City of Pirates (1984)

Dir. Raoul Ruiz

Nobody can say why you go chasing a pirate down

the street but such a state of affairs makes possible

a certain number of anxiety dreams. Was it the pirate,

you ask yourself, or was it the paranoia?

          

from 'When the privateers returned from their pillage' by Steve Spence

There is no Johnny Depp in eyeliner complaining about why the run's gone in City of Pirates, a film by the late Chilean director Raoul Ruiz, a film made to be intentionally difficult to gain cohesiveness over, nor are there galleons or people walking the plank. A pirate can denote something outside of law and order, and honestly, it's too literal and tedious to immediately go to Depp when the idea of a place suggesting pirates is far more mysterious and befitting this film's dreamlike structure.  Many viewers will complain that there are no actual pirates in the film, nor cities of any kind, dismissing the allegorical versions offered. Personally I wasn't disappointed, the lights that seasonally brighten up on a bush in a character's "Garden of Allegory" representing the ones readied for a war between pirates and the country of Spain, but some may be taken aback by the fact that this never becomes important for an overall narrative, merely detail in a world to add character, and that one should be concerned for the battle on this plant when its discovered Spain has lost.

I admit to finding the film a struggle to sit through in the beginning, but in dealing with the film, the issue of what I brought to it in terms of residue biases is part of the subject itself. Isidore (Anne Alvaro) comes into contact with Malo (Melvil Poupaud), a young boy who is in fact a killer, descending into a non linear trip that includes murder and an island where a man Toby (Hugues Quester), owner of the Garden of Allegories, has an entire family living in his head. It felt too close to the stereotype of pretentious art cinema originally. But befitting the film, either it was intentional, or that I fully absorbed the tone of it, and avoided forcing my own subconscious tagging by narrative cinema onto it.That Ruiz partially improvised the film, creating dialogue just before shooting scenes, was a dicey thing to do, in terms of how it would affect the tone of the work, and I'm still at the stage as a viewer, while falling in love with City of Pirates by the end, that the opening quarter of difficult films like this can frustrate me until I acclimatise to them. I've only seen four of Ruiz's films and one short, from a man who made over a hundred films, shorts and television work. As well as difficulty in actually seeing his films, including this one, sadly you can have critical writing be very vague when it comes to the maze-like nature of his work - like the key needed to unlock the mystery in the centre of his The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1979), the description needed to entice you into Ruiz's world, rather than make it sound like obtuse navel gazing that'll put the casual viewer off being curious, is usually missing.

Yes, many viewers will find City of Pirates' completely disinterest with linear cohesiveness frustrating and dismiss it, but the film is far from obtuse. Again for a second review in a row I can reference Un Chien Andalou (1929), and how it was made with every rational idea purposely excised from the finished work. With City of Pirates, anything that connected together the content in terms of a narrative was removed during the editing process. Ruiz, and I dare stake this claim, in a film set by the ocean as depicted in lush almost candy-like colours - hazy burnt pinks, oceanic blues, blistering oranges - despite seeing little of his work, is an individual who suits the metaphor of the Chinese boxes well. Even if the conclusion is there by the end, the greater significance is that the route through the films seem to be continually expanding as you go along, and altering into more and more tangents as they go. Like the following too:

As a film, any plot for it boils down to the protagonist tagging along with the child as his "fiancée", after he (or likely she) has murdered her adopting father, only to be pushed into an increasing sense that she herself is hiding a more homicidal person within her. What the draw of the film is, the greater importance clearly, is how this is represented. It's worth remembering too that City of Pirates is a film that's playful in tone. A lot of my problems with the film disappear when the adoptive father leaves quite violently, in an unintentional shift in tone, or possibly on purpose. The beginning of the film is jarring against conventional norms of narrative cinema. A sentient white ball that bounces by itself, the mother talking to the dead, random appearance by policemen, and the one unfortunate aspect that was either Ruiz intentionally mocking pretence or something that flaws the film a little, the use of actors quoting very descriptive poetry. I'm not a fan of poetry where elaborate vocabulary for whole verses is common, rather than use of metaphors, grounded yet imaginative verse, or completely visionary or intentionally nonsensical wording choices. There is still the poetry in the rest of the film, usually in duelling voiceover, debating existence and life, but it's not as problematic. That the more irritating aspects of the dialogue were all quoted by the father, who is continually offering his adoptive daughter/live-in maid money as if soliciting sex behind his wife's back, it is the possibility that its intentional.

It becomes clearer than mood and fluxations of it drives City of Pirates, and what appears to be slight and close to pretentious drastically changes if one remembers what their dreams are like. Far from a cheap defence, it's a remainder to reconsider the context for viewing a film like this then the critical opinion. Dreams can have narratives, but they also dispense of any 'rationality' and inherently disregard notions of storytelling which required a 1-2-3 creation of characters and story. In this context, the film works perfectly. After a beginning stumble, it works as an increasingly darkening dream. One that is clearly humorous. One that has black humour and purely unconventional images. The most distinct, in the beginning, is the camera from inside the father's mouth, looking out between the teeth at his wife inspecting them.

City of Pirates

Instantly with this image, you should realise this is a deliberately absurd work. Especially if you use an example not from the film like this to emphasis the absurd camera shot -

Justin Quinnell's Smiley Cam Research Project

Large portions of the film are like this. The protagonist lost amongst a potential lover who offers her everything from radios to food, to Toby himself, where the mother of the family inside his head never heard from but only heard of from the other individuals juggled about from his consciousness. Surrounding this Ruiz is technically accomplished at making the shots seen have a distinction and a logical, tangible frame to house these illogical aspects. In dreams, the depth is gained from the resonance of the images and the events, not the background behind them. The meaning and emotions felt are already there for you beforehand as, in deep sleep or day dreaming, you are pulled away from the necessity of having a rationality to all that you encounter or sense. The difficultly one may have in trying to gauge with 'difficult' films, books and such materials could easily, possibly, maybe, be removed if you could go through them as one would encounter dreams in sleep. Maybe even the poetry I had a bugbear with may have made more sense in the film's place if I could have fully embraced the film in a resting state fully open to its content. The film's too deliberate in tone to be merely random, even if partially improvised, and the film's technical brilliance means that obvious motifs can exist which string together.

