‘They are sweet, my colours, sweet as Autumn, hot as blood, pure as syphilis, and enter into the eyes, infecting all.’
A young artist arrives in a remote village to restore a painting inside the church. The friend who recommended him for the job is killed, and other murders soon follow…
Heady combination of Gothic horror and Giallo mystery from Italian co-writer and director Pupi Avati. Stars Lino Capolicchio and Francesca Marciano try to make it through the mayhem to the final credits.
Young art restorer Stefano (Capolicchio) is engaged to work on a badly damaged painting inside the village church run by priest Don Orsi (Eugene Walter). The picture depicts the martyrdom of San Sebastián, and Mayor Solmi (Bob Tonelli) wants it returned to its former glory. To his surprise, Capolicchio meets old friend Antonio Mazza (Giulio Pizzirani), who has moved to the village after a disastrous love affair and has recommended Capolicchio for the job. However, Pizzirani seems nervous and mentions an important secret he has discovered. Before he can explain, however, he dies after falling from a hotel window. Capolicchio suspects murder, but the local Police Marshal (Ferdinando Orlandi) is satisfied with an explanation of suicide.
As he continues to work on the painting, Capolicchio starts a romance with the village’s new school teacher, Francesca (Francesca Marciano), but finds himself increasingly convinced that he has stumbled onto a mystery. The villagers seem strangely tight-lipped about the eccentric artist Buono Legnani (Tonino Corazzari), who painted the picture and his family, who once lived in the village. Then Capolicchio finds that his room at the local hotel is suddenly no longer available. Young man Lidio (Pietro Brambilla), who helps out at the church, finds him new accommodations at a strange, crumbling old house where a paralysed old woman (Pina Borione) lives upstairs. As Capolicchio probes deeper into the painter’s family history and his friend’s murder, he puts himself and Marciano in danger.
The Italian market for mystery thrillers had been seriously oversaturated by the onslaught of Giallo films in the early 1970s, and, in general, the audience had moved on by the time Avati went into production with this project. However, the considerable success of Dario Argento’s ‘Deep Red//Profondo rosso’ (1975) demonstrated that there was still a market for such films if they were well executed. Avati’s story, co-written with his brother Antonio, Maurizio Costanzo and Gianni Cavina (who also has a prominent supporting role in the film), is not a significant departure from the familiar Giallo formula. However, the director’s approach to the material is very different as he soaks his film in a Gothic atmosphere of slow decay set against an idyllic backdrop of rural beauty.
Events open with Capolicchio’s arrival at the village by car ferry, with new schoolteacher Marciano as a fellow passenger. He’s met at the dock by Mayor Tonelli and his chauffeur Coppola (Cavina), who does double duty as the town drunk. Although Capolicchio is keen to rush to the church to view the damaged picture, Avati still delivers these opening scenes languidly, establishing a slow rhythm that the drama maintains until the final act. These early sequences also establish the beauty and isolation of Capolicchio’s new surroundings, bathed almost entirely in bright sunlight. This is a marked contrast to the generally gloomy dispositions of the locals, although Avati is very careful to avoid the usual clichés of open hostility. These people aren’t unfriendly, just a little uncommunicative, which helps to evoke a subtle atmosphere of unease and paranoia. There’s a constant sense of words not spoken, of old secrets hidden. Everyone seems to know more about what’s going on than our protagonist does, and that also applies to our apparent heroine, thanks to some deft work by Marciano.
Director Avati is also able to take full advantage of some wonderful locations. Sure, a more photogenic and architecturally interesting church would have helped, but the interiors he employs are particularly striking in both their visual appeal and bare-bones aesthetic. The absence of any modern appliances or decor evokes a sense of timelessness that’s a perfect backdrop to the story that he has to tell. The secrets that inform the mystery lay in the past, but they’re certainly not dead and buried, and the consequences of digging them up are very real. Avati delivers a present time that is almost mundane in its everyday realism but always feels overshadowed by events from a strange, possibly unknowable, past. He also holds back on the shocks and blood, which makes their sudden arrival toward the finish all the more telling.
If the film has a weakness, it’s the final act where the solution to the mystery is revealed. It’s far less complex and inventive than expected. The late twist also borders on the ridiculous and makes very little sense on closer analysis. Rather than arising organically from the unfolding events, there’s the unmistakable feeling that it’s been tacked on simply because the audience expects a film like this to have one. None of this undoes the fine work that’s gone before, but it’s a definite disappointment. On the bright side, the final events play into the dread and inevitability that Avati has been carefully building, and no one can accuse him of pulling his punches in the final scenes.
Another pleasing aspect is the care taken with the minor roles, both in casting and direction. Everyone in the village looks authentic to the rustic setting, assisted by Luciana Morosetti’s excellent costume design. It’s easy to believe that this is a real, close-knit community where newcomers may be welcomed but will never be truly included. The level of tension so vital to proceedings is also heightened by Avati’s subtle direction here, with the villagers contributing half glances and odd, fleeting expressions to his tapestry of paranoia. Capolicchio is fine in the lead but does tend to be a little overshadowed by some of the more showy supporting characters, particularly the drunken chauffeur played by Cavini and Pizzarini as the nervous friend who takes a one-way trip through his hotel window.
The music is also worthy of note as Amedeo Tommasi delivers a superbly understated score. It’s more evidence of the care lavished on the project and the meticulous attention to detail the director employs. One obvious example is Pizzarini’s funeral service. The scene would have been perfectly effective if presented in a standard way, with Capolicchio, altar boy Brambilla (a wonderfully strange performance by the actor) and the priest reading the rites over the coffin in the church. Instead, moments before, Avati has Brambilla confess to Capolicchio that he’s put a live animal in the coffin to keep the murdered man company. So, throughout the service, we can hear the creature scrabbling about within the box, and, of course, we all know what it will be on the menu when it gets hungry. It’s not an essential sequence by any means, but it is wonderfully macabre and a shining example of turning an inconsequential moment into something memorable.
Born in Bologna in 1938, Avati initially intended to be a jazz musician, the clarinet being his instrument of choice. Eventually, however, he moved into cinema and co-wrote and directed his first film in his early thirties. ‘Balsamus l’uomo di Satana’ (1970) was a horror fantasy which starred Tonelli and featured Cavina and Pizzarini in significant supporting roles. The trio were almost ever-present in his following half-dozen projects, several of which were horror films. However, Avati’s career took a turn with the TV mini-series ‘The Jazz Band’ (1978). After this, his output became far more mainstream, but he did return to horror with the inventive and well-regarded ‘Zeder’ (1983). Over a career of over half a century, his films have won multiple awards, and he has been nominated three times for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He also began working as a novelist in 2015, making the film ‘Il signor diavolo’ (2019) from one of his books.
There’s quality in every frame, and if it doesn’t quite reach the first rank of Giallo classics, it’s damn close.