Just in case the Mayans got it right, this is The Agitation of the Mind signing off in the company of 13 favourite femmes fatale. It's been a pleasure.
Showing posts with label Edwige Fenech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edwige Fenech. Show all posts
Thursday, 20 December 2012
Sunday, 7 August 2011
After a two-month hiatus, Giallo Sunday returns with Sergio Martino’s 1971 giallo ‘The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh’, his first foray into the genre and his first teaming with Edwige Fenech. How is it awesome? Let me count the ways.
Firstly, its success kicked off a string of stone-cold classic gialli from Martino: ‘The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail’, ‘All the Colours of the Dark’, ‘Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key’ (its title, one of the most magnificent in all of cinema, suggested directly by ‘The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh’) and ‘Torso’, two of which reunited him with Fenech.
Secondly, it features stellar turns from three giallo legends: Fenech, George Hilton and Ivan Rassimov. Rounded out by Cristina Airoldi (who has one of the most memorable scenes in ‘Torso’), Alberto de Mendoza (a character actor extraordinaire with an incredible eight-decade career in cinema), Carlo Alighiero (who played Dr Calabresi in Argento’s ‘Cat o’ Nine Tails’ the same year) and Bruno Corazzari (one of the “go to” guys for all-purpose villainy in Italian cinema), the cast is tip-top.
Thirdly, it marries stylish thrilleramics with a psychological imperative (the “let’s scare Edwige to death” syndrome: cf. ‘All the Colours of the Dark’) and delivers the whole thing in such a twist-heavy package (the last third of the film is pretty much one narrative curveball after another) that it’s deliriously difficult to keep your eye on the ball.
Fourthly, it delivers a generous helping of much-loved giallo tropes, including extended, operatic death scenes (a protracted bit of business in a park bears comparison with Argento’s ‘Four Flies on Grey Velvet’, made the same year), bottles of J&B all over the shop, a beleaguered but still gorgeous heroine, and black-gloved killers with sharp implements. Seriously, take a look at this little collection of screengrabs and tell me if they don’t scream giallo:
I could continue enumerating all the ways in which ‘The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh’ is one of the defining examples of its genre, but I’d probably end of with a repetitive article that segued into a several thousand word love letter to Edwige Fenech, so let’s get things back on track with a plot synopsis.
Julie Wardh (Fenech) has entered into a marriage of convenience with career-obsessed diplomat Neil (de Mendoza) – a man so stultifyingly dull that he dishonors the name Neil (plus, how dare someone who’s obsessed with work share the same name as me? I hate work) – in order to get away from her domineering and possessive ex, Jean (Rassimov). Jean, it is revealed in flashback, is the chap who happily pandered to Mrs Wardh’s eponymous weird kink. And the kink in question? “Blood both excites and repels her.” Hence Jean making love to Julie on a bed of broken glass. (Don’t try this home, kiddies!)
Returning from a trip abroad with Neil, Julie is unnerved by the ministrations of a psychopath targeting women in their neighborhood, and by the fact that Jean seems to be trying to inveigle his way back into her life – the two, she worries, might not be unrelated. Hanging out with BFF Carol (Airoldi), Julie meets Carol’s playboy cousin George (Hilton), whose attentions provide a welcome distraction from her worries. When a blackmailer observes her passionate interlude with George and threatens to spill the beans to Neil, Carol offers to deliver the pay-off in Julie’s place. Things go badly wrong and Julie’s life spirals into chaos and paranoia.
Any fuller synopsis than that would lead us into spoiler territory, so many great things about this film will have to go by the board, particularly anything relating to that aforementioned last third. I will give a nod, however, to the way Martino seems to wrap things up with a bit of expositional dialogue between two characters which leads to much (perverse) hilarity between them; Martino plays the scene as if he’s about to homage Clouzot’s raised-middle-finger-of-irony ending to ‘The Wages of Fear’ (I was even prepared to forgive him the plagiarism, it was done so gleefully), only to subvert expectations and deliver an equally delicious irony but effected by quite different means.