It's darker content reveals itself to be a fully darkened core to the work rather than mere shades to it. I can laugh and include the ridiculous juxtaposition of images just before, but parallel as well in City of Pirates is an incredibly uneasy film while still being tongue-in-cheek and playful. Nasty in its violence, the boy floating paper boats made of money in a river of a man's freshly split blood. Almost Italian giallo in its use of knives and blood spillage:

City of Pirates

Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975)

With Toby, despite a friendship taking place, his treatment of Isidore at first, locking her up in a prison cell, is immensely unsettling. When its changed into a friendly relationship, it's not a jarring and offensive shift. In dreams, opposites can sleep so much closer together while in the everyday the idea of them moving into being different and one-and-the-same equally is disturbing. The same applies to Malo, the killer boy, sarcastic but with the halo of a cherub. No wonder, when actor Poupaud grew up, you'd want to hug him in François Ozon's Time To Leave  (2005). But the boy is also a serial murderer and rapist. Later he takes on the status of a deity for murder, more of an entity. (Alarmingly Ruiz makes one of his names Peter Pan.) The childish innocence of the tone - pirates, bright colours - is hiding a tragic tale. A woman who lost romance, as she explains her backstory, and, in the symbolism, may be a killer as well. The film is open to interpretation. You can argue she's a mass murderer. Argue, with a shot of a man's face reflecting at her in a mirror, that it's the guilty of a man by proxy of his anima. That everyone's dead and this is purgatory as viewed as a coastal paradise of hazy, post-shooting highlighted, eighties colour coding. It's a not a cheat, a con, for Ruiz not to answer this, to be intentionally vague. His job here clearly was to make a waking dream. Dreams inherently have each viewer/listener of them making their own interpretations of what they mean.

There's always been a paradox in that, structurally, cinema is of audio and visual content. Even when either is removed, the lack of either and the sense of this takes up the gap left. However, the paradox, is that narrative is seen as more necessary within films. Narrative is not inherently of cinema, especially as editing, or lack thereof, is more of the connection of images in new meanings. Dreams are of the same idea. (So, fittingly, Sergei Eisenstein and Salvador Dali can exist in the same club house). Even if a narrative exists, like you wakes up naked in class on the day of an exam you haven't prepared for, my own experiences in dreaming have shown that the sensation of progression, through events, is more dictated by the effect of what happens than a story with a beginning, a middle and an end being shown. How narrative got to be the main priority in cinema is probably the result of theatre and novels influencing the material filmed, through either can remove it from themselves as well. Unfortunately, this means City of Pirates is seen as experimental because it negates the importance of narrative cohesion. My difficultly with the film at first is as much a subliminal printing of all the Hollywood films we see as children. This is important as I had difficulty writing this review - asking why I suddenly loved the film halfway through, when my mind originally was numb through the first quarter, and what I got from it when I loved viewing it. Sensations. The sense of dread, curiosity, wonder. The last image has stuck with me. Two women talking by a window. A man with a rotting face points a gun at the side of his skull. The women become skeletons even though without ligaments, muscle, a tongue or a vocal box they couldn't talk. Death. Unease.

A woman lost without love who'd likely slit her adopted father's throat for a lark and deep seated revenge against him. Her adopted mother doesn't care about the various murders, and still loves her. Death still existing from a child, completely against the notion of childhood innocence. Fittingly comparable to the last film I reviewed here - The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears (2013). I know too Ruiz was an exile from Chile when it became a dictatorship. When Isidore is imprisoned, was that on his mind? Yet he's still playful. A white ball, clearly on a string above, being spun around the mother's head as if possessed by the dead feels too whimsical on purpose to be a fault tonally. There is no need for Ruiz to have to divide this from the serious side of the film, as the viewer should themselves and the film is structured so these abrupt parings make sense together. The conscious structure of these irrational pieces was ignored by me at first, which I regret when I finally noticed and understood them. Rather than hold one's hand, the film lets you feel when you react to individually in seeing said images. With this film in particular, it emphasises for me the absurdity of letting narrative being a driving force when images and sound are the more important factors for a film. That, and as taking its cues from dreams, it already possesses a cohesiveness, but that cohesive structure belongs from something, dreaming, where the rational to have something explain all of itself to you, rather than take from it what you can, is literally asleep and not allowed to be involved in experiencing the dreams. With City of Pirates the point is to experience the sense of dreaming it. The try and make a narrative out of it makes little sense to do and is patronising to it and yourself.

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Images, in order, from the following sources:

1. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zlc81EWkeDU/TKedkC6nJdI/AAAAAAAABFU/jyKLN328ND0/s1600/vlcsnap-2010-10-02-15h55m18s148.png

2. http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/7813/ruiz5qu7.jpg

3. http://www.utopia-britannica.org.uk/Assets/maze.jpg

4.  http://dcairns.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/vlcsnap-197666.png

5. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/

-bbwrZ9IoKEA/TzLR1daBeII/AAAAAAAAAC0/wm_XH2UcfZU/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-02-08+at+11.08.56+AM.png

6. http://deeperintomovies.net/journal/image11/cityofpirates06.jpg

7. http://cdn.filmschoolrejects.com/images/deep-red.jpg

8. http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/post_images/6403/city%20of%20pirates.png?1314026129

9. http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/cityofpirates-window-red2.jpg

The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears (2013)

From http://twitchfilm.com/assets/2013/07/StrtangeColorPoster-1.jpg

Dirs. Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet

As a side note, the viewing of the second feature length film of the directors of Amer (2009) does come with a strange anecdote of going to see it. There were tests being run just before a 3.20pm screening, and after some delay, the first images on the cinema screen were mute clip from The Truman Show (1998). If Jim Carrey had actually been in an avant garde psychodrama cribbing from the texts of giallo films from Italy, my head would've exploded. I have no grief with said cinema just to let the reader know. The screening was late but all the trailers usually played in front of films were skipped, and the film was presented to its best as a visual and audio barrage, so I have nothing to concern myself with. It's just that odd moment is very memorable.

It's befitting the type of film The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears is that this kind of breaking up of cinematic conventions was done by accident before the film actually started. Done completely sincerely, it nonetheless takes the conventions of the giallo, a murder mystery story, and inverses them. Dan Kristensen (Klaus Tange) arrives back in Belgium from his work abroad, only to find his wife Edwige (Ursula Bedena) is nowhere to be found. The building complex they are living in is a maze of hidden secrets and perplexing circumstances surrounding the environment. The fellow occupants have their own hidden sides, and nothing is what it seems. Joined by Detective Vincentelli (also played by Klaus Tange), reality becomes less and less tangible as the walls hide older ones, a killer is clearly within the building, and the circumstance are so severe Kirstensen even becomes his own killer, victim and witness at the same time one restless night. It is not a good comparison to say this is close to an original giallo. They could be campy, schlocky and significantly different even when they were stylish and artistic. For all their abstract moments, even Dario Argento's, they had a simple narrative that was followed closely. The Strange Colours... has a narrative, unlike Amer's three segments, but is likely going to be the more difficult of the two for people because it purposely goes away from what is easily understandable, using symbolism and outright surrealism for plot points. The film is very unconventional on purpose, the experimental style of the directors made clearly apparent again like in their previous work rather than for them to be making a throwback film. Umberto Lenzi's Eyeball (1975) this is not, a trashy and wonky Italian pulp film, but violently nasty, pulsating with sex and weird imagery, as much Art with a capital A and a sensority experience.

