The Concorde Affair (1978)

I’ve spoken before about my half-Italian ancestry.  I don’t really go making a big deal over it, but this, combined with having a rather large family of siblings, led directly to how I express myself in conversation, I think (not necessarily in my writing, though feel free to disagree).  You see, most times, conversing with my family involves one of two modes of speech (and sometimes even a combination of both): yelling and screaming.  It’s not uncommon to have dinner with my family and go home with an acute case of tinnitus, and that’s if all you’re asked about is passing something to someone.  Topical conversations can quickly become shouting matches that would put almost any government bureaucracy and their modes of debate to shame.  This is not to say that there are ill feelings involved.  Far from it.  This is merely the knuckle-dusting, teeth-gnashing, ear-splitting method of communication with which I was raised.  There’s still love at work underneath it all, though for an outsider, this may be difficult to comprehend.  Unlike the titular vehicle of Ruggero Deodato’s The Concorde Affair (aka Concorde Affaire ’79), my family and I don’t need massive engines doing over Mach One to break the sound barrier.  We have our natural speaking voices.

Evil businessmen Milland (Joseph Cotton) and Danker (Edmund Purdom) are up to hijinks, shenanigans, and all-around malfeasance.  Concurrently, a Concorde on a test flight suddenly encounters all sorts of issues and crashes somewhere around the Antilles archipelago.  Maverick reporter Moses Brody (James Franciscus) receives a phonecall from his ex-wife Nicole (Fiamma Maglione), who just so happens to own a swank restaurant in the Caribbean, and she informs him that she has crucial information regarding the plane’s crash and urges Moses to come down and investigate.  So he does.  Meanwhile, stewardess (back before they were more commonly referred to as “flight attendants”) Jean (Mimsy Farmer) turns up as the sole survivor of the wreck but quickly finds herself a blackmail pawn of scoundrel Forsythe (Venantino Venantini).  

The Disaster film was huge in the Seventies.  Irwin Allen made a cottage industry out of these films, some great (The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno), some not so great (When Time Ran Out, The Swarm).  Starting in 1970 with Airport, there were no less than four films centered on people’s natural fear of flying.  And that’s the essence of them.  These are thrill rides designed for people to have some catharsis over their claustrophobia, aquaphobia, pteromerhanophobia, etcetera.  To that end, they typically showcase a microcosm of characters, running the gamut from working class heroes to snotty rich folks, none of whom can negotiate the obstacles required for survival by themselves.  No, they must band together, however reluctantly, and act as a group.  These films also require one character who is level-headed and resourceful enough to lead the others to safety (like, say, another character named Moses?).  The reason why the plane, ship, skyscraper, whatever fails is fairly inconsequential.  What’s important is that their failure plays on the audience’s inherent distrust of machines (how does something so heavy stay in the air?  How does something so heavy stay afloat?  You get the idea), and their eventual salvation reaffirms mankind’s superiority to machinekind (that is, until Skynet becomes self-aware in 1997) and their mastery of their domain.  When this sort of film is done right.

It’s unfortunate, then, that Deodato’s film seems to miss the point almost entirely.  The first two thirds of the film are focused on Moses finding the downed aircraft and convincing the authorities that there’s something going on.  The last third is focused on his rescuing Jean and then getting her to talk with a flight controller at a London airport as the second Concorde flight starts experiencing the same catastrophic problems.  We get the filmmakers’ idea of the microcosm aboard the second flight.  We have the priest, the cripple, the proud athlete, the cutesy kid with her dolly, the fat guy with heart problems, and so forth.  Yet, none of them is developed beyond these broad descriptions.  None of them actively participates in the action of the film.  None of them means anything to us the way characters like Steve McQueen’s Chief O’Hallorhan or Gene Hackman’s Reverend Scott do.  Further, there are no complications for any character to actively have to deal with midflight.  It’s pretty bad when the main tension of a film is essentially resolved via a phonecall.  It appears as if Deodato and company wanted to make a straight up action film but were saddled with the Disaster elements, so they just threw together whatever they could in about five minutes worth of scriptwriting and filmed it.  Of course, the producers also wanted to get a piece of all that JAWS money which was floating around in the late Seventies, so they inserted a shark inside the plane wreckage.  And did you notice Franciscus’s character’s last name?  No coincidences here. 

