‘Better be a housewife than a slave to capitalism.’
A desperate young woman marries a wealthy surgeon after a chance meeting. However, she becomes dissatisfied with her new life and takes a lover, leading to murder…
Largely forgotten Spanish-Italian Giallo thriller from co-writer and director Giovanni d’Eramo. Marisa Mell stars with one-time Hollywood A-lister Farley Granger and Europe’s hardest-working actress Helga Liné.
Life is turning out tough for pretty young brunette Louisa (Mell). Newly arrived in the big city, she’s wearing out her last pair of shoes trying to get a job. Fortunately, she’s befriended by hotel switchboard operator Yvonne (Liné) just as one of her colleagues is leaving. Liné teaches her the ropes of surviving in the big city, the pair bond over work, and their respective love lives. One night, out hitchhiking, Mell is picked up by a Rolls Royce driven by prominent surgeon Armando (Granger). A whirlwind romance leads to marriage, but Mell soon finds that Granger is repelled by sex, and they have nothing in common.
Mell meets Stefano (Riccardo Salvino), one of her husband’s colleagues, and the two begin an affair. However, they also fall in love, and Mell is torn between the comfort and the security of her life with Granger and the passion she feels for Salvino. Eventually, she decides that the only way out is to murder Granger and make it look like an accident, pushing his Rolls Royce over a cliff and into the sea. However, on the night she elects to commit the crime, someone else lurks in the shadows at the cliff edge.
This film is a potentially interesting project that falls short in several crucial areas. Its most obvious virtue is the unusual notion of telling a Giallo story almost exclusively from a female point of view. Of course, there were occasions when women were not cast as the hero’s girlfriend or murder victim number 3, but any alternative was usually reserved for the cold-hearted ‘surprise’ killer. Mell’s Louisa may broadly fulfil that last role in terms of the plot, but she’s as much a victim as those women who end up on the wrong edge of a black-gloved killer’s blade.
Although it’s not sufficiently established, in the first act, it’s clear that Mell is living almost hand to mouth and alone until she meets the street-wise Liné. This friendship seems a blessing at first, but Liné is focused on the main chance, and her advice follows rigidly along those lines. She’s not consciously malevolent but is more than happy to teach Mell how to manipulate men into obtaining a free lunch. This initial activity is framed as little more than a bit of fun, but we never see where it leads, and it does beg the question of how Granger just happens to pick up Mell in his Rolls at night. Is she really just hitchhiking? It seems that in a male-dominated society, a young woman without means or status has limited options if she wants to taste the finer things in life.
Of course, the film is not focused on making any kind of a social statement, which is a pity because these themes are far more interesting than the conventional thriller elements. However, their presence provides a solid base for Mell to develop her character. She’s naive early on, almost bewildered in fact, and, from then on, an ever-changing blend of confident, trapped, fearful, ruthless, loving, bored and desperate. It’s a shame more filmmakers didn’t recognise her undoubted talent because she delivers a truly excellent performance, hitting all these targets with a rare authenticity. The audience is likely to sympathise with Louisa, at least to some measure, and it’s Mell’s skilful work alone that may prompt such an ambiguous reaction.
Unfortunately, aside from Mell, there’s not much else to celebrate. The story is thin and short on surprise, suspense and unexpected developments. An effort’s made to tell the tale in a non-linear fashion, but it’s clumsy rather than a clever manipulation of the timeline. There’s even a suspicion that it may have been added in post-production to try and liven things up. Much of the later running time is taken up with Mell trying to cope with an unnamed blackmailer (Francisco Rabal), and although both actors give it their best shot, these scenes are far too static and lengthy. Granger also barely gets a look in, and the audience finds out next to nothing about his character, the details of which should have been pivotal in informing Mell’s actions.
In the interests of fairness, it is worth pointing out that I could only source a print running 86 minutes and in a less-than-pristine condition, which never helps. Most sources quote a 93-minute running time, which might smooth over some of the rougher spots. A difference in frame rates may be responsible for this timing discrepancy, however, but missing footage could help to explain why renowned character actor Luciano Pigozzi has little more than a (very) brief ‘walk-on’ as Granger’s butler. Some sources also identify the blackmailer as Granger’s driver, although I saw no evidence to support that. A visiting policeman does seem to tag him as the lookout for a gang smuggling illegal cigarettes along the coast, but he could have been multitasking I guess.
Overall, the results aren’t likely to please the casual Giallo fan. The small number of murders mostly happen offscreen and are presented in a bloodless, matter-of-fact way. Mell is obliged to appear without her clothes on a few occasions, a couple even relevant to the plot, and there’s the obligatory sex scene with Salvino. Fortunately, the strength of her performance is such that these more exploitative elements don’t undermine the sympathy the audience is likely to feel for her. After all, she may be a killer, but, in a way, she’s also a victim.
Given the ‘hit and miss’ nature of the finished film, perhaps it’s not surprising that writer-director d’Eramo has a limited filmography. His only other directing credit is from 1946, but there’s so little information about that film, and anyone involved that it was likely an amateur effort, or his participation is a case of misidentification. He worked as a writer on around a dozen projects from 1950 onwards, notably providing original story material for ‘The 300 Spartans’ (1962). He also has the screenwriting credit on Duccio Tessari’s slightly bizarre ‘Forza G’ (1972), a drama based on the exploits of a real-life team of aeronautical acrobats. Most of the pilots play themselves, with the addition of Salvino as their leader. It’s far more notable for the aerial sequences than the half-baked drama, but Salvino’s participation may have led to his casting as Mell’s love interest here.
A more accomplished director might have made something from both the underlying themes and the drama. As it is, we’re left with a terrific central performance and little else.