From https://static-secure.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/4/10/1397138290671/Aping-Bu-uel-a-scene-from-010.jpg

It feels right on point that critic Anton Bitel, in Sight and Sound magazine reviewing the fillm, suggested this was a treatise on the mind of a psychologically damaged man, Kristensen's possibly. When the Detective and the protagonist are played by the same person, it immediately suggests, to paraphrase a title of Video Nasty film, that this is nightmares of a damaged brain we're seeing. Amer, despite its three separate pieces that made its whole, had an obvious connective tissue - the growth of a girl into a woman, puberty and sexuality inbetween - while The Strange Colours... jumps from its narrative tracks to follow the mental environments of its characters. This is furthered by the trademark style of the directors, an exceptional and total cinematic flourish. It's not just the striking use of colours. Or the unconventional use of ordinary objects. It's the obsession with the smallest of details, amplifying them greatly. Rarely in films do you get the sound of leather stretched. As the sole other person in the theatre with me said, afterwards, there was an extensive use of added sound effects. Concerning one with all the aspects of a film - visuals, sound, editing and so forth - with as equal care never feels apparent in quite a lot of cinema when you many movies. Far from giving attention to itself with this, pushing you away from engaging in the film, it is as immersive as a dream, no matter how abstract the film around is, all interconnecting in a way perceived to make rational sense. Instead of becoming impatient in wanting a standard A-to-B narrative, which is a danger when viewing a work like this, this has its images and scenes connect together by themselves in a way that explains what is going on that you have to be willing to follow on their own accord.

When the detective has his own flashback to previous assignment, involving voyeurism and vengeance with red wrapped "sweets" and rings as claws, that seems to have no connection to what is originally taking place, it's clear it's not as random as Kristensen points it out to be in being mentioned as the film goes along. It's just one part of a clearer connected tissue of moods and ideas. The anxieties and lusts of a male where his wife interchanges with many other women, sex and death juxtaposed and combined as the apartment complex becomes a host of a single mind than a building. Turning an all changing entity of photo-optic tricks in the opening credits, that can house the most sadomasochistic acts, including an uncomfortable situation with glass, to the curiosity of a young boy. Never has the goal that Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali had in mind with Un Chien Andalou (1929) been a clear reference point for a film that is also indebted to a specific area of cult genre cinema, but it's the case with The Strange Tears..., especially the notion of removing anything that had an obvious explanation but using a well known narrative structure to construct a film around this irrational material. Everything has a purpose or is designed to juxtapose in unconventional ways. It becomes very obvious what has happened to Edwige, but the reason why it has happened, and the individual involved, who may be connected to the disappearance of an older man years before, as seen in someone else's flashback, is left a mystery. And it becomes more and more obvious as the film becomes more unconventional that the individual responsible is not necessarily a mere killer, and that something more complicated is going on. When a box of toys suddenly appear, with spiked wheels and erotic imagery amongst them, or a chapter on the desires of a woman, likely Edwige's, plays out involving a bowler hat, stop motion straight from Jan Svankmajer, and an inspired scenario taking place onscreen which uproots conventions of a chase sequence from giallo or slasher films. Even the title, a beautiful one, turns out to be a very obvious reference to something the viewer sees in the end but also hides so many potential signifiers within it, particularly with the amount of wounds and injuries that are inflicted to the human body. The previously mentioned scene of Kristensen literally being duplicated and taking on multiple roles against himself, harming himself, eventually, long after the film ended, becomes the obvious sign of the hidden paranoia of his that becomes more obvious as the other scenes play out.

From http://diaboliquemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/STRANGE-COLOURS-MIDLINE.jpg

It's not that rare to see experimental artists use pop culture that is seen as un-progressive and below high culture for a source of inspiration. Actually, its more common than you'd think. In most cases it's the reasons the material were criticised for that are the aspects latched onto by the artists to replicate in their work, Andy Warhol the obvious example. There is definitely a fan vibe to this film when the protagonist, part of an intercontinental telecommunications company, has so many main themes from Italian giallo on vinyl and plays them at convenient moments, the film littered with tracks taken from the original inspiration and providing the theme of Killer Nun (1978) an expecting resurrection as a tense and inspired ditty that gets into your head. And The Strange Colours... inherited the lurid side of the giallo - the nudity, the sexuality, and the linking of death and said sexuality together that'll be shocking for some viewers. A razor blade and a woman's anatomy, an image repeated multiple times, is something that you see at the beginning of the film and lets you in on what to expect for the rest of the running time. I admit I was concerned the film was going to get silly or undermine itself with questionable content, especially from a scene early on where a woman is completed naked on a balcony of the apartment complex for no discernible reason. But when, around then, it seemed to progress dangerously close to tasteless, fitting as it references giallo, not a good thing when it's trying to be a serious avant-garde film too, the equal opportunities attitude to both genders in what happens takes place and a much more complicated tone is revealed by the halfway point that prevents it from being mere ultraviolent softcore. Its a work of pure style, I confess that, but its a gem of this because it uses its style to create a tone of fear linking with anxieties of sexuality and violence that gives a depth to the proceedings. Using the ability of dream logic to transform moods into sensations that are more than enough to have a profound effect on you. The works that take their influence from "disreputable" objects tend not to stick with the structures and meanings of the originals, and transport them into a new context. As Kristensen becomes more entangled within a situation that becomes more of a cloud over him for the viewer watching the film, the sense of reality being altered that is apparent in giallo, where each plot twists changes the rules of how everything works, is here as well but with a significant difference. Each piece of information in a giallo, far from a breadcrumb to get one home, is a further complication in these films, but there's a conventional narrative surrounding them nonetheless which is not found here. Dropping the conventional narrative, this is no longer a stylish pulp journey for the sake of twists and turns that a giallo usually is, but concentrates itself, using the sub-genre's style, on the sensation of tension and sensuality. While Amer was about female sexuality, this is clearly about male sexuality. Amer had danger, death and fetishism, but this feels more chaotic, nastier and paranoid in tone to the earlier film. They mirror each other, but this one feels the more intentionally horrific once it gets to its ending, all stemming from a complete lack of understanding in femininity once you get what its title originally means. You could argue the reason why Amer ended as it does is explained in this film like a metaphorical prequel, although rewatching Amer is a must for me now.

