The Montesi Scandal

“Early on a windy morning in April 1953, the body of a young woman washed up on a beach outside of Rome. Her name was Wilma Montesi, and, as the papers reported, she had left her home in the city centre a day earlier, alone. The police called her death an accidental drowning. But the public was not convinced. In the cafes around the Via Veneto, people began to speak - of the son of a powerful politician, lavish parties, movie stars, orgies, drugs. How this news item of everyday life exploded into one of the greatest scandals of a modern democracy is the story Karen Pinkus tells in The Montesi Scandal. Wilma's death brought to the surface every simmering element of Italian culture: bitter aspiring actresses, corrupt politicians, nervous Jesuits in sunglasses, jaded princes. Italians of all types lined up to testify in the death of the middle-class carpenter's daughter. They sold their stories to the tabloids, only to retract them. They posed for pictures while pretending to shun the spotlight. Pinkus takes us through Rome in the 1950s, linking Wilma's death to the beginnings of the dolce vita and following the first paparazzi on their scooters as they shoot the protagonists. More than a meditation of the intricate ties among cinema, paparazzo photography and Italian life, The Montesi Scandal narrates the story and its characters as the notes for an unrealized film, brilliant in form and conception. As the reader discovers, the story of Wilma Montesi cannot be understood except as a film – but, ironically, one that seems impossible to produce.”

Sounds like an fascinating read; what makes this interesting for the giallo fan, besides the way it is a real-life example of La Dolce morte, is that among those involved in the scandal were actress Alida Valli and composer Piero Piccioni, whose father was a government minister at the time.

Eroticofollia / The Evil Eye

Roman playboy Peter Crany (Jorge Rivero) finds himself suffering from extraordinarily vivid dreams, in which the members of a mysterious sect try to compel him to commit murder.

At a fashion show a woman, Yvonne Chevrel, confides to Peter that she has been experiencing similar visions, that culminate in his murdering her. They go away together and the nightmare apparently becomes reality as Yvonne indeed wakes up dead.

Unsure of what is going on, Peter seeks the help of psychiatrist Dr Stone (Eduardo Fajardo), with whose assistant, Turino (Eva Vanicek) he quickly falls in love, all but forgetting his beautiful girlfriend Targa (Daniela Giordano).

While Peter and Turino leave for her family's (quiet) place in the country in the hope of getting away from it all, Inspector Ranieri (Anthony Steffen) pursues the playboy whose friends and acquaintances do indeed appear to be exhibiting a rather higher than average mortality rate…

This is definitely one of the odder gialli out there. While a number of filone entries, like Emilio P. Miraglia's The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave and The Lady in Red Kills Seven Times, flirt with supernatural horror before eventually resolving things naturalistically, usually in terms of a conspiracy to drive a victimised protagonist to their death whereby the supernatural serves as alibi for a perfect crime, comparatively few pursue a supernatural direction throughout. Fewer still, with Francesco Barilli's The Perfume of the Lady in Black being one obvious exception – albeit as a film operating at a far superior level of quality to this one – becoming more confusing and enigmatic as they progress in the manner that Eroticofollia does.

Consequently it's not particularly surprising that the film – AKA The Evil Eye, foregrounding the notion of the mal occhio and suggesting a tenuous connection with Bava's seminal film of the same alternate English-language title – works best in terms of set pieces and bizarre imagery, even if some moments, like the opening orgy/black mass dream sequence, are more effective than others, such as the various objects that act of their own volition where the lack of resources to match The Exorcist is often all too apparent and leads more to laughter than terror.

On the plus side, the film has an attractive cast, with eye-candy for everyone regardless of orientation and preference; a cool Stelvio Cipriani score; plenty of groovy fashions – Rivero's shiny brown suit a particularly taste(ful|less) example; and a foregrounded J&B bottle.

There are some things you can rely on, no matter how weird a giallo might get.

A question

This morning I was at the University library, reading some things on Argento. One thing that struck me again was how whenever we (i.e. the Anglophone audience) read something about the giallo film in relation to the slasher, it is invariably with cause and effect somewhat mixed up: The American form, though historically later, is taken as the norm / reference point, from which the Italian one deviates, when it is really more the other way round.

So, I wondered, was there anything written in Italian at the time the American slasher film was emerging which looked at the way it deviated from the giallo as norm / model / reference point?

That, for instance, Friday the 13th took the template of A Bay of Blood but substituted a sexual subtext for an economic one, maybe because class based identity politics have never been that important in the USA as compared to Europe and “they” (i.e. Americans) seems to have more problems with sex than “we” (i.e. Italians / Europeans) do.

