Some thoughts on the first two sequences of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

The impact of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage's gallery sequence is such that commentators often begin their discussion of the film at this point. I would argue, however, that the general excessiveness of the film – an excess which, as we will see, takes a different form from that of the director's later films – means that the two sequences which precede it do more than just introduce the two main characters, the killer and amateur detective Sam Dalmas.

In the first sequence, which plays over the film's credits, the killer prepares for the murder of 'his' next victim, who is also seen being stalked and photographed, neatly signifying the camera as assaultive weapon. The sequence introduces Argento's characteristic emphasis on textures through the shine of the black gloves and raincoat, photographs and knives; a shine that also, by happy coincidence, further foregrounds the director's introduction of a heightened fetish element to the giallo film killer's accoutrements in relation to Freud's famous formulation of fetishism in relation to the “Glanz auf der Nase” or “shine on the nose”. Nevertheless, although agreeing with Needham's assertion that the film sees what was primarily a fashionable disguise in Blood and Black Lace transform into something more replete with fetishistic meanings here, one also feels that his analysis perhaps neglects to consider the longer history of black gloves and raincoats in films such as M, where they are not particularly fetishised, and Death Laid an Egg, where they are.


Le mani sulla citta - the black gloves as normal attire in Fritz Lang's M and within the krimi tradition


The black glove and blade fetish combination in Death Laid an Egg (1967) prefiguring The Bird with the Crystal Plumage by three years.

In other regards, however, this sequence is less successful. Whilst the unclear chronology, superimposition of the camera frame, freeze-frames and snapshots of the victim in black-and-white certainly serve to alert audiences to the fact that they are watching an explicit re-presentation of the world; to Argento's strategies; and the idea(l) of becoming alert, active participants, their diegetic meaning remains unclear. Why should the killer chose these particular victims and be compelled to document things in this manner, even going to the lengths of typing away whilst wearing the gloves.

While we could invoke a psychoanalytical rationale, such as the killer's attempting to master their original traumatic event through ritual and repetition, the remainder of the film does not really seem to support this. Though the killer's fourth victim / the film's second is photographed before her murder, the fifth / third is not. One possibility here is that the last victim is murdered by the killer's protector-accomplice, but this is not made explicit. Likewise, no reference is made to the killer's documenting their crimes in the analysts summing up of the case at the end of the film.


Photography or cinematography?


The shine of the photograph and the gloves; the killer touching the surface of the image


The fetishisation of the murder weapon

The obvious questions that then emerge is why they are there and why the sequence does not just show the killer's preparations, then the murder. (Indeed, the minimal representation of the murder here, the screen momentarily going black whilst a single scream rings out, also testifies that Argento's rarely recognised facility for restraint, most evident in his more recent films, was present from the outset.) One answer is that by foregrounding the constructedness of the image in this way Argento was better able to allude to one of his key influences, Antonioni, and specifically Blow-Up.

As such, these images seem to open themselves up to analysis in terms of the Barthesian framework of excess meaning proposed by McDonagh. They are excessive signifiers, or signifiers of excess, that only really make sense in relation to their own systems of meaning. Crucially in this case, this sense is also fundamentally external to the film itself, intertextual rather than intratextual.

This, in turn, is something that distinguishes the intermittent and less controlled excesses of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, which McDonagh downplays, from the more consistent and disciplined excesses of Deep Red, as Argento's most thorough-going working through of the problematic established by Blow-Up, which she emphasises.

In Deep Red the excesses are more multi-layered and thereby better able to meet the requirements of both “readerly” / popular cinema and “writerly” / art cinema approaches, providing a combination of textual, subtextual and intertextual meanings and reference points. Thus, to give one example, the bizarre puppet with which the killer torments and distracts one of her victims functions at the readerly or more surface level to amplify the shock moment and at the writerly or deeper as something associated with – for instance – a characteristic Surrealist motif and, by extension, notions of “convulsive beauty”.

Here, however, what we seem to have is a would-be “writerly” fragment that likely comes across as too self-conscious and mannered to really work in art cinema terms and as too confusing and nonsensical in those of popular cinema. (Though, as Sobchack's deconstruction of the term confusion to emphasise the co-mingling and co-presence of the senses shows, sometimes it is not necessarily a bad thing; the point here is that we seem to have a confusion that hinders rather than helps our understanding and appreciation of the film.)