After the viewing, when the lights came up after the end credits finished, I was the sole person in the screening room, the other individual who watched the film having already left as (presumably) the end credits rolled, creating a sense of having been dropped back into real life suddenly. It was startling. With its blasts of sound, heavy percussion based music cribbed from the original inspirations, visual manipulations and moments of editing that felt like a knife piercing flesh, it felt like the sensual overload I went into the screening hoping it would be, having left me disorientated for a long while after the viewing. The lights of the nearby bathroom were a heady, sickly yellow of artificial lighting, a cramped claustrophobic toilet cubicle with a grill behind you when you sit down. What's behind the grill, something I actually asked myself jokingly but with curiosity. Complete blackness. Maybe behind it, what was a respectable art cinema with modern architecture hid a secret or two like is found in the film when a wall is broken down. While The Strange Colours of Your Body's Tears doesn't provide intellectual meat to leave on, its a film that causes you to look and listen carefully around you when you leave the cinema and step back into the real world, causing one to see it through senses and emotions. Everything pulsated when I got on the train for the long way trip home, even though it was a bright English afternoon and no one was being killed by someone in leather gloves nearby like an Argento film. Probably the reason giallo was the object of obsession for the directors Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet is that it's the sub-genre where style and what is seen, felt and heard was so extravagant and obsessed over, from the music to the colours. And a story of murder and sex is always about sensation too even if it's pure fantasy. What's truly cinematic is when you can feel a film, not just look at pretty pictures on a screen. With a success rate of two out of two feature films, a great segment in the wildly varying (but underrated) The ABCs of Death (2012) and short features, the duo behind this are few of the only individuals who take reference from the history of cult cinema seriously and create results that actually have virtue to it. Not through indulgence, sarcasm, or merely presuming to replicate the older films, but by turning it into their own voice even if its divisive and for only a few. It's going to feel like hell for me waiting for their next film now. Even a short would suffice!

From http://www.critic.de/images/the-strange-colour-of-your-bodys-tears-03-The_S.jpg

What? (1972)

From http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/What-Poster.jpg

Dir. Roman Polanski

I admit that rather than dig into an auteur's canon through the best work, as according to canon, I sometimes end up drifting to the lesser knowns of their careers or the oddities. Failures and miscreants. As much as F For Fake (1973) is a masterpiece from Orson Welles, usually its Touch of Evil (1958) after Citizen Kane (1941) in people's minds while I'm more inclined to dive for the former. My habit connected to how DVDs are released, snapping on the first time releases of an obscurity like a dog on fire. Or when rare screenings are shown on TV that are not easily available. But this habit, because of my peculiar "grab-the-film-in-proximity" mentality, has meant I've had a new side to the question of what auteurism means. Rewatching What?, how am I going to view this as a Roman Polanski film, as I've only seen a couple, and by itself? What exactly is What? By itself, and why has it got that title let alone is how it is? Along with Louis Malle's Black Moon (1975) and Claude Chabrol's Alice Or The Last Escapade (1977), this is another European auteur who decides to do something different by riffing on Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland.

Nancy (Sydne Rome) escapes from a group of men in a taxi, a wide eyed naive American on vacation in Italy, only to end up at a holiday villa cut off in its own eccentric world. Legendary Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni is Alex, a former pimp turned masculine lizard with an eye on Nancy and many peculiar fetishes. There are a pair of British lads, the third friend Polanski himself as Mosquito, with his "Little Stinger", a harpoon in a dumb sex reference. The owner of the villa (Hugh Griffith) is near death and has the eye for Nancy, as does everyone else, such a shambolic man who can play Mozart despite arthritis in his hands. Add a priest, an older American couple, and two women, one usually completely naked, to the mix and a wacky sex comedy is the result. The villa itself is as much of a character. Full of art - Francis Bacon above the bed, Roy Lichtenstein printed on the carpet - and is placed next to an idyllic coast line. Nancy has to both deal with the people in the villa and the villa itself - déjà vu, objects breaking when she just touches them, and more and more of her clothes being stolen and torn. Honestly What? is a weird film. I've overused this word, something I've had to kerb, but it applies for this film. [My Collins Gem dictionary defines weird as "strange or bizarre; unearthly or eerie"] Films that I have praised have been defined as weird because they've broken away from convention; unfortunately I've over the years clouded the term with a vagueness, as someone whose only actually looked at its meaning in the dictionary. What? is weird, but unfortunately it's also slight.

It looks beautiful at least. Two cinematographers - Marcello Gatti and Giuseppe Ruzzolini - and the setting for the erotic farce is perfect for the cinema screen. Expansive ocean. Old Italian architecture.  A tower. Vast corridors. Passage ways and balconies. To reach a room just above you, where a ping pong ball has fallen from which Alex has an irresistible urge to crush to hear the crunching sound, you have to pass through a lengthy journey inside to reach it. Hidden away in obscurity until a few years back, the premise of What? would have worked beautifully, and it does stand out as an absurdist work. Alice In Wonderland but as conceived as more directly sexual and about cross cultural relations, the American in not only Europe but the cinema of Europe, a Polish director, Rome an Italian actress of American birth, Mastroianni and a cross pollination of actors including from Britain. The problems, on a second viewing, is the execution that is full of flabbiness and vagueness. Its tone is immediately off, with discomfort, as a comedy when it starts with Nancy escaping a gang rape in a taxi, which is immediately setting up the film as prickly in its content. The real life events of Polanski causes a problem when viewing this film because, as an erotic absurdist piece, the crime he committed in real life, whether you can separate this from his films or find him completely reprehensible, have a bitter taste to some of the content in What?. It's not that Nancy is continually naked or in a state of undress for most of the film. Nor the kinky and lurid tone. The problems are both how asinine, and merely crass, the sex jokes are and how insipid Nancy is as a main character. It's a problem that the opening involves a near-gang rape done in a jokey way, her backside is continually pinched and she's lusted over by all the men because she is such a blank individual who doesn't take consideration of what's fully going on, the only register that of a deer caught in the headlights. Her submissiveness to Alex is bad not because she's submissive to him but there's no sense of reasonable depth to it even for a sex farce. The tone that would try a gang rape as a joke makes this worse . (Such a tricky, discomforting concept like rape has only been justifiable as a joke, and a good one, from what I've seen in Pedro Almodóvar's Kika (1993) because the joke is on the patheticness of the rapist.)