As with any labyrinthine plot, too much analysis can sometimes be fatal. The climactic revelations depend on alibis aplenty for more than one character, and the lacunae are pretty tenuous in places. Still, it’s no small measure of the film’s success that Martino is pulling unexpected moments out of the hat right till the end.
His direction is energetic. The camera prowls with POV-centric menace à la Argento. The set-pieces – including a cat-and-mouse scene in an underground car park, and a nervy exploration of an old dark house lit only by the guttering flame of a cigarette lighter – are confidently handled. ‘The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh’ was only his second non-documentary feature (after the spaghetti western ‘Arizona si scatenò... e li fece fuori tutti’), yet every frame demonstrates that with the giallo Martino had found his métier.
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Given that the last Ruggero Deodato title I approached was ‘Cannibal Holocaust’, I settled down very nervously to watch ‘Phantom of Death’. Please, no wholesale animal slaughter, I prayed as the opening credits commenced.Fortunately, there were no snake, turtle or monkey eviscerations, although I did have to sit through Michael York doing the worst impersonation of a concern pianist ever committed to film. York plays Robert Dominici, an ivory tinkler of the classical persuasion. He’s involved with but unable to commit to the gorgeous Susanna (Mapi Galan) and lusted after by wealthy fashion designer Helene (the uber-gorgeous Edwige Fenech). Poor bastard – must be terrible for him.
As if decreed by the bit of cheap sarcasm in that last paragraph, things do get pretty awful for him very quickly. Susanna is murdered, the second victim of a brutal killer who has very recently despatched specialist consultant Dr Carla Pesenti (Carola Stagnaro). This inaugural killing is intercut with Dominici’s recital and sets up an interesting aesthetic: a very formal, slightly detached directing style punctuated by Argento-like set-pieces defined by prowling, subjective camerawork and grand guignol violence. My very poor understanding of Italian translates the indigenous title, ‘Un delitto poco comune’, as something like ‘A Small Community of Crime’, which is an unwieldy title but one that contributes to the misdirection Deodato puts in place for the first half hour. With Dominici as a successful and acclaimed musician, the luckless Dr Pesenti an expert in her field, and the soon-to-be-in-danger Helene the head of that sooooo giallo of institutions, the fashion house, ‘Un delitto poco comune’ is the first indication that here we have a group of affluent types whose lives are under threat, either from a someone with a grudge, or an individual within their midst.
Added to this, Deodato throws in any number of expected genre tropes, from the bumbling copper, Inspector Datti (Donald Pleasance) seemingly unable to prevent each successive murder, to enough in the way of spiral staircases, rickety elevators, heads plunged through decorative glass, sharp instruments flashing in the dark, geysers of blood and non-linear editing to suggest ‘Phantom of Death’ was made in the glory days of the giallo and not a decade and a half later in 1988. In fact, Deodato’s manipulation of his audience’s knowledge and expectations of two decades of gialli is the film’s biggest asset. For the first thirty minutes, you sit back comfortably convinced that Dominici is being established as the Sam Dalmas or Marc Daly du jour, the reluctant hero in the wrong place and the wrong time who’ll be required to turn amateur sleuth when Inspector Datti’s incompetence puts him in danger.
Not so. Deodato whips the rug out in commendably effective style with an hour still to go, shifting the focus to Datti and ramping up the tension as a cat-and-mouse game between cop and killer plays out, with Datti’s good-natured daughter Gloria (Antonella Ponziani) a potential victim and Helene’s role complicated as events take another unexpected turn.
Unfortunately, the English language title provides a heavy-handed clue from the outset (take the first two words, factor in the importance of musicianship, think of a very similar title in literature and film, and bear in mind the disfigurement of that anti-hero), the performances are all over the place (York chews the scenery like it had just got five stars in the Michelin Guide, Pleasance drifts through each scene on autopilot, and Fenech valiantly strives for more than the script gives her), and the dialogue is often embarrassingly bad. Particularly when Inspector Datti speculates “Why would anyone kill a doctor? Hmmm? Ah? Unless [pregnant pause] they had something to hide.” Also, the film is riddled with inconsistencies. A file is stolen from Dr Pesenti’s office and yet a crucial appointment is noted in her diary, but Datti never thinks to cross-reference them. Dominici keeps fit by training with an oriental fencing expert – what the fuck??? A concert pianist engaging in a physical activity that could damage his hands?!?!?