That said, the action scenes are capably handled (as you would expect, because Deodato is a capable director).  Further, the underwater scenes are very well-shot and edited, whole minutes of the film going by without dialogue and generating some decent thrills.  The idea of diving to come to the truth is interesting, and that’s part of the point to which the film is heading.  Nevertheless, the film is such a hodgepodge, it never focuses on what it needs to focus on long enough to allow any of it to reach a satisfying conclusion, and what it does focus on simply doesn’t quite fit into the whole in a nice case of Square-peg-round-hole-itis.  This film is nothing short of schizophrenic.  And even this wouldn’t be so terrible an offense if the filmmakers seemed to give a shit about any of it, but I never felt as if they did.  I’ll give you an example.  A character has to amputate a hand to escape certain death.  Maybe a minute later, this same character is shot dead.  So, why the drama with the amputation?  Because at that moment in the film, they needed to generate some suspense.  Afterward, it didn’t matter, because the character had fulfilled every need the script had for him, and it’s heavily debatable that he was even necessary for that.  I suppose there are worse ways to idle away time, but The Concorde Affair feels at what heart it has like nothing more than a solid reason to take a nap.

MVT:  The film uses some miniature effects work that would likely make Ed Wood shake his head.  They are dizzyingly bad.  I was astounded they actually allowed the footage to be used, but in retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have been, considering the film’s origins.  By that same token, eating it all up was delicious.  Connoisseurs of this sort of thing know what I’m talking about.                 

Make Or Break:  The expositional scenes between Cotton and Purdom illustrate fully how little there actually is going on in the film.  All of the plot’s twists are revealed in these boardroom scenes, and once they are, it becomes clear to the audience that, yes, that’s pretty much all you’re going to get out of this movie.  So, love it or lump it.

Score:  6/10

The Perfume Of The Lady In Black (1974)

The first time I smelled a woman's hair was magical. Before I go any further, this is not going to be some fetish article, so if that's your bent, prepare to be disappointed. Anyway, I was about eleven-years-old and attending a school dance (we had those back then). I recall wearing a white blazer with the sleeves pushed up and a pastel-colored shirt. My mullet was in full-swing at this time, which I'm sure is the only reason no woman would ever mistake me for Detective James "Sonny" Crockett. Nevertheless, I had worked up the nerve to ask a girl to dance (I'll spare her the ignominy of naming her), and she (having nothing better to do) accepted. I don't recall the song (it may have been "Cherish" by Kool & The Gang, but I was paying more attention to not stepping on my partners' feet), but with my head up close to hers, I caught a whiff of Prell and Aqua Net that stays with me to this day. Whenever anything even closely resembling those two smells wafts under my nose, I'm instantly transported back to that night. Granted, in the grand scheme of things it was a minor occurrence, but it's lodged in my memory like a wood tick.

Sylvia (Mimsy Farmer) is a young, successful, seemingly independent young woman. Her relationship with geologist boyfriend, Roberto (Maurizio Bonuglia), is bumpy, but seemingly not unworkable. Sylvia's trouble begins after dinner with some friends, where the conversation centers on black magic and superstition. The next day, Sylvia oversleeps and claims that she broke the glass from a framed photo of her and her parents when she was a child. Unbeknownst to Sylvia, she is being trailed by a mysterious man, and shortly thereafter, she espies the reflection of her mother spraying perfume on herself in a mirror. Sylvia's paranoia mounts, but how much is in her head, and what will be her ultimate fate?

The Perfume Of The Lady In Black (aka Il Profuma Della Signora In Nero) is a complex, nuanced, thought-provoking horror/thriller from co-writer/director Francesco Barilli. It is heavily influenced by the work of Roman Polanski, most notably Repulsion, The Tenant, and Rosemary's Baby, but it also bears a resemblance to Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Still, this is very much its own movie and is more accessible and thought-out that many genre films from Italy during this same time period. 

