Spirits of the Dead

The stories differ in their messages. The first one,"Metzengerstein", from Roger Vadim, is quite simple and it has plenty of erotic scenes. Jane Fonda showed her beauty at that time when she was married to Vadim. I did not find anything interesting in this story, except that selfish always wants what is denied to them. The second is "William Wilson" with Briggite Bardot vs Alain Delon, who played two roles in this segment. The director Louis Malle probably wanted to show that each person has two faces or characters, one bad and another one good. The problem is that the good one dies normally before the bad. The scenes of this story are very much revolting. Fellini's "Toby Dammit" was the last one, which I saw with some skepticism of being able to understand it. Sometimes you should be inside Fellini's brains to understand what he really wants to say, but incredibly this was understood. An actor already tired of not having his own life and invited to receive an award suddenly he is becoming himself and doing some unpleasant declarations and gestures. The end of his life is his happiness, i.e. when he is able to do what he wanted.

It's interesting that no IMDb commenters seem to have caught Malle's significant homage in "William Wilson."

Malle makes Wilson far more sadistic than Poe's character. In the opening school sequence, Poe's Wilson is, to be sure, a leader of the other students: "the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my disposition, soon rendered me a marked character among my schoolmates, and by slow, but natural gradations, gave me an ascendancy over all not greatly older than myself." Any sadism is, at most, implied: "If there is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a master mind in boyhood over the less energetic spirits of its companions." In Poe, Wilson does not try to strangle his doppelganger, nor is he expelled from the school. He approaches the other's bed at night, apparently sees his own face on the sleeping boy and "passed silently from the chamber, and left at once, the halls of that old academy, never to enter them again."

In Malle's film, Wilson is torturing another student as a snowball fight rages in the background. The doppelganger makes his first appearance by hitting Wilson with a snowball. The snow fight, the torture, the significant hit by a snowball, the expulsion from school are not in Poe's tale.

But all these elements ARE in Jean Cocteau's novel LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES. The snowball fight not only is featured in Jean-Pierre Melville's film of the novel, but Cocteau filmed the scene earlier in his own BLOOD OF A POET. The torture is briefly in Melville's film, but described more fully in the novel: "By the spasmodic flaring of the gas lamp he could be seen to be a small boy with his back against the wall, hemmed in by his captives...One of these...was squatting between his legs and twisting his ears...Weeping, he sought to close his eyes, to avert his head. But every time he struggled, his torturer seized a fistful of gray snow and scrubbed his ears with it." As the snow fight continues, Cocteau's iconic character Dargelos throws a snowball that hits another student and puts in motion the events of the novel/film.

Dargelos is the same sort of malignant leader of his schoolmates as Malle's young Wilson. The headmaster calls his influence on his classmates unhealthy, and after an outrageous act he is expelled from the school. Even more to the point, Dargelos has a doppelganger in the form of the character Agathe. In Melville's film Dargelos and Agathe are played by same person, and their mysterious resemblance is important to the story.

All of these added Cocteau elements are so strong that one assumes that Malle intended viewers to recognize the reference.

it is strange to see a film ignoring its artistic virtues. because it is only a puzzle of directors and texts and actors and memories. a sort of experiment. seductive. and full of nostalgia. eccentric. and bizarre. stars, Romanticism, the shadow of Edgar Allen Poe and the mark of directors. it is strange to say what part is most remarkable. because, after the final credits , remains only the drawings in dust. and pieces of old velvet. a good kick to read Poe. again. because, maybe at the first sigh only, the film seems use his work only as pretext. but, like each part of film, it could be an impression.

Also known as Histoires Extraordinaires, this film combines three short stories by Edgar Allen Poe, and has each segment directed by a different European director. The first, entitled Metzengerstein, is directed by the man that helmed Barbarella, Roger Vadim. It tells the story of a beautiful yet debauched countess Federica (Jane Fonda) who falls in love with her family rival, Baron Wilhelm (Peter Fonda - bit weird, them being real-life brother and sister), who frees her leg from a trap in the woods. After he rejects her, she orders the burning of one of his villages, and the Baron is killed when attempting a rescue of one of his horses. The horse is taken in by Federica, who becomes obsessed with it once she