From http://images10.knack.be/images/resized/119/469/558/521/0/
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Rome is merely pulled along as Nancy, without any real interest for herself onscreen for us to care about her. The Alice In Wonderland scenario, depending on the version, is usually of an onlooker to the scenarios played out, but they can still interact with what happens with some spirit to them. Mentioning Black Moon, actress Cathryn Harrison's protagonist still interacts constantly to the events that take place, as does Sylvia Kristel's in ...the Last Escapade. Nancy could have worked as a character, a stereotype of the youth, the American, who believes in expanding her mind - bell bottom jeans,  yoga, travelling the world - yet has no idea what the old continent of Europe actually is, befitting a subject for the Polish Polanski if he was actually at his best. Her asking of someone's Zodiac abruptly to deaf ears or talking about a philosophy book she's read, she's a caricature of the middle class youth who believes in improving the world but is pretty useless in contributing anything of use, which unfortunately is not used enough. Most of the film is of Nancy in increasingly less interesting sexual scenarios. The character never progresses enough from her views being bashed by the lustings of mad perverts. Rome is just a pretty face, her voice is too thin when you need to depict an extremely naive woman who slowly realises the place she's in is alien to her.

It's a film made on a lark, which would have worked if it was actually daring and chaotic to befit a Wonderland scenario. It has its virtues indeed, but only really in style and Mastroianni. To see him, who dominated La Dolce Vita (1960)  and 8 1/2 (1963), in a tiger suit being whipped is on for the bucket list of viewing experiences, but even if it wasn't his voice heard in the English dub, he still brings a damn fine performance physically to the work. Moments where a better film exists are there. The curtain rail of Nancy's rail falling off and literally every object is almost against her.  A random moment where her left thigh is painted blue. All of this would as madness where nothing for her is going to assist her in the villa, as time repeats over and over again. But the film eventually peters out. After trying to admire it as a flawed gem, I eventually gave up from when Hugh Griffith is introduced. Eventually the most the other characters say to Nancy are directions around the villa or how they admire her breasts, something I found a mere flaw, without any real glee in the sexual humour like a good bawdy work, but just becomes irritating and questionable. It adds a creepiness in its lifelessness without even mentioning Polanski's real life events. The tone, after I stopped deluding myself, is just off, not working at all. The jokes are obvious or non-existent, the lost potential for this scenario felt, worse when its director knew how to do the abstract in his darker material. It's a film that's pleased with itself but fails miserably barring a few virtues.

It does beg the question of what an auteur means when this exists in the director's filmography. It's a fascinating and memorable work, but surely this upsets what Polanski's career means with its existence? And what does it mean if there are people like Jonathan Rosenbaum who put it amongst his essential films of cinema's existence? Am I blind? I fully endorse auteurism as a theory, worship at the shrine of it honestly, but my belief is counter balanced with the realisation that cinema is both the work of many people and that, no matter much I try, there'll always be the odd ones out that prevent the theory from being complete truth. What? eventually drags on, never progressing in tone like the other films referenced in this review. By the end it merely finishes. Leaving the film the viewer finally finds out what the title means, which is, an intended baffling of the audience. "It's the title of the movie!" Nancy shouts to Alex, leaving in the back of a truck, completely naked, full of pigs, suddenly breaking the forth wall. It lacks the subversive and abrupt undermining of it Jean-Luc Godard did very well in two of his late sixties films, Pierrot le Fou (1965) and Week End (1967). Instead it comes off as laboured and missing the point of what it should be doing with its ideas. What? sits at odds in a really tumultuous time in Polanski's life, and even without this in the back of my mind, the film comes off as a bad surreal film. I thought I could appreciate all 'weird' films, but this one is laboured by its end, proving there is a difference when one actually has the spontaneity and creativity that make them great. What? as a title perfectly sums it up, ill-advisedly, in that its title suggests befuddlement in the film because nothing of interest is explained. 

From http://366weirdmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/what.jpg

Videotape Swapshop Review: Anatomy of Hell (2004)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sL-uE1XV2K0/UC-cBc5ZaAI/AAAAAAAANzs/CKTMANmjr-8/s1600/2004+Anatomy-of-Hell.jpg

Dir. Catherine Breillat

If there ever was a divisive film, this one is such an example. In fact for the most part Anatomy of Hell is viewed as awful and going too far. There is the thought though for me that this violent hatred for the content of this film that I've read justifies the existence of it. Sometimes a bluntness this strong is needed, and while there are aspects of the characters' dialogue that I disagree with on a philosophical level, it still causes me to think hard about why it was included in the film. It is better to try to grasp what the film is trying to do than to merely dismiss it as garbage, and as this review below attests to, revisiting this film, which I have not done since film studies at college over six years ago, had an immense effect on the material I saw again.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/19694/anatomy-of-hell-2004-director-catherine-breillat/

From http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x66/mothsmoths/aoh19.jpg

A Little Death: Stranger By The Lake (2013)

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Dir. Alain Guiraudie

Cars are left side-by-side to each other at a dead end of a country road, an improvised car park. This image repeats in Stranger By The Lake, set over consecutive days. Repetition, similar actions and events happening but with more and more complication. It's summer and Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) goes to a beach each day, a gay cruising spot where men can sunbathe, swim, interact, or go into the woods to have sex with any of the other patrons. The film begins at first as an erotic, naturalistic drama, as Franck is unable to find a romance or even a brief sexual fling each day there. Instead he develops a friendship with Henri (Patrick d'Assumçao), a older male who sits on the other side of the beach by himself and never goes swimming or cruising. Very static shots make up the film. No music. In the throes of summer, the beach and surrounding woodland is beautiful and cut off from the rest of the world. A vast sea is shot in the brightest blue and you could get lost within the surrounding woods.

