In short: Swordsman of Siena (1962)

Original title: La congiura dei dieci

Italy, in the second half of the 16th Century. British mercenary and charming rogue Thomas Stanswood (Stewart Granger) is moving (with quite a few horsemen trying to catch him in tow) from his former employ to work for the Spanish governor Don Carlos (Riccardo Garrone) of occupied Siena. As it turns out, Don Carlos is quite the fiend, as is his torture-loving (note to my American readers: in civilized countries, torturing people makes you the bad guy) cousin Hugo (Fausto Tozzi), chief of the guard aka main thug.

Don Carlos needs Stanswood as bodyguard for his fiancée, Orietta Arconti (Sylva Koscina), member of a renowned family of the city. Surprisingly enough, Orietta actually wants to marry Don Carlos, despite his responsibility for the death of her father, and the heavy patriotic misgivings of her younger sister Serenella (Christine Kaufmann). What Orietta doesn't want is a bodyguard, particularly not a charming and roguish bodyguard her sister falls for head over heels.

Soon, Stanswood finds himself entangled in the conflict between the Spaniards and Siena's very own band of terrorists/freedom fighters known as the Ten, and, having a chivalrous heart and a soft spot for Serenella, rather doubts his Spanish employers are the right side to work for in this conflict. Why, he might even end up joining the rebels, and winning a brutal horse race for them to incite a more large-scale rebellion.

Etienne Périer's (the IMDB lists one Baccio Bandini as co-director, but the film doesn't, and you know how notoriously trustworthy the site is in these things) Swordsman of Siena is a fine piece of swashbuckling adventure, the sort of film tailor-made to let Stewart Granger do the charming rogue bit he does so effortlessly and convincingly.

All too often, supposed charming rogues in movies really rather come over as smarmy, self-centred bastards, something Granger usually manages to avoid with natural charisma, unless he's in a film where him being a self-centred bastard is exactly the point. In Swordsman's case, Granger also has help by a script that knows the difference between being a rogue and being an asshole (there's a particularly great scene in which Stanswood refuses Serenella's teenage crush because he's "ten years too old or ten years too young"), a fact that makes Stanswood a particularly enjoyable hero.

As is more often than you'd expect the case in swashbucklers, the female characters have a bit more to do than just stare adoringly at Granger or do that bit where their particularly heavy dislike is meant to hide their attraction (something which actually makes logical sense for one of the female characters in this particular film), though they do get to do these things too, of course. It's as if the swashbuckler as a genre, unlike other genres working in the historical past, could actually accept that women, despite being constrained by the mores of their times, still were actual human beings and certainly were doing more with their time than just standing whimpering on the side-lines. Or I'm just particularly lucky with the swashbucklers I watch in this regard.

Everything else about Swordsman of Siena is very much like you'd expect of a good example of its form: it's fast paced, full of colourful costumes, rather exciting fencing, a smidgen of romance and some melodrama to properly prepare the finale. That's a good thing, mind you, particularly since Périer really does know how to keep things moving (and exciting) throughout, and how to transition from the film's light-hearted core to the more dramatic bits.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,french movies,in short,etienne périer,stewart granger,sylva koscina,christine kaufmann,riccardo garrone,alberto lupo,adventure

In short: So Sweet, So Dead (1972)

Original title: Rivelazioni di un maniaco sessuale al capo della squadra mobile

A provincial town in Italy is hit by a series of murders. All victims are women from the upper rungs of the bourgeoisie, all of them were married and all are found surrounded by photos showing them having sex with men who clearly aren't their husbands. Because he's polite and something of an overachiever, the killer scratches the men's faces off the photos, which makes the life of the investigating cop, Inspector Capuana (Farley Granger, in a subtle and complex performance mostly based on looks instead of facial impressions) that decisive bit more difficult by helping potential witnesses who have reasons of their own not to want to talk to him avoid answering unpleasant questions.

Capuana's investigation is difficult enough as it is, for the town's upper class may be great at committing adultery, but most of its members do not like to talk about their hobbies to the police, and sure are influential enough to get special treatment from the police. Given the miserable state of evidence in the cases, it'll take a long line of victims (Femi Benussi, Krista Nell, Susan Scott - it's half of Italy's giallo actresses for the price of one) until Capuana will be able to get his man. And even then, he might just learn something about his own wife (Sylva Koscina) that'll make him act in a manner morally much worse than adultery could ever be.

