypical “final girl”.

Whatever the relative merits and / or demerits of these changes, they would seem to have worked with the audience as far I Corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale's box office is concerned, with the film doing approximately the same business as its two 1972 predecessors, All the Colours of the Dark and Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, combined.




Yet more broken doll imagery - "dolls, just stupid dolls" and some soft-focus lovemaking reminiscent of the opening of Your Vice...


From Torso to Black Christmas and When a Stranger Calls, with the killer on the phone?


The masked, gloved, knife-wielding killer

The thing that I find most interesting about the film, however, is the way it might help illuminate certain aspects of cinematic violence as they might pertain in the giallo.

In a 1993 Film Quarterly article, Devin McKinney attempted to distinguish between two sorts of screen violence. In its “weak” form, characteristic of most mainstream cinema, violence is more likely to be spectacular, throwaway and even pleasurable. In its “strong” form, typically associated with art cinema, violence is more likely to be depicted in a complex and consequential way.

While McKinney's own position would likely disincline him to give a film like Torso the benefit of the doubt – especially when its first half operates broadly in weak violence terms – events at the villa have a stronger edge via the way we are denied the on-screen spectacle of Daniela, Katia and Ursula's deaths in favour of an emphasis on the – thoroughly unpleasant – aftermath and Jane's suitably horrified / terrified reactions.

More generally, one also wonders what the emphasis on trauma within the giallo might mean for McKinney's thesis, in that innumerable genre entries explore the longer-term consequences of a violent act in the past.

While trauma admittedly often serves as little more than pretext for violence as spectacle in some of the better, more thoughtful, aspirational and consequential examples of the giallo – The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Don't Torture a Duckling, The Cat with the Eyes of Jade or The Stendhal Syndrome for example – the balance swings the other way.

A particularly good example here is another hybrid, the much maligned Trauma itself. A large part of the reason for the film's poor reception, I would suggest, was its giallo disavowal of the usual inconsequential pleasures of the more mainstream slasher film. Thus, for instance, when David catches sight of the vulnerable Aura undressing his gaze – and ours – is an explicitly guilty one.

This is not to say that Trauma is an unqualified success; some of the murder set pieces do seem to be intended to be spectacular but fail. This kind of analysis does seem, however, to offer some potential here and more generally in distinguishing between the less aspirational “vernacular” giallo and the more aspirational “auteur” or “art / popular” variants.

Returning to Torso itself, one question that arises is which kind of giallo it is. As a "vernacular" film there is, I would suggest, the matter of which vernacular audience – that in the Italian terza visione cinemas (as I Corpi...) or in the American grindhouses and drive-ins (as Torso), as evinced by the difference between the two versions, the Italian one including an opening monologue on art (overlaid atop a sex scene in an almost Godardian juxtaposition that reminded me of Le Mepris) and some low comedic moments absent from its international counterpart.


Art or commerce?


The consequences of violence

As an auteur film, meanwhile, the issue seems that of exactly who this author might be, of distinguishing between the contributions of Martino and Gastaldi. While not discounting the latter's work, I would suggest that the most successful elements of the film, most notably the extremely suspenseful, largely silent scenes at the villa, belong primarily to the director. Other elements, like the broken dolls and fall-of-man themes, seem more generic / attributable to the writer. The same can be said of the less successful mystery element, with the usual rule of black-gloved thumb applying: if somebody is an obvious suspect, like Stefano, then they are likely just a red herring.

As far as the Psycho-esque element of unexpectedly killing off apparent protagonist Daniela goes, meanwhile, it is worth remembering that Gastaldi and Martino has used the same device themselves in The Case of the Scorpion's Tail with Evelyn Stewart's character.

As ever, the issue is one of the more mainstream critics applying only certain frames of reference and deeming the giallo to be beneath them.

Whatever one thinks of it, Torso thus emerges yet another giallo that manages to be both entertaining and – if one is willing to go beyond “mere entertainment”– thought-provoking.

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

Oliviero Ruvigny (Luigi Pistilli) is a burnt-out, alcoholic, mother-fixated writer who has not written a line in three years and survives by selling off the furniture from the crumbling family mansion. His main pleasure in life is taunting his beautiful wife Irina (Anita Strindberg) who also attentions of her dead mother-in-law' cat, a malevolent creature that more than live up to its name, Satan, as far as she is concerned.