But there are also plenty of genuinely creepy moments (the most effective involving nothing more than a peripheral character on a swing), as well as an unexpectedly melancholy subtext about mortality, the existence of God and, if He does exist, the cruelty of His grand design. ‘Phantom of Death’ is half-and-half an extrapolation of Argento-style aesthetics and an inquiry into what a giallo directed by Ingmar Bergman would be like.
Sunday, 19 December 2010
This is purely hypothetical – mere conjecture on my part – and I would ask anyone who represents the director or producers of ‘Strip Nude for Your Killer’ to please bear this in mind – as well as the fact that there is no malice whatsoever intended in these remarks – but I reckon the first production meeting for ‘Strip Nude for Your Killer’ (in its equally unambiguous Italian title: ‘Nude per l’Assassino’) went something like this:“Andrea, baby, we’ve got a great script for you. A giallo. It’s gritty, it’s pacy, it deals with contentious subject matter. It screams you, baby.”
“I’d rather make a porno.”
“But Andrea, this has got huge box office all over it. Edwige’s schedule is good. We’ve got Femi Benussi on board. Hell, this movie is going to be filled with gorgeous women.”
“Cool. Let’s make it a porno.”
“No, no, no. It’s a murder mystery. Hell, we can throw in some nude scenes, but first and foremost it’s a mystery. It starts with a really gritty and controversial scene as an abortion goes wrong and the two men involved conspire to cover up the girl’s death.”
“Guys, why don’t we scrap the abortion and concentrate on how she conceived in the first place? We could do it as a porno.”
“But Andrea, baby, the abortion sets up the rest of the plot. The scene shifts to a health spa where fashion photographer Carlo – we’ve got Nino Castelnuovo lined up for the role – picks up a foxy redhead played by Femi Benussi and they make out in the steam room. Whaddaya think, Andrea? Your kinda thing, baby?”
“I’m interested.”
“Then he takes her back to the studio he works for where there’s jealousy from one of the other models. Also, the predatory lesbian who runs the studio takes an interest in her.”
“Do they make out?”
“Um, I guess we could address that in rewrites. Anyway, it’s at the studio that we meet our other main character, Magda. That’s who Edwige’s playing. Magda’s an up and coming photographer who has a professional relationship with Carlo and they team up when a spate of murders –”
“Hey, how about she’s a photographer but what she really wants is to be a model and she gives Carlo a blow-job in the dark room to convince him to give her a shot. Because, you know, fuck the feminists.”
“Um, yeah, I guess we could do that. So anyway, Carlo and Magda find out that –”
“Does the redhead buy it? ’Cause I was thinking, maybe we could have her walk around a strange house stark naked for five solid minutes before she gets viciously knifed to death.”
“Andrea, baby, that’s why we called you! That’s what we want on this production: creative thinking, dynamic filmmaking, exciting set pieces. And tits.”
“Don’t forget the ass.”
“That’s what you’re here for, baby. You bring the T&A game. How about it, Andrea? Shoot it quick, don’t bother about composition or continuity. Nobody cares about acting performances. Let’s get this fucker in cinemas in two months’ time. Your usual fee and we’ll throw in crate of J&B. Whaddaya say?”
“Guys, I’m on board. What’s this thing going to be called?”
“We’re thinking either ‘Seven Deaths in the Camera’s Lens’ or ‘Death Wears Motorcycle Leathers and a Gender-Disguising Helmet’. Although the pizza delivery boy prefers ‘Six Drops of Blood on a Naked Corpse’.”
“Good call from the pizza dude. But, guys, how about ‘Strip Nude for Your Killer’.”
“Love it, baby. We start shooting in half an hour.”
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