What has rarely been recognised, however, is thus the importance of certain key sequences in The Bird's much-maligned follow-up, The Cat o' Nine Tails in offering a more successful initial interrogation of Blow-Up's (rhetoric of the) image. Part of the reason for this, one suspects, is that this is also achieved at the cost of being integrated more into film itself, with a concomitant diminution of the apparent scope for the critic to interpret. Put another way, Cat o' Nine Tails is a more classical and readerly film than The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (or, for that matter, the little-seen Four Flies on Grey Velvet).

In Cat o' Nine Tails it is actually a Blow-Up style professional photographer who captures the vital detail that reveals an apparent accident to be a deliberate act of murder. Waiting at the train station to record the arrival of a starlet – a sequence that itself perhaps allowing for a reference to Antonioni's L'Avventura and La Notte alongside the paparazzi of Fellini's La Dolce vita – the photographer happens to catch the hand of the assassin pushing the would-be blackmailer in front of the oncoming train.


The moment of death is captured by the photographer


But after a brief look at the body he remembers why they are there: “Hey, we've forgotten about the starlet – come on.”




Though the death continues to affect him: “That's right – smile, smile. A man is dead!”

Reflecting his inability to truly see – i.e. to see within the framework of the filmmakers' emerging sense logic – he does not, however, notice this until prompted to interrogate the photograph more closely by one of the film's protagonists. It is Arno, the blind ex-newspaperman, the one who sees, who is a seer, that asks the pertinent question of whether the reproduction of the blackmailer's fall (itself another recurring theme in Argento's cinema, as Thoret emphasises) reproduced in the newspaper was perhaps “cropped,” emphasising / framing it at the expense of excluding / deframing the remainder.


The photograph as it appears in the newspaper


And the detail that, working within the framework of an unfortunate accident, no-one sees

The second sequence in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is less excessive – though not totally lacking in this regard – but also more successful. Following the cut to a black screen and scream, the first thing we see is an announcement of the mysterious murder of a young woman, the third in a month. As the camera moves out, we then get more of the detail, that this is an advertising hoarding for Paesa Sera (the newspaper on which Argento himself worked) and that the other headline is a train crash in England, with many dead. Neither event, however, particularly concerns Professor Carlo Dover as he buys a newspaper from the kiosk and scans though its pages – “ah, the same old rubbish” – nor his friend Sam Dalmas – “come on Carlo, or we'll be late.” This indifference will of course prove deeply ironic in the light of the events about to unfold.




From the specific to the general; note the gialli paperbacks on the edicola

The way the scene is constructed, opening on a detail and then moving out to give the wider context, rather than using the more classical approach of providing an establishing shot, then breaking the scene up into smaller details once spatial relationships have been identified, soon emerges as one of the characteristic features of the film. This also, of course, gives it a distinctly modernist edge that distinguishes it from the likes of Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace, if not Questi's lesser-known, more experimental Death Laid an Egg.

As the two men walk along, we learn that Sam is an American ex-patriot writer, who came to Italy in search of inspiration. It has not emerged, however, and he has instead found himself writing a manual on the preservation of rare birds for as a work for hire. Besides introducing the common giallo theme of the foreigner or outsider and representing the first in a long line of Argento's creative figures, Sam's existential situation, his desire to be doing something authentic and meaningful, seems to parallel that of Argento himself at this point in his career. While quickly establishing himself as an in-demand screenwriter and script doctor after Once Upon a Time in the West, Argento had also rapidly become frustrated at the way his work was often treated by directors, his ideas failing to emerge onto the screen in the manner as he had hoped. Indeed, in large part it was his sense that the directors proposed to helm The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, such as Terence Young and Duccio Tessari, would be unable to appreciate its novelties – more, to repeat, in form than content – that led to his decision to direct the film himself. Perhaps surprisingly, however, he has indicated that he did so without any real thoughts of pursuing a career as a director rather than writer.




Portrait of the artist as a young man

Carlo: “Don't you want a copy?” (of the book)
Sam: “Who needs it – I have this!” (the cheque)

What also seems curious here is co-producer Goffredo Lombardo's sense that he had made a mistake in agreeing to part-finance the film with Salvatore and Dario Argento's own company, SeDA Spettacoli. For while one could understand the film's rushes not “making sense” in classical cinema terms by virtue of the more modernist approach Argento was taking, the extensive storyboarding he has indicated he undertook in developing the film might suggest that Lombardo ought to have known what the new director was aiming for.