Naked men lay on the beach, explicit full frontal nudity, completely casual, in a way that makes the taboos of male nudity a complete farce. At tines these men look like deities on holiday. The sex is explicit and real, even if body doubles were used. It actually amused me to see a film with real acts of sex on a cinema screen. In fact this is the first film with hardcore sex I've seen at the cinema. As the nearest multiplex is in another city to me, the nearest art cinema to have seen this further afield, to see such an explicit work on a giant cinema screen than on DVD for once is a vast difference. Only now writing this review do I also realise, usually as a solitary viewer, that I viewed such scenes of ejaculation and sex in the prescience of strangers I didn't know, all male young and old in the day time, and that I never gave consideration to the sex itself as I left my seat to the in-cinema cafe but to the unsolved thoughts of what the film was altogether. I feel hesitant talking about sex with even my parents, yet complete strangers did not bother me with this film, too enraptured by said film and more concerned my head was blocking the screen for the person behind me. Having actually seen a film now, at a cinema, with hardcore sex that was available to see for a wide audience, even in an "alternative" cinema, now makes the fear I had in viewing any real sex, hetereo gay bi etc., completely stupid by how it never registered to me in the viewing as I was more concerned for the characters and what the director was intending to do. It also makes the fact, especailly in Britain, we're still debating this issue within cinema just as farcical. After this film ended, I walked out, passing a glance with the only other person who stayed until the end credits finished, and the only thing on my mind was wrangling the moods I felt for the film, not necessarily these hardcore images by themselves. The scenes themselves have a real, alluring eroticism that even for a heterosexual viewer like myself can feel, unbelievably passionate when experiencing viewing the film. Brilliantly though, even as Thanatos and Eros start to intermingle, the director Alain Guiraudie also has the down-to-earth and absurd also take place alongside the erotic. Condoms strewn on the woodland floor to the annoyance of someone about to make love to Franck, and a running gag of a chubby guy who likes to watch others have sex and masturbate nearby, sometimes to the bafflement of the party he's near. The fact that this man is fleshed out, character wise and literally, beyond being a gag into a loveable personality himself shows a rich dynamic to the eroticism and characterisation too that is rewarding. This is not just a misery fest like a lot of arthouse films with hardcore sex in them are stereotyped as, not helped by films including ones I admire that are this, nor neither is it flimsy hardcore. This for me feels like someone who actually cared about depicting sex in a way that even viewers like me who aren't gay can feel as much as a gay viewer could.

Part of the way through however, Franck views a heinous incident, falling in love with the mysterious but likely dangerous Michel (Christophe Paou). Their romance blossoms but as a police inspector (Jérôme Chappatte) enters the world of the beach, Franck's romance may be for the worst. Less a murder mystery than a psychological suspense drama based on one man's desire, Stranger By The Lake proves you can have a make version of the femme fatale, alluring yet dangerous. The difference is the figure of desire here is a very masculine, muscular and bearded male. There have been films where an average Joe/Jill falls in love with a very dangerous person; the director has said the film's an expedition into his own sexuality, but there is a universal aspect to the story too, the fear of potential danger and how as much it might be a draw to them, as they know how ill-advised their romance could be rather than naive about it. The inspector comments that only two to three days after the heinous incident, the patrons of the beach are acting as usual, as if nothing has happened, but the environment is a fragile one. Its cut off from everything, but it's not that far away from the rest of the world. Once, humorously, in a man wandering through wanting to meet "horny" women, but when a boat passes by its clear how thin the distance from the rest of the world actually is. Everything appears to be normal in the secluded beach too, but the murder does linger amongst the patrons at the back of their activities.

Until the end the film continues with an exceptionally engaging character drama with these characters that populate the beach. The film never leaves this location, the repetition of Franck arriving at the beach and regular faces met, including always saying hi and talking to Henri, giving the film a sense of lived-in reality, but also a rigorous structure to work around. If something strays from what is repeated before, that means something is very amiss. The erotic desires of Franck and Michel are palpable and legitimately sensual, but it's clear, especially through Paou's performance, Michel is someone "off" from everyone else. Regardless if his lovers were other men or women, there is something very amiss to him. I could be sticking my foot in my mouth, as a heterosexual male discussing a film by a gay filmmaker, but I question what critic Armond White said in that this film shows a retrogression in depicting gay men when it's a film set around a specific story with specific characters. Its beach world is incredibly normal, welcoming so, as well as sensual, the fears Guiraudie might be expressing clearly interpretable in the fact that the danger, wrapped around a potential thriller, is not linked to homosexuality itself but a concept that has existed in all the arts, and for any form of physical and emotional desire. The lover who you crave, love, but who could be harmful to you at the same time. This doesn't mean the fact that this is a gay filmmaker making a psychodramatic work around gay men should be ignored - if a film is specific, it should be allowed to. The problem is when its scrutinised under a perception outside of the individuality of films that oppresses the ability to gauge each film because a "respectable" portrait always has to be encouraged without a logical reason to. It doesn't need to do this and feels richer for this. Its greatest virtue is also being an immensely engaging, slow boiling hybrid of genre and drama. The ending, the last minutes, are not that of a Hitchcockian thriller, a blurb praise the film's been saddled with to sell it, but that of the central relationship and the theme within it. What was an abrupt one when I left the theatre screening room, realising this, becomes pitch perfect for the whole film when you consider this dark romance is the central plot.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXoQV2dMYce6a9wjqckylW8kw-LELYAvZkun9ulJcIDwgxkBgeanhKyaIF-43_V2iUYNMoQFPPTuo2cRpWOx_lHdU-4JH3A02PKxKFlQ4JBJ3UIHa7cqktvWh9TlNkr3IRBIESse3VByI/s1600/stranger-by-the-lake-14-01.jpg

Videotape Swapshop Review: The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962)

From http://wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/gallery/posters-a/awful_dr_orlof_poster_07.jpg

Dir. Jesús Franco

Another Videotape Swapshop review, and more Franco. Like a reliving high, I can jump back to reviewing another of his films and always find something of interest. Only my own inconsistency with using Jesús and Jess for his first name is going to give me grief one day if I don't get a consistence first name moniker for him in my writing, especially when I'm LONG before ever getting through a quarter of his work. I was thinking about starting on another director, next year, that I felt I had barely seen work from and wanted to compensate for the embarrassment, but I had to choose a director whose filmography is over the hundreds as the first, meaning I'll be with Franco for a while at the same time. Its damn great to be watching his works which is the thing I'll be going to in my mind every time I think this, and I only wish I started becoming a fan of his while he was still alive. But as I watched this early work of his, I can say fully that he left a vast library of work that expands when you think you've pinned the late Spaniard down fully in tropes.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/18154/the-awful-dr-orloff-1962-director-jesus-franco/

From http://www.mondo-digital.com/awfulorlof4big.jpg

Representing France: Two Orphan Vampires (1997)