Conspiracies and paranoia lie at the heart of the film. We see Sylvia being watched by an enigmatic man, and when she drops her family photo off to be reframed, he runs in the shop immediately afterward to have a chat with the framer. Andy (Jho Jhenkins) appears at various times to grin nebulously in an "I know that you know that I know" manner. A vase which triggers memories of Sylvia's childhood disappears from the shop in which she spotted it, and the shopkeeper claims total ignorance of its existence. Seemingly everyone who has even a tangential relationship with Sylvia seems in on it. It's the mystery of "why?" that propels the narrative forward. However, it's the effect of the mystery on Sylvia's psyche that creates the film's emotional core.

It's obvious from the first time we see childhood Sylvia (Daniela Barnes/Lara Wendel) that there are issues in the family. As the film's opening credits roll, we see a tinted photo (the same one Sylvia smashes the frame of) of Sylvia staring sweetly up at her father, while her mother, Marta (Renata Zamengo), stares at the camera. As Sylvia recalls more from her youth, her memories encroach more and more into reality. This is shown cinematically by the inclusion and interaction of the adult Sylvia with the people from her past - in the same frame. If these scenes were blocked in a shot/reverse shot fashion, we could just say that she's hallucinating, but by having present and past together onscreen, it makes the threat more tangible and punctuates that Sylvia's world is changing. This will take yet another turn when Sylvia begins to interact with one of her memories in the present rather than as a representation of her remembrances (though it is that, as well).

The movie also contains a heavy reflection motif. The very first shot of the film itself (post credits) is of the water in a fountain outside Sylvia's apartment building. The water is roiled by toy boats scooting into frame. The idea of reflective surfaces and childhood/the past will carry on throughout the remainder of the film. The first time Sylvia sees her mother's "ghost" is in a mirror. Sylvia's apartment has large mirrors on almost every wall. Sylvia sits in on a session with a mystic in a room with multiple mirrors. As well as having reflective qualities, water also plays a large part in the film. Sylvia's dad was a seaman. Several scenes take place during thunderstorms. In her old home, Sylvia finds a fountain (now dried up) as well as a mosaic of a boat on water, which she places a cheek against. Because of her attachment to her father, water becomes a strong reminder of her past as well as a symbol of mental erosion and tumultuous emotions.

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland provides yet another touchstone for the movie. Sylvia is reading Carroll's work. Andy provides a subtle reference to the White Rabbit when he states, "It's later than I thought." Later in an effort to center herself, Sylvia quotes from Carroll, "Life, what is it but a dream?" These allusions then extend to Sylvia's psychosis when she sees herself as a young girl, the hallucinatory, dreamlike aspects crisscrossing, ultimately creating a whole new role for Sylvia to inhabit.

There's very little in this film with which to quibble (and much, much more to discuss). That said, the biggest (and I hesitate to use this term) misstep is that this feels like two movies converging. On one hand, you have the conspiracy story. On the other, you have the descent into madness story. The two don't always mesh, and the final scenes create several questions that remain unanswered (for good or ill). Not to mention that the final twist feels so divergent (even though it has been foreshadowed earlier in the narrative), you feel as though you've just been smacked with a wet sock. And yet as the film fades out, you cannot help but feel somber, astonished, and satisfied simultaneously. Even without the sense of smell to spark it off, The Perfume Of The Lady In Black will live in your memories for a long time to come.

 MVT: Barilli herein has crafted a movie loaded with style, revolving around interesting characters, and showcasing an interesting, multi-level story that invites repeat viewings.

Make or Break: The "Make" is the scene where Signor Rossetti (Mario Scaccia) stops by Sylvia's apartment. He seems fine, but there is a drop of blood on his right shoe, and we just know there's something going on. I was instantly reminded of an interview I saw with artist Bernie Wrightson (most famous for his work with horrific subjects, notably the "Swamp Thing" comic book) years ago. When asked what his definition of horror is, he described a man standing on a sidewalk, waiting for a bus. Everything about the man is perfect, except there's a spot of blood on his shoe. Maybe Mr. Wrightson saw this movie? Either way it's a strong image, and I think it elicits more terror than all the graphic violence in the world ever can.
  
Score: 8/10