Narrative / Spectacle

In most film theory, based as it is on the example of Hollywood cinema, the assumption is that there is a narrative which is periodically interrupted by spectacle.

The question is whether this paradigm really fits Italian genre / filone cinema, where it often seems more the narrative that is interrupting the spectacle.

Perhaps it is a distinction that goes back to historical debates in the Italian industry over the labels of film and spettacoli - i.e. spectacle / show.

And perhaps Salvatore and Dario Argento naming their production company SeDA Spetaccoli and not SeDA Film or Cinema thereby tells us more than we might think and further indicates the tensions operating in his work under its auspices.

The Black Belly of the Tarantula / La Tarantola dal ventre nero

Watching this 1971 giallo from Paolo Cavara hot on the heels of Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion makes for an interesting contrast, in that its opening gambit – a husband confronts his (recent ex) wife over some compromising photographs of her with another man – could easily have been the turning point of Luciano Ercoli's film.

The similarities end at this point, however, as Maria Zani (Barbara Bouchet) is brutally murdered shortly afterwards. While we saw her husband Paolo (Silvano Tranquilli) beating her, he seems genuinely shocked and co-operates with Inspector Tellini (Giancarlo Giannini), but also fails to tell the truth as to when he last saw Maria nor reveal that he has the other half of the ripped photograph.

Taking this, Paolo - whose job is that of the ever-suspect insurance salesman - hires a private investigator, the ironically named Speedy. to see if he can find the blackmailer himself.

A second murder then occurs with the same modus operandi as the first, the killer paralysing their victim with a poisoned needle, then fatally stabbing them while they are conscious but helpless – apparently akin to the way a wasp might kill the titular spider. Another clue / complicating factor is the discovery of extensive traces of cocaine at the crime scene.

The two investigations continue along their separate lines, then intersect as Paolo arranges a rendezvous with one of the blackmailers only to go for a fatal dive off a roof, following which his contact / assassin is himself run over before he can be questioned.

As Tellini gets closer to the heart of the conspiracy, he and his wife Anna (Stefania Sandrelli) find themselves threatened by the blackmailers...


In a glass darkly


Behind the glass

Along with I Tanto Paura / Plot of Fear, The Black Belly of the Tarantula was one of two gialli directed by Paolo Cavara, a relatively obscure figure about whom one admits to knowing little about.

Starting with contributions to a some of Franco Prosperi and Gualtiero Jacopetti's mondo films he then seems to have reacted against this in The Wild Eye, an anti-mondo film that predates the better known Cannibal Holocaust by more than a decade in its use of the form against itself. (Mark Goodall's book Sweet and Savage contains a good discussion of the film, and is recommended for anyone interested in mondo more generally.)






Some classic giallo imagery, albeit with the unusual feature of the brown surgical gloves

Although his spaghetti westerns remain to be explored, this appears to suggest a seriousness and self-consciousness of approach that – with a few noteworthy exceptions - might well be considered the kiss of death for the giallo. Thankfully, however, this proves not to be the case, as Cavara delivers a film which manages both to deliver as entertainment while also hinting at something more beneath its slickly directed surface, with generally effective use of zooms, whip pans and hand-held camera.

The editing exhibits some nice cuts between scenes, from the hands of the killer to the hands of those investigating, and one almost Eisensteinian moment where a falling dummy is juxtaposed with the killer's descending knife.






The forbidden photo of a lady above suspicion (by dint of being dead)

As befits the nature of the conspiracy, the viewer's voyeurism is also continually being brought into the equation, whether the credits sequence that cuts from figures obscured by distorting glass to the exploitation goods of the naked Bouchet being massaged, or our point-of-view positioning one of the blackmailers covertly filming the Tellinis as they make love.

The plotting is suitably convoluted, with plenty of suspects and red herrings. Though some may feel that the killer's identity is either too obvious or not obvious enough (following the usual filone heuristics that the most and least likely suspects can be ruled out for this reason) the nastiness of the murder method goes some way to offsetting this.

There is also plenty of eye- and ear-candy for the viewer, Ennio Morricone's top notch score with vocalism from the inimitable Edda Dell'Orso helping make up for the brevity of Bouchet's get naked and die near cameo.