From http://images.moviepostershop.com/two-orphan-vampires-movie-poster-1997-1020492359.jpg

Dir. Jean Rollin

It's a delightful surprise that this film doesn't feel like a nineties horror movie at all. As much as I'm obsessed with the nineties, one of the reasons I'm obsessed with it is the tackiness of the era as well as the positives. Not a lot of horror films from that decade are celebrated, as compared to other eras, for this reason.  Jean Rollin didn't make a tacky film in the autumn/winter of his career here, thankfully making a very interesting one instead. It's very much an art film, against other films of his I've seen, which must be beared in mind. It's amazing too that I can compare this film to the work of fellow French director Eugène Green, of The Portuguese Nun (2009), with his long, almost Bressionian moments of dialogue, dangerously near the precipice of pretentious but ultimately charming and rewarding in being a bit more freer to let scenes play out as far as needed for mood and effect. This is the same for Two Orphan Vampires. I will openly admit it's going to be a difficult film for people to digest, including those who like Rollin films. I will also admit that I've developed a taste for films that could be seen as "difficult", with small fan bases, but this one works completely for what it intended.

From http://admin.highdefdigest.com/picture/original/32953

The titular vampires are two girls, Louise (Alexandra Pic) and Henriette (Isabelle Teboul), living in an orphanage ran by nuns, blind in the day, but able to see at night when they go out to feast. Immediately distinct in their identical clothes and white canes, the two are sympathetic in that, while they need to feed on the living, they are clearly close, engaging in their ponderings on existence, and obsessed with books on Aztec culture and magic while they believe they are reincarnations of the Aztec gods. The film is a series of events, ones from their previous lives, able to come back to life after being killed, as well as ones from their new life, as a doctor adopts them and they continue to explore the world around them. They do encounter other supernatural entities - a ghoul, a werewolf and so forth - but they are women too; in fact, baring the doctor, there are no male characters in the film baring extras or minor, one scene roles. (An interesting tone for the film in that it's a world framed entirely around women who have the discussions on the meaning of life as well as the small dramatic plots.) Its brief story is more of an engaging character piece, of characters doomed to repeatedly die despite their happiness, both girls concerned that they'll eventually never come back to life again at some point. Its abstract in a way that could frustrate people, but baring in mind, digging deeper with what Rollin was obsessed by, this is a waking dream of a film crossed with the kind of aesthetics of book illustrations that look exceptional when used in the opening and end credits of the film

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_n35PfUpWyak/TPwPrOEv2mI/AAAAAAAAZVg/
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It doesn't look cheap either. I suspect it was shot on celluloid. It has an atmosphere, like the best films covered in this series of reviews, where from the first scenes it already sets up the mood immediately with the look and use of the locations and the space in them. The bright, vast locations of the day time to the blue lit environments of the night time scenes. His obsession with sexuality and sensuality is still there slightly in the vampires' relationship, including the sexual nature of how vampires bite a victim's neck that has always existed in the mythology, but barring two moments or so of nudity, this is quite a chaste film more concerned with friendship, and the bonding of Louise and Henriette, at times like teenage girls onscreen, other times very wise and adult in their reflections of the world around them. The film's mind is more on magic and supernatural creatures than carnality of other films of his I've seen. Probably the biggest reason why people could be put off Two Orphan Vampires if they're not prepared for it is because this strips away the blood and nudity in Rollin's films and leaves the unconventional plotting, where two vampires get bored of their predicament and do whatever they desire to escape it, presented not as a conventional three act narrative. For me it's nice to go through such an abstract, dreamlike film that paces itself well. The dialogue is all of interest even if its unconventional at times. It's an interesting take on vampires that doesn't compromise the mythology while adds new things for its own depiction. The two lead actresses are very charismatic as their characters, to the point that their potential ego in believing themselves to be gods is actually sweet natured and understandable pride in their existence than despairing their "curse". The distinct age fluctuation in their appearance in fact adds a strange air to the proceedings which makes their characters more interesting. The directions the film takes make sense - a world of supernatural beings who are methodical and languid, none of the hectic tone of, say, the Twilight films, and most horror films, where two vampires can kill time as best friends for most of the running time. Nothing feels contrived in the film in what happens, anything odd feeling appropriate for the dreamlike tone. It feels like spending a week with these characters in their immortal lives only with a few deaths at their hands taking place, and the danger they will be discovered and killed themselves adding dramatic tension. It looks good, and even if the score is dated synth, it feels like it's actually from the eighties, the depth of that era's music here to and adding to the material. There is nothing in Two Orphan Vampires that feels amiss, and that Rollin made a film completely against what is expected with these genre tropes is admirable, more so in that he succeeded for me.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_n35PfUpWyak/TPwPhQPz1ZI/AAAAAAAAZVY/
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Representing Belgium and The French Language: Female Vampire (1973)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Female_Vampire.jpg

Dir. Jesús Franco

First of all, hopefully I'll be able to pick up from the few days I missed. The least expected thing - technical malfunction out of my hands and nothing to do with my computer - delayed the final stage of the season. It will have to run into November to make up for thirty one films I wanted to write reviews of. A conclusion for the series will have to be written in November or part of the next Month In Review too. To compensate today, I present a review of another Jess (Jesús) Franco film and the first in a group of reviews I wrote for Videotape Swapshop  to tie both places I write for together into this blogathon. 

It made sense, since I was diving into the director at the beginning of the year, going through his filmography slowly, to cover a film or two for this season. Considering how many co-productions he made, including for countries with no other horror films expect his to truly represent them, its befitting and also says a lot about how diverse his career was. And I have barely scrapped a body of work that's over a hundred films not including the re-edited versions. There could have been three of his films covered already, but Bloody Moon (1981), his West German slasher film, is one of the few legitimately awful films of his I've encountered. I rather champion Female Vampire. Merely poking the air next to the catalog of the late man, deciding to view his work when he sadly passed away this year, I can be thankful that its quite a solid series of films I've seen baring those couple of bad ones. Even something like Oasis of the Zombies (1982), which I reviewed on this blog, is no way near as bad as some of the films I've seen. I'm late to the party with reviewing Franco's films, with other blogs devoting themselves to his, but as a person who only saw a handful of his films before and barely had any primary knowledge of what his films were like, there's a potential for a really interesting chronology in these reviews, as the director gets the most tags to his name so far in the labels section for filmmakers, where I slowly get to know more and more about his style as I watch more films. I could be digging at his work for years, which means I may have to use other director seasons as mini-diversions, their thirty or so films a puddle next to the ocean of Franco's, and there's stuff by Franco, like his porn films, that are going to be difficult to find. Here at least I got to one of the first of his films I heard of, and I'm glad for what I saw. I only wish an available DVD wasn't very out-of-print in Region 1 or 2 as of yet. 