Yet another picture that holds a power


An early appearance by Dalila Di Lazzaro, later the lead in Flavio Mogherini's The Pyjama Girl Case

Visiting the village for much-needed supplies after hosting another party for the hippies at the nearby commune, Oliviero arranges a rendezvous with the girl from the bookstore, Fausta (Daniela Giordano). But while waiting for him to arrive, she is murdered by a sickle-wielding, black-gloved figure.




Daniela Giordano in a particularly thankless role.

When the police call at the villa the next day Oliviero claims that he was with Irina all evening. This satisfies the police but leaves Irina – seemingly too frightened to tell them the truth – ever more worried.


Ruvigny hits the J&B

Then the Ruvigny's maid (Carla Brait) is killed. Again proclaiming his innocence, Oliviero convinces Irina that the best thing to do is wall up the body in the cellar and, if anyone asks, say that she left their service; to go to the authorities "would be like putting a noose around my neck" he explains.


The maid dons Oliviero's mother's dress and suffers the consequences


Ivan Rassimov, looking shifty as ever

The last thing either of them needs, then, is the unexpected arrival of Olivieri's niece Floriana (Edwige Fenech), although Irina warms to her as she stands up to Oliviero and offers her aunt more than a shoulder to cry on.


I love the abstract, gestalt figure qualities of this composition





Unfortunately at this point, the film loses its way somewhat.

Fausta's killer is unmasked as an escaped lunatic, thereby removing the burden of suspicion from Oliviero but also making his and Irina's subsequent actions less believable.

More damaging, however, is the dirt bike sequence that follows, which effectively puts a brake on the narrative for the better part of five minutes.

Happily things pick up after this as the various plots come together, though never quite recapturing the lost momentum of the first half.


All work and no play makes Oliviero a dull boy?

Combining familiar generic themes and motifs with more overtly Gothic elements drawn from Edgar Allen Poe's short story The Black Cat – itself later adapted by Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento in giallo / horror style – this 1972 entry boasts one of the most extravagant titles in the entire giallo filone, itself stemming from a line in the filmmakers' earlier The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh.

At the helm, Sergio Martino again demonstrates his undoubted technical abilities, although some of his choices also feel a touch over-emphatic. It is not that an extreme close-up, shock zoom or sudden cut-in has no place here – that would be an absurd suggestion to make – more that they feel somewhat redundant when the point has already been made through dialogue, performance or other, more subtle, aspects of mise-en-scene. Sometimes more is less.

Against this, however, there are some beautifully realised moments. A love scene between Floriana and Irina, for instance, may use all the slow-dissolve, hands-clasping-in-ecstasy cliches, but in doing so it perhaps indicates not only their pleasure as immediate meaning but also a retrospectively element of falseness when it becomes evident that both participants are playing particular roles.

Bruno Nicolai's score lacks variety compared to his work for Martino elsewhere, with an absence of suspense and lounge themes in favour of numerous minor variations on the same gentle, romantic harpsichord and string led theme. This also, however, perhaps allows for a better fit with the overall tone of the film, insofar as the emphasis is more upon the relationships between the characters than the woman-in-peril scenario.

While Strindberg is perhaps the designated victim, she is more the victim of systematic abuse than a clear cut conspiracy of the sort experienced by Edwige Fenech in The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh or All the Colours of the Dark.

Fenech herself is intriguingly cast against type as a conniving bitch with her own agenda, leaving Rassimov with the short end of the stick once more as yet another sinister presence; while his exact allegiance and part in the various plots and counter-plots remains a mystery until late on, it is evident from his very first appearance that can be up to no good.

To an extent Luigi Pistilli might also appear typecast, insofar as he is again given the role of someone troubled, haunted and compromised following his reluctant co-conspirator of a forceful Lady Macbeth type wife in Bay of Blood and his policeman traumatised by a suspect's death in The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire. Again, however, what matters is the way he differentiates each such figure from the others, with his alcoholic Oliviero also giving an ironic twist to the omnipresent J&B bottle as more a signifier of failure ("It's all poison", as the character remarks at one point) than la dolce vita.


Leering local layabouts


The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll?


La Chute, again

It is also worth noting that the film features both dummy and doll action. There is also a scene repeated in Torso, as a gang of locals leer at and make crude remarks as to what they would like to do to Irina: if Martino gives the (implied) male spectator his “visual pleasures” he also likes to explicitly problematise them on occasion. I also find these moments curiously reminiscent of those in Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura where Monica Vitti's character similarly finds herself being eyed up and objectivised; whether the allusion is conscious or not is if course another matter entirely...