Some classic mannequin action in the second murder set-piece

As Tellini, Giancarlo Giannini delivers a performance of considerable sensitivity and depth. While arguably as much a testament to Giannini's acting abilities as anything else it is also worth noting how these characteristics seem to position his character with the giallo against the poliziotto, with its preference for a more talk and less action.

Though Plot of Fear certainly leans more towards the poliziotto side of things, with more emphasis on the crime plot and less on the black gloved killer, it is again characterised by an unusually well-developed police protagonist, possibly hinting at an emergent auteur personality.

Indeed, considering the giallo-poliziotto in relation to the two pure filone (though in truth no filone could ever be called “pure” in the sense that, say, a 1930s Hollywood western is pure) one also wonders if a consideration of matters beyond the nature of the protagonist(s) as private or public investigators is needed, encompassing the investigators' personalities; the nature of the crime; and the methods deployed investigating it.

Making a very broad assertion, I would speculate that the key difference is that the typical poliziotto is more direct in each case. The poliziotto cop - think Maurizio Merli - basically knows who the bad guys are and that if he confronts them directly they will respond in a way that gives him evidence / cause to dispense violent judgement / justice, whereas his giallo counterpart is far less sure.

Speculations aside, The Black Belly of the Tarantula is a quality example of the genre; I know that when finances allow I will be upgrading my pan and scan Alfa Digital disc for Blue Underground's 1.85:1 OAR version that also runs approximately five minutes longer, at 89 minutes.

Tellingly, there are some abrupt transitions in the Alfa release: visiting the boyfriend of the second victim, Tellini discovers some incriminating evidence yet we never see what happens to the character, who disappears thereafter.

Whether Blue Underground's is the definitive version is perhaps another matter, with the IMDB entry – again never the best source of information when it comes to films like this – indicating that the uncut Italian version runs 98 minutes, a difference greater than could be explained away by format conversion; as ever your contributions and clarifications would be welcomed.

Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion / Foto proibite di una signora per bene

Minou is beautiful and devoted to her husband Peter. Yet her tendency to drink too much and a tranquilliser habit suggest some underlying malaise even before, walking along the seafront one night, she is confronted by a mysterious sword-cane wielding sadist.

All but threatening Minou with rape – the phallic symbolism of his weapon hardly needs discussing, with the film as a whole likewise offering (almost too) easy pickings for the psychoanalytically minded – the man calmly informs her that Peter is a fraud and a murderer, then inexplicably departs, allowing Minou to make her way to a nearby bar, call for help and have a few drinks to calm her nerves while awaiting her husband.




The mirror lets the man gaze at the woman gazing at herself

A few days later Minou gets talking with her friend Dominique at a nightclub. In the course of conversation Dominique comments on how one of Peter's creditors was recently found dead, with nitrogen in his bloodstream.

Meeting again the next day, Dominique shows Minou some of the candid photographs she brought back from her recent visit to Copenhagen. (“Are they pornographic photographs?” “Yes, but good ones. Quality is important in every profession.”) One features the man.

A further shock comes from Minou's visit to Peter's business, where one of his colleagues shows her the new decompression chamber, used to simulate different pressure conditions for testing deep-sea diving equipment.

Putting the details together, Minou realises that Peter had motive, method and opportunity to kill the man and make it look like an accident.

In the middle of the night the telephone rings. It is the stranger. He plays Minou a taped conversation implicating Peter in murder and demands a meeting with her the next day.


The Frightened Woman

Hoping to buy the man off, Minou offers him money. He laughs at this, telling Minou that it is her that he wants. Desperate to obtain the tape and save her husband, Minou accedes to his demands.

Unfortunately her situation then gets worse instead of better as the man then starts blackmailing Minou with the photographs he surreptitiously took of their encounter. Worse, he says that Peter did not murder anyone, with the whole story being fabricated as a means of ensnaring Minou herself.

Not sure what do to on her return home, Minou tells Peter that she has been out with Dominique all afternoon – a claim that backfires when Dominique turns out to be there as well...




Interior design by the House of Bava?

Although showcasing the talents of the same team who would later make
Death Walks on High Heels and Death Walks at Midnight – director Luciano Ercoli, screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi and actors Susan Scott / Nieves
Navarro and Simon Andreu – this 1970 giallo from Luciano Ercoli differs
from its successors in one key respect. With Dagmar Lassander taking
the female lead as the “Lady Above Suspicion” of the title, Minou, Scott is
relegated to a supporting role, that of her decidedly more suspect friend, Dominique.