Or has the interplay always been so convoluted that any attempt to find a point of origin will inevitably fail or entail reifying the fluidity of the giallo into an for once and all essence?

Even if there is no answer, it is an interesting question, I think...

Worth a look

If you like Spaghetti Westerns – and I am sure you must if you are here – then check out http://dollarirosso.blogspot.com. It is in Portuguese, but even looking at it without knowing the language you can tell it is good.

Sette note in nero / Murder to the Tune of Seven Black Notes

As a child Virginia she saw her mother commit suicide. It is the kind of traumatic incident that is not especially unusual in the world of the giallo, but for the fact that Virginia was in Florence, Italy at the time and her mother Dover, England.


“Mummy!”; compare to the death of Jill's mother in The Beyond


Just like the killer's demise at the end of Don't Torture a Duckling

After almost 20 years Virginia (Jennifer O'Neill) has managed to just about put the memory behind her, and is newly married to Francesco (Gianni Garko). As he departs on a business trip, Virginia travels out to his villa in the country, which she plans to redecorate.

En route, she has a vision of a middle-aged woman being buried alive by a bearded man with a limp. Arriving, she is shocked to discover the place looks exactly like the one she has just seen in her mind's eye. Worse, there is a skeleton behind one of the walls.










Note how a couple of clergy dressed in red 'just happen' to walk past to provide another instance of colour association

From the skeleton, the police are able to determine that the victim was aged around 25 and was murdered around five years previously. It soon emerges that Francesco's lover Agnesi disappeared about this time. Unable to provide a satisfactory alibi – he left for the US shortly after, but still had a window of opportunity – and with Virginia's visions obviously inadmissible, he is arrested on suspicion of murder.

Virginia, aided by her parapsychologist friend Luca (Marc Porel) and sister-in-law Gloria (Ida Galli / Evelyn Stewart), thus sets out to locate the limping man in her vision and prove her husband's innocence.

While it is probable that the commercial success of Deep Red played some part in Lucio Fulci's decision to not only return to the giallo after a five year absence but also introduce a supernatural / fantastical element to the proceedings, it would be a mistake to label Murder to the Tune of Seven Black Notes / The Psychic as nothing more than a rip-off.

Rather, it seems to have been one of his more personal, committed projects whose failure to find an audience is perhaps less a reflection of weaknesses as confounding preconceptions as to what a Fulci film is.

The pre-credits suicide sequence is pivotal in this regard. The slow-motion shots of Virginia's mother smashing off the rocks are the kind of shock images that grab you and makes you wonder where the film-maker is going to take you next, especially if you know that his previous giallo, Don't Torture a Duckling, had ended with pretty much the same shots.

As it turns out, however, the remainder of the film performs something of an about face, presenting a paucity of violent set pieces likely to disappoint anyone coming to it with expectations raised (retroactively we must remember) by the likes of The Beyond or The New York Ripper.

Nevertheless, as the immediate referencing of Don't Torture a Duckling also indicates, the film is otherwise of a piece with Fulci's other horror and giallo work.

Stylistically Fulci uses the same panoply of devices – extreme close-ups and zooms, especially on and into the eyes; rack focus into or out of objects or characters such that figure becomes ground, the concrete abstract and vice-versa; down to the momentary bleaching out of the image by the police photographer's flashbulb as he photographs the crime scene as in A Lizard in a Woman's Skin. (If it isn't broken, don't fix it.)



Giallo brand cigarettes against a blue backdrop


Black and white as the crime scene is photographed

Thematically the film likewise turns on the same question of what the protagonist's dreams or visions mean and how they relate to past, present and future, reality and possibility, the main difference lying in the interpretive schema used, parapsychology rather than psychoanalysis; even if the hard-headed officers of the law in both films regard them as equally pseudo-sciences compared with the facts provided by their forensics.

The genre colour is also significant within the diegesis through the clues of the cigarette with a distinctive yellow paper and the livery of the cab seen by Virginia, as it turns out that Gloria smokes the former and that there were only 16 of the latter in the city at the time of Agnesi's disappearance.

The main question, one suspects, is whether this, combined with the assured performances – O'Neill a suitably fragile beauty, Garko disarmingly charming and Galli (in dubbing voice at least) bitchy yet protective – and restrained yet effective score from frequent Fulci collaborators Frizzi, Bixio and Tempera is sufficient.

Here one admits to not being so sure and to finding it more a film to be appreciated than enjoyed. Then again, this sense of hesitation and inability to decide – does the avoidance of gory set pieces make or break The Psychic? is a palette of seven black notes / tonalities sufficiently expressive? – is itself the hallmark of the fantastical.

