Our natural, mediterranean tendency to drama, to the baroque, gave these thrillers a flamboyant side which made many of them - including Argento's "Profondo Rosso",
What a movie! (Deep Red in English) I´d seen it almost 30 years ago and it still remains fresh in my mind. A Quality Horror film.
OscarGuy wrote:I think we can use the "Released in the United States" guideline as a rule for deciding which "telefilms" to include. I'd say if they premiered on TV in the US before going to theaters they should be disqualified.
Who's to determine which films debuted on TV before being shown in U.S. theatres? It's that kind of thinking that kept The Last Seductioin from being eligible for Oscars even though it was on numerous critics' ten best lists and won Linda Fiorentino several best actress honors. I think if a film was released theatrically in the U.S. it should be eligible regardless of whether it was shown on TV first or not.
HA! Oh Marco, I love how kind and sweet you are when someone agrees with you, or says something nice to you. You are the cheapest of cheap dates. :p Huggles.
I'm sure you will love it, Eric. While I must admit that I rarely agree with you on serious, recent movies, I've happened to read by chance a few reviews you wrote (on some site) of Italian B-movies of the 60s and 70s, and they are extremely good and perceptive.
Very interesting back story; thanks for that post Marco. It sounds like a can't miss film, provided one watches it in the proper circumstances. The opportunity for me to see it in a theater is nil, but I hope someday it will maybe get a French DVD release.
I really think the requirements for making a documentary are different than standard filmmaking. While this has changed in recent years thanks to Michael Moore, I think it would be ill-advised to include them in the list.
As for setting a time-limit, that's the exact scenario I wanted to avoid. Because they "feature" films such as Life of an American Fireman, The Great Train Robbery and A Trip to the Moon would be excluded. Again, feature-length is an amorphous term that I'm not comfortable in limiting.
I think we can use the "Released in the United States" guideline as a rule for deciding which "telefilms" to include. I'd say if they premiered on TV in the US before going to theaters they should be disqualified.
And as for Film Series, we enter a very dangerous front in that respect. While The Lord of the Rings Trilogy would be an appropriate combination, the James Bond films would not. The Godfather trilogy could, but some may bristle at being forced to include The Godfather, Part III.
Really, that kind of thing should be up to everyone before we start...after all, those who think Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back should be combined but to exclude The Return of the Jedi might find opposition...it's a VERY difficult decision to make.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
Thank you, Marco, for that wonderful post; sounds like a fascinating film and I hope I get the chance to see it some day; and Eleonora's story, wow, what a great lady!
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
OscarGuy wrote:Feature-length only. Film lengths vary based on the period, but if it's obviously a short film, don't list it.
Direct-to-Screen films only, not teleplays, movies made for television or miniseries.
I don't think Documentaries should be included, but that's a personal opinion.
by PM or Email is fine for me.
A couple of suggestions:
01. If you don't want to include short films, I say we should make it a rule that to qualify as a feature, the films has to be at least 30 minutes in length.
02. I think we should include documentaries as long as they were released theatrically and are 30 minutes or more.
And a question:
What's your ruling on film series/trilogies? Can we list the films as a whole (e.g. The Godfather Trilogy, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, etc.) or do we have to list each of the films individually?
Well, I think that giallo is the sub-genre in which Italian cinema gave its best results during that fertile, unforgettable, sadly long-gone magic period, the 60s and 70s - even more than western. Our natural, mediterranean tendency to drama, to the baroque, gave these thrillers a flamboyant side which made many of them - including Argento's "Profondo Rosso", Avati's "House with the Laughing Windows", and Lado's "Short Night of the Glass Dolls" - truly great movie experiences. They were also often very well directed.
But Nelle Pieghe della Carne is something else. It's an unbelievable mix between giallo and eurotrash, and the result, while probably one of the worst movies ever made, is certainly one of the most surprising. So surprising that yes, it has now achieved, in France especially, a kind of cult status - mainly due to La Cinematheque Francaise calling it "involontairement dada" and showing it in Paris and other cities to an adoring, delirant audience (including myself, but later about this).
It is basically a pairing (a la Baby Jane) of two Italian stars who had seen better days, our (mine and Penelope's) adored Eleonora, and Pier Angeli, who in the 50s had had a probably even more important career (at least by international standards). But now it was the late 60s, and the time when Eleonora was acting with Jean-Louis Trintignant under Zurlini's tender direction in Violent Summer, and Pier Angeli was starring with Paul Newman in two movies, was sadly over.