The change has a vital effect on the dynamics of the piece as a whole,
as can be seen if we apply the semiotic “commutation test” and imagine what the film might have been like with Scott in the lead.

The picture that emerges is very different, the no-nonsense persona that Scott conveys in the two Death films (and their companion piece, Predeaux's Death Carries a Cane) being entirely at odds with the neurotic Minou, as someone who is about internalisation and introspection rather than externalisation and action.

Equally, however, it is important to recognise that Scott is in no way miscast. Rather, as with All the Colours of the Dark, she seems to enjoy the opportunity to play a more ambiguous character – a role not too distant, for that matter, those essayed by Simon Andreu opposite her in the other two films, albeit obviously with a more overt masculine danger.

Here Andreu is a more straightforward villain, leaving ambiguity up to Pier Paolo Capponi's Peter. While a relatively bland figure by comparison, one suspects this was something consciously sought by the film-makers, his sheer inoffensiveness providing additional reasons why Minou might have subconsciously sought to get into her predicament as a means of compelling Peter to do / say something. (Undoing the top of her dress at the start of the film - “ Dominique is right. I dress too much like a housewife” – Minou fantasises about telling Peter she has been having an affair to see what his reaction might be.)

Of the four leads, it is Lassander who has the most difficult role but who also, unfortunately, comes across as the least able to meet its demands, as perhaps signalled by the way in which Minou's inner state emerges as much through voice-over; a mise-en-scene that repeatedly emphasises mirrored and other doubled compositions; and thoughtful editing, most notably when a sequence of her making love to Peter is seamlessly intercut with her more S&M tinged encounter with the stranger, making it is difficult to tell who and what she is responding most passionately to.

Elsewhere the director throws in the odd nod to Cocteau and I Vampiri as the strangers' apartment, formerly festooned with plaster hands, is mysteriously devoid of signs of recent habitation when revisited by Minou with others in tow.

Morricone's score, with the exception of the odd party music cue that is just too far towards kitsch, is another asset, with its beautiful main theme and effective suspense cues.

The most unsatisfying aspect of the film for me was its last minute “surprise” ending. Though not completely deus ex machina, the very fact that it had to be summarised and explained within the diegesis seemed to indicate that the film-makers were really more interested with exploring Minou as a character than in crafting a more routine conspiracy thriller / mystery.

Indeed, in this regard while the film certainly recalls the kind of risqué gialli Lenzi and Baker were making around the same time, it also seems to suggest affinities with 1940s female noirs such as Mildred Pierce and, especially, The Reckless Moment at times.

While certainly willing to put herself in a compromising position to protect her husband (rather than daughter, as is the two 40s films) the thing Minou never contemplates is conspiring with or against her husband; in this respect those conspiring against her, whoever they may be, know her only too well that she is truly a signora per bene.

Yet – and this is perhaps the film's ultimate strength – while Minou may not be a murderous figure akin to Blood and Black Lace's Countess Cristina or A Bay of Blood's Renata, she is thereby also one that viewers can more readily identify and engage with, perversions and all.

The question the film then raises, consciously or otherwise, is what perverse actually means in a context where perversion – or at least specific manifestations of perversity, i.e. Minou's implicit masochism but not Dominique's confident bisexuality – is the social norm.

The Bloodstained Butterfly / Una Farfalla con le ali insanguinate

Following a seemingly insignificant credits sequence that it is worth paying attention to in its own right – I shall say no more, on this, however – this 1970 giallo from Duccio Tessari proceeds to introduce a wide array of characters, identifying their familial and professional relationships and roles:


Marta Clerici


Françoise Pigaut


Sarah Marchi


Maria, Sarah's mother (Ida Galli)


Alessandro, her husband


Giulio Cordaro, lawyer (Günther Stoll)


Giorgio (Helmut Berger)


Eriprando Villarosa Venostra, Giorgio's father


Diamante, Giorgio's mother

Following this, the action shifts to a park in middle of storm. One of a pair of girls, clad in yellow – i.e. giallo – macintoshes and hats, interrupts Françoise's murderer, who flees before the girls' nanny can raise the alarm. Nevertheless the man, clad in a concealing hat and coat, is seen by several eye-witnesses, including a woman in a lover's lane, Gabriella Justi, who later picks television presenter Alessandro out of a police line-up.