So Sweet, So Dead is one of the small group of movies that try to cross the Italian style "ripped from the headlines" police procedural with the giallo; unlike many other films making that attempt, Roberto Bianchi Montero's is actually successful at doing what it sets out to achieve. Many films with the same idea as So Sweet (and isn't it interesting how the film's Italian title emphasises the film's identity as a police procedural while the English language one identifies it as a giallo?) suffer from the peculiar choices their director make when deciding what element from which genre to take, often leading to movies combining the least interesting and the most annoying elements of both genres. Sadly, this has resulted in more than one movie about bored looking men sitting in drab rooms talking police procedural stuff while crawling through a plot that is confusing but equally drab.

Montero goes about his business a bit more intelligently, making the murder and sex scenes, as well as identity and motivation of the killer, stylistically and in their content part of the giallo genre, while the social commentary, the central cop character and the cynical ending are coming right from the police procedural. One could argue that Montero uses the copious scenes of nudity of a minor who is who of Italian genre actresses and the sexy, sleazy violence to make his semi-realist observations about the life of the upper classes more interesting to a rather jaded audience. The director succeeds in this project rather well, especially because he seems to be stylistically at home in both genres (which does not come as too big a surprise seeing as Montero worked in any film genre you might care to name), making the giallo parts suspenseful, their violence disquietingly enticing, and the police procedural parts' observations about the mental state of provincial Italy 1972 believable and human.

There is, alas, a real possibility that the director agrees with the killer about the adulterous women being "whores" who deserve to die, although there's an equally large possibility that position is part of the bourgeois hypocrisy he is trying to criticize. In good exploitation film tradition, you can base an argument for both positions on So Sweet, So Dead.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,giallo,crime,roberto bianchi montero,farley granger,sylva koscina,susan scott,krista nell,femi benussi,in short

In short: Delitto D'Autore (1974)

Professional heiress Milena Gottardi (Sylva Koscina) has just returned to her provincial home town after having spent three years in the big city to hide her marriage to Marco Girardi (Pier Paolo Capponi) from her aunt Valeria (Wilma Casagrande), who has her hand on the family's purse strings. Valeria, you see, doesn't approve of Marco at all, and seems to have made it clear that this disapproval could make one a very skint heiress.

Shortly after Milena has arrived, threatening things begin to happen. Someone follows Milena everywhere and records her conversations; possibly the same mysterious person makes threatening phone calls; somebody leaves a pair of black gloves in Milena's bed.

Eventually, Milena is kidnapped and held for ransom, her aunt murdered and a possibly valuable painting stolen. It's clear to the police there must be more than one criminal, seeing how at odds kidnapping someone but then killing the person who is supposed to pay a ransom would be, yet knowing that and actually arresting anyone are two different things.

Delitto D'Autore is one of the more obscure giallos you can stumble onto, and can therefore only be found in a beat up print with colours so faded you'd think it was filmed in 2010.

Not that I'd expect a better print to be the film's saving grace - there's too much wrong with it to make it salvageable that way. Delitto's main problem is a disturbing lack of everything that makes a giallo worth watching: acidic commentary on the upper classes, stylish visuals, a sense of madness or the air of a dream all are absent. What's left to see is some random nudity, lots of scenes of cops talking in a room, and even more scenes of director Mario Sabatini just waving his hands pretending to do anything beyond somehow filling up the running time.

Where the good films of the genre swagger and wink and flash their stuff, proud of their sleaze, their style and often their absurdity, Sabatini's Delitto is tepid and timid and just sort of there, not even able to get any interesting performances out of a perfectly serviceable cast (Luigi Pistilli and Krista Nell are also in it, and both pretty much wasted).

The film's transformation from an exceedingly boring example of the giallo into an exceedingly boring example of the police procedural might come as a surprise (possibly the only one you'll experience watching it), yet it is not the sort of transformation that leads anywhere besides, perhaps, to a soundly sleeping viewer.

All in all, Delitto D'Autore is one of those films that languish in obscurity because they just don't have anything of interest to offer.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,in short,giallo,sylva koscina,luigi pistilli,krista nell