It is perhaps this that ultimately marks the film out as a vital point in Fulci's filmography as the moment of transition from the rational world of the gialli that preceded it, where there has to be a reason / explanation for everything that happens, and the absurdist horrors that followed it, where the dead walk.

It is also worth noting in this context the way in which the pivotal moment in The New York Ripper, upon which the identification of the maniac hinges, again relies upon an ambiguous vision.

A few things

First off, apologies to those whose emails I have not answered yet and for the paucity of updates over the past few days; things have been unusually hectic.

Second, and of more interest to those who are not particularly concerned with the ins and outs of my schedule, a couple of recent additions to the library.



The first of these is Bernard Joisten's recently published book on Argento, Crime Designer. I have not got all the way through it and my French is admittedly limited, but there are nevertheless enough names and reference points to make it a worthwhile read for any Argento fan.

While some of the intertextual connections such as the painters De Chirico and Magritte were familiar others, like fashion photographer / fellow “crime designer” Guy Bourdin were new. Maitland McDonagh does refer to Bourdin's Vogue colleague Helmut Newton in passing at one point in reference to an Argento murder scene (“Pics by Helmut Newton.”) but does not really explore the theme as Joisten does. (And Argento did, after all, stage a catwalk show inspired by the opening moments of Suspiria, so the connection is not just the critic angling for obscure reference points; see also some of the Bourdin wallpapers on his website.)


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The second is another back issue of the late lamented European Trash Cinema, the interview issue with Steve Bissette Cannibal cover. I got a laugh when I opened this, as it was wrapped in some pages of The Daily Mail. To explain for younger and / or non-UK readers The Daily Mail is the mouthpiece of right-wing little England that was instrumental in mounting the moral panic that led to the banning of Tenebre amongst others and, albeit indirectly, gave the films and the culture around them a significant fillip.

>As far as the magazine itself goes, while the Barbara Bouchet profile covers similar ground to the one in Giallo Pages, it was the first to be published and – an argument I would say also pertains to the interviews with the likes of Antonio Margheriti and Sergio Stivaletti – the more the merrier. Besides the sheer value of the information within them, it is also the way they work as time capsule, whether Margheriti lamenting the state of the Italian film industry or Stivaletti talking about Trauma, then in pre-production.

I am sure I am not alone in wishing there was some way to get all this material back in print, that we lived in a world where an English-language Argento on Argento, Fulci on Fulci or Freda on Freda was viable. Unfortunately as it is we do not even have the full version of Spaghetti Nightmares...

Lang / Reinl / Argento - some observations on The Invisible Dr Mabuse

Metropol(e|is)

The theatre featured in German-set The Invisible Dr Mabuse is called the Metropole, allowing Reinl to allude to Lang's Metropolis. On the Argento side of things the re-opened cinema in the Berlin-set Demons is also the Metropole.





This Metropole is currently showing what is described as an “operetta,” set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, though it also involves ballet and “Grand Guignol”, the latter again being explictly referred to within the diegesis.

Here it is worth remembering here how the (Italian) Grand Guignol was an important influence on the development of the horror films of Bava, Freda and company, whilst the French Revolutionary setting allows for a connection to Trauma specifically, through the “moving guillotine” and credit sequence / nursery room imagery.


Compare to the divas in Argento's Opera and Phantom of the Opera


His master's voice – the shadowy but not invisible Dr Mabuse

The star / diva of the show has attracted the attentions of an invisible admirer. While he sneaks into her dressing room to better observe her, significantly he declines to speak or identify him presence. This silence helps establish that he is almost certainly not Mabuse, whose defining qualities, as per Michel Chion's notion of the acousmetre, are the voice we hear coupled with the face and mouth we do not see.

It also distinguishes him from Argento's phantoms of Opera and ... the Opera, where the acousmetric qualities of omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience are once more foregrounded.


Bobo / Haghi / Mabuse

Among Mabuse's underlings is a clown, Bobo, who seems to function as a way for Reinl to allude to Lang's Spione, whose master spy, Haghi, is a Mabuse in all but name with his plethora of identities and disguises.


Codename EDGAR

The director also has fun when the FBI agent makes contact with the local agents, whose cover is as an opticians – i.e. precisely something concerned with vision; extending to the investigator hero's ability to see through illusion to reality – and identifies himself by (mis)reading the letters off the chart, as EDGAR, as in Wallace.

Curiously the pseudo-scientific explanation behind the film's invisibility device does not seem all that removed from the James Bond film Die Another Day, reminding us of the long pre-history of Bond and the often unacknowledged traditions going all the way back to Fantômas ("who is Fantômas?") and beyond that Bond, Mabuse and countless others tap into.