Chi l'ha vista morire? – she did

Coupled with Alessandro's lack of an alibi and an array of evidence against him – a distinctive car-seat cover, a muddy raincoat whose cleaning nevertheless fails to remove a singular chemical trace, a bloodstain on his shirt; with the strong emphasis on the forensic, police procedural and legal aspects of the case unusually engaging for a giallo – the case against him is compelling.

His friend and defence counsel, Giulio, nevertheless manages to discredit Gabriella and cast doubt on the relevance of the the scientific evidence. This is still, however, insufficient to definitively save Alessandro. He is thus compelled to reveal that at the time in question he was with his mistress, Marta Clerici, who cut her hand on broken glass, hence the bloodstain.

Unfortunately for Alessandro, Marta cannot be found nor can he satisfactorily explain why he should have hidden the shirt if this was all it was. Thus, he is convicted of Françoise's murder; the case seems over.

At this point, however, we learn that Giulio and Maria have themselves been conducting an affair and so conspired to use events to get Alessandro out the way.

Then, with Alessandro still behind bars, there is another murder in the park, similar enough to that of Françoise to suggest that Alessandro was indeed the wrong man...

Revisiting this 1970 giallo from Duccio Tessari, I was compelled to question my own earlier judgement, that he was a master of the classic giallo.

The first thing to say here – and those not in the mood for some random pseudo-intellectual ramblings might well want to jump to the end – is that it is not in terms of the film being in any way lacking. Writing, direction, performances and most everything else are uniformly accomplished – if I were to single out one thing especially it would have to be Gianni Ferrio's evocative score, with its fusion of Tchaikovsky and lounge/jazz – and combine to make for an enthralling piece of giallo cinema.

Rather, what I found most thought-provoking about the film was its deployment of what would conventionally, too straightforwardly and readily, be identified as flashbacks. For, as with the repeated re-visions of the gallery sequence that Sam Dalmas plays through in his mind and which Argento doubles for us on the screen in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage what we often seem to have here are more like “crystal images” of the type described by Gilles Delezue, “the uniting of an actual image and a virtual image to the point where they can no longer be distinguished,” and which he identifies as a key component of the modernist cinema of the “time-image”.

Thus, as the police construct a version of Françoise's murder and as the various witnesses to it give their evidence, we are not being presented with a true picture of what happened – which is what Dalmas works towards, even if he can only grasp this truth by gradually abandoning his old interpretive frameworks for understanding the world – but rather a demonstration of a kind of Nietzschean perspectivism in which there are not so much facts as interpretations.

Is this image someone's memory or a reconstruction? Is it true or false? Or, as with the likes of a Resnais film, is it ultimately indeterminate and unimportant in relation to what is it perceived and believed to be?

Here we might note, for example, the vaguely Last Year at Marienbad-style conversation between Giorgio – and ambiguous haunting and haunted presence whose status as hero, suspect and / or red herring remains unclear until the end – and Sarah Marchi, an exchange that singularly fails to indicate the truth of their past encounter, possible ulterior motives, and so on; or the cross-cutting between Giorgio's solitary walk down a street in the present and with Françoise in another, possibly imaginary, time. (In relation to the first of, Inspector Morisini's throwaway “haven't we met somewhere before” remark to Giulia in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage seems hopelessly weak by comparison, both unnecessary and unsatisfactory.)


“You had short hair and you were going to the sorority school. You didn't notice at all - it was long. Yes, of course, it was long. And you wore it down to your shoulders, like this. I wore it in braids, always in braids - my mother made me. Anyhow, now we really know each other. Right.”


“Maybe fables become facts under oath.”

Or, in more concrete, less cinematically imaginative terms – although the contrasts between the TV studio and the home, monochrome and colour etc. still show Tessari's desire to do something more than just get the film in the can as efficiently as possible – there are the early exchanges between Alessandro and footballer Giorgio Chinaglia where they debate a players' strike on the sports programme. Is it a case of the big-name stars protecting their own positions, thus prefiguring the kind of self-interest that is later echoed in Giulio and Maria's betrayal of Alessandro? Or is it (also, perhaps) an honest expression of solidarity with the more rank-and-file, in relation to a otherwise random political banner that Giorgio passes and Tessari's camera lingers on later on.






A mediated reality - the reporter, the TV and the 'real' images

Such moments could also, one supposes, again be examined in relation to Nietzche and Deleuze, as exemplars of the “power of the false” whereby what is false may also be the more life-affirming. (Nietzsche: “Memory says, I did that. Pride replies, I could not have done that. Eventually memory yields.”)