Also of importance, looking back on this film, is that Lina Romay deserves her own label in the Actors section of my site. Even if a lot of Female Vampire is near-explicit titillation, she was clearly more than mere window dressing in this film, turning the movie into something more sensual and interesting with her clear interest in how she presented herself. Its worth making this review link a moment of my own applause for both her and her husband Franco together. 

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/17244/female-vampire-1973-director-jess-franco/

From http://images.dead-donkey.com/images/bscap1924wl3.jpg

Representing Italy: Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971)

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh07nq7S_PGLOGEH-MOIe91H10OTdusSPkZBVUoWyx54k63269K1rEz57mXVjfPKajHTHBlmjlgSvC-iGiAVNbh2p8KWSKKKuyGU4w_M4TOzREiqM8eXby3JXSIgOTzB663-Jiqc3tyEEoN/s1600/four+flies+poster.jpg

Dir: Dario Argento

To watch a giallo, which Dario Argento impacted with his debut with the power of an electric bolt, is to expect the unrealistic. Its fantasy. A tricky knotting string of narrative. It only works as it does in form by being as absurd as it is as well as logical to some extent. The giallo, as I come accustomed to it, is a subgenre that could only make sense in cinema, willing to jump to unexpected places as abruptly as possible as well as have real logic to them. Befitting Argento the former film critic, giallo even when its middling is all about the lack of a clear vision, lost in the web of narrative for the protagonist and the viewer. Red herrings are there, one of them or someone else entirely behind the murders. A "gimmick", a McGuffin, or a nagging aspect for the person trying to solve the crime is always there, and the resolve is far from the original placement of one's expectations. In most other subgenres, it's possible that going to A to B hasn't even gotten past A by the end credits. Giallo on the other hand, unless it's so bad you don't care, feels like a journey.

From http://hotdogcinema.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/four-flies-mask.jpg

This was the missing piece in the puzzle of Argento. There are other films that were obscure, but Four Flies On Grey Velvet was the noticeable absence. Notable because it's in the beginning of his golden period of giallo and supernatural horror films. Notable because it was the final film in the unofficial Animal Trilogy, including his famous debut The Bird With The Crystal Plummage (1970) and The Cat O'Nine Tails (1971). Now available officially, the only truly obscure film in his filmography is The Five Days (1973), his sole excursion outside of horror and mystery thrillers, a historical comedy of all things. Four Flies On Grey Velvet certainly crams a drastic amount of shifts and pulls of subjective reality as it goes along. The drummer for a band Roberto Tobias (Michael Brandon) finds himself accidentally killing a stranger in a theatre, a mysterious figure above them capturing the incident on camera and using it as blackmail. However the figure doesn't want money. As he resists, Roberto tries to figure out what is going on, realising that blackmail isn't enough to explain what is going on, and so much more is taking place behind his back, not at least bodies that are slowly piling up. It plays with its form, but it's not the bombastic camera tracks and stylistic lighting of the later Argento films. Its sly, playful; after the great, but simple and economic first film The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, he suddenly raids every technical idea he could come up with to test himself. The heavy prog rock by Ennio Morricone, in contrast to his previous scores for the first two Animal Trilogy films, is very much a mirror for the film as a whole. This is a Mr. Bungle song sat at the end of two considered jams in this unofficial trilogy. The plot is even more ludicrous than the other two, its title from a gimmick later in the narrative that borrows from the history of mystery fiction, but feels even more ridiculous for being so suddenly introduced near the end of the film. The playfulness of the film is signaled immediately in the opening credit prog jam when there's a first person shot from inside a guitar that's there for the sake of it. Even next to the fantastic and bravado shots or images from the likes of Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and Opera (1987), this film is the closest to a quirky film in his filmography, with how it presents itself, while still being a full blown giallo.

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The whole film feels so different from a lot of his early and later films. Another character instead of Roberto does the investigation of the leads. There's romance between Roberto, already married, and his wife's sister that isn't actually frowned on or highlighted as a grand plot push. The characters around Roberto are broad and intentionally exaggerated, from a downtrodden postman who keeps delivering porn to the wrong house, to a friend (Bud Spencer) who is nicknamed "God", introduced with a chorus singing "Halleluiah!" that drastically differs from anything in Argento's work barring the bawdy orchestration that follows Daria Nicolodi out a door as she teases David Hemmings in Deep Red (1975). Argento's films can be very fun, and there's comedy in others, but most of them are played deathly serious. The entirety of Four Flies On Grey Velvet feels more knowing of itself, more openly silly. Clearly in trying to reach a new level of experimentation he could implement for his films afterwards, Argento made a film here that took some risks that he wouldn't attempt again. It's not part of his supernatural films, which even Deep Red is partially of, but how does that explain where the reoccurring images of a beheading leads to in its meaning? It sets up tropes that would be ran with in later works, but there are things that are never continued in the ones I've seen. Our protagonist never looks into the case for himself, completely lost barring clues others find for him. Its everything around him that shifts without much of his influence, and results of it completely take him down.

From http://24.media.tumblr.com/9b6e17e68fa653bd9718c6c121abe4e5/
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As Argento films go, it's good because of this and because it's still very much a rock solid giallo. Its full of clever, eye popping uses of the camera and the Morricone score is great. The last moment of the film may be one of the director's best for just knocking the viewer out. And the story is good as what a giallo usually is - it's not the mystery that's of interest, it's how it done and how things such as coincidences are welcomed rather than rejected for only logical explanations. Its full of pulp uses of psychological babble as other giallos, the same obsessions with clues and sociopaths, and in this film the added playfulness takes them to a different tone and makes the film stand out separately from the others. To Argento's credit, all of his films, from what I've seen, have been different from each other, never wanting to repeat himself in tone and presentation even if continuing with similar ideas. Finally accessing Four Flies On Grey Velvet not  only completes a key part of his career for me but also adds a new layer to how distinct he can be.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAvs-Y0R3N0yNqtSLODRagUTe_WrJDjDbk9RyKOX7k7UiFMtZkvc978ZXo79uU3lcAeJ1QMv6bsEqXpep01_1q32U4FfY5LXMS4BsdyiRwD5LI27cY4agtW3SGrbR7GfvrRWrqF8AMl5Q/
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