This is the kind of movie that has everything. It opens with a ridiculously inappropriate quotation from Sigmund Freud, and it goes downhill from there. What follows is a fascinating rollercoaster of murders (preferably by decapitation with an axe, but even by dropping cyanide tablets in a bath - don't ask), incest, unjust imprisonment, dog strangulation (again, don't ask), plastic surgery, mistaken identity, revenge, attempted rape, vague paedophilia, and not one, but TWO children being shocked by a violent event and losing their memory as a result - all this happening in a dark villa on the sea, and shot in a matter-of-fact, boldly "realistic" way. It is, also, full of fashionably-60s flashbacks, mostly to the first murder - always with a different character as the killer; but also - since this is eurotrash and Eleonora's character is conveniently Jewish - we are repeatedly treated to those (back then) typical black-and-white flashbacks set in a nazi concentration camp (see the movie and you'll probably understand - and then please explain it to me). The last half-an-hour is the best - one "shocking" surprise a minute, with each character revealing someone else's real identity and lines like: "Falaise", yes, in this movie they really have names like Falaise, "Pascal, the guy you are about to marry is actually... your brother!" Nobody, in this movie, can be sure of whom he or she really is till the very end, and when heads starts being found everywhere - in vases especially - it may even turn out to be yours, or at least the head of the person you thought you were. This may sound confusing, but it's not - it's more often incredibly funny.
The movie is so deliberatedly over-the-top, and at the same time so solemn in its art-house ambitions, that at times you can understand why it is considered by some to be so great. It is certainly unique, a one-of-a-kind experience, such a daring mix of drama and farce that you stop wondering who killed whom in that famous flashback and start focusing on the real mystery: is this all intentional? Was Sergio Bergonzelli - a forgotten, Z-grade director - consciously applying surrealism, pop art and yes, dada even, to cinema and pre-dating Almodovar, or did this mess just happen by chance?
As I said, I experienced this movie in the best possible way - with a real audience (seeing it by myself on dvd would have been far less effective), in Nice - just because I happen to have a place there, I honestly wouldn't have made the drive from Milan to France just for that. Or would have I? This was after all the chance to see Eleonora's swan song, a film impossible to find, forgotten and surrounded by an aura of mystery, and there was a kind of poetic justice in seeing the beloved, now reclusive star's last movie in a cinema.
I can't even describe it - not in English at least. After ten minutes, everyone there was laughing. Not just laughing - literally exploding with laughter (the French first because they could read the subtitles, me a few seconds later) - like some strange drug addiction. I've never seen anything like this - it wasn't just a movie, and not even just a "bad", trashy movie, not anymore at least - it had fast turned into a happening, something deliriuous, with the audience shouting at the characters, trying to predict the next twist and of course miserably failing. Poor Pier Angeli was by then too depressed and cathatonic to even attempt to act, so she wears always the same expression of wide-eyed terror on her face. But not Eleonora. This may have been an inept, cheap thriller, yet Eleonora wasn't the kind of actress who surrenders to bad material (or who laughs along with it, like an American performer would have done). She was, after all, Eleonora Rossi Drago, and wasn't going to let her audience forget it. So for all the movie, absurd line after absurd line, unbelievable twist after unbelievable twist, she acts as if she's still in a Michelangelo Antonioni movie, or in a Chekhov play directed by Visconti - a serious, committed, professional performance, by an aging but still beautiful star. People kept laughing at her, but Eleonora didn't seem to care - aristocratic as always, she valiantly completed her job, right till her last dramatic close-up on the screen.
But laughs isnt what Eleonora deserved. While Pier Angeli made two or three other movies before killing herself, Eleonora disappeared from the screen immediately after this movie - a sad and at the same time glorious ending of a once prestigious film career. She disappeared from anything else, too - no more public appearences, no more photos. She, too, attempted suicide of course - but like in one of her movies of the 50s she ended up by marrying the man who saved her life. She now lives in Palermo, Sicily. Nobody has ever seen her again.
ITALIANO wrote:my personal number 1, Sergio Bergonzelli's Nelle Pieghe della Carne
Wait, what?
Hehe... Ok, I was joking.
I looked at that description and thought it sounded fantastic. I haven't seen nearly enough giallo.
And now that the topic was brought up, I'm pretty sure it was the exclusion of short films that also led to my own exclusion from the last (and this) poll.
ITALIANO wrote:Hehe... Ok, I was joking. But that movie - which has been rediscovered a few years ago by La Cinematheque Francais (I know, nowadays this doesn't mean much) and which I saw in Nice - truly is an unintentional masterpiece of surrealist art. You should try to see it - one laugh a minute, guaranteed. Almodovar must have been inspired by it for some of his early films.
Oh, and Eleonora Rossi Drago is in it (though understandably she retired right after making it).
Yes, I was aware of the film's reputation (but you're correct, I haven't seen it--yet, anyway!), and indeed some people do think very highly of it as some kind of unclassifiable masterpiece (the Skidoo of its genre, only better, is the impression I get?), so I wasn't sure if maybe by chance you were serious, or if there was some personal backstory to it ...