While Marta, who was not wearing her glasses at the time she saw Alessandro, and the treacherous Giulio admittedly have somewhat banal reasons for endeavouring to impose their versions of the truth, the character of Giorgio is far more interesting in this regard, precisely because of his existential estrangement from his family, privileged background and world as a whole, and corresponding commitment to his own particular set of values. ("Father, our family motto reads "Born a bastard to become a king." Well, I never got a crack at the king. On the other hand I wasn't lucky enough to be born a bastard.")

Whether his actions in relation to these are seen as affirmative or destructive is another question; all I will say is that The Bloodstained Butterfly's resolution is one of the most morally ambiguous in the entire giallo canon. It answers one question – who killed Françoise – but asks you a whole lot more. (Nietzsche again: “That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil”)

Again, then, one comes back to Argento and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, as a film whose endings – a Psycho-like psychologist summing up the case, in which a man “who loved not wisely but too well” sought to cover for his murderous wife, and the departure of Sam and Giulia for the USA – likewise contrive to be ambiguously, undecideably, modern.

But – and this is the point where we welcome those uninterested in these theoretical digressions back – whether a film is modern or classical, what really matters, following the “two kinds of music” distinction attributed to Kurt Weill, Duke Ellington and others, is whether it is good or bad.

The Bloodstained Butterfly is undoubtedly good and, even based on the version I saw and from which these screen caps come from, well worth seeing; while there are Italian and Spanish DVDs out there unfortunately neither is fully satisfactory from the non-Italian speaker's perspective.

Squadra Gialli / Krimi Corner

Although the internet has been a great boon for fans of cult cinema everywhere, putting us in near instantaneous contact with one another and giving the opportunity to share information, opinions and more, one thing it sometimes gets accused of is leading to a decline in more traditional fan culture activities.

Happily it does not have to be a case of one or the other, as a couple of recent “by the fans, for the fans” projects deserving of your support ably illustrate.



The first, by the amiable Jonny Redman of Lovelock and Load is a CD entitled Squadra Gialli, a compilation of choice cuts from 70s gialli and poliziesco themes (plus the odd horror cue, like a cut from Giuliano Sorgini's Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue score that gives Stelvio Cipriani or Franco Micalizzi a run for their money in the funk groove stakes) sequenced into a non-stop 50 minute mix. Great to go with the J&B at your next themed party...

Jonny also has an earlier lovelockandload mix available for download.



The second, by the indefatigable Mirek Lipinski of Latarnia is the first issue of on-going quarterly newsletter dedicated to the German Edgar Wallace krimis. The first issue features a profile of Wallace, checklist of Rialto releases, and an informative and insightful review of the Retromedia DVD of The Monster of London City and The Secret of the Red Orchid.

A little public service announcement

An English-language dub of Giuseppe Vari's 1977 Black Emanuelle film Suor Emanuelle / Sister Emanuelle has been uploaded to Rapidshare by someone.

There are seven RAR files, each around 100MB in size:

http://rapidshare.com/files/9252059/SE__By_St0L3n_.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/9263184/SE__By_St0L3n_.r00
http://rapidshare.com/files/9264844/SE__By_St0L3n_.r01
http://rapidshare.com/files/9254806/SE__By_St0L3n_.r02
http://rapidshare.com/files/9266500/SE__By_St0L3n_.r03
http://rapidshare.com/files/9268080/SE__By_St0L3n_.r04
http://rapidshare.com/files/9261572/SE__By_St0L3n_.r05

The password for the files is: www.crazy-coderz.net

Screenshots are here: http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n282/StoL3n/th-SisterEmanuelle.jpg

Amazon.com, which has the film for sale - so there might well be copyright infringement issues with the upload depending on the territory you are in etc. - describes it thus:

"Renouncing her "sinful" past, Emanuelle (Laura Gemser) has entered a convent and has dedicated herself to a life of service. Enter Monika (Monica Zanchi), the free-spirited, free-loving daughter of a wealthy Baron. Emanuelle is charged with keeping Monika in line, but when the young girl's wild ways bring back memories of her own sensual past, Emanuelle begins questioning her own religious and sexual identity. Advances from an escaped killer who is hiding in the convent serve to complicate matters further.”

Pretty much the same old thing, then, for you to download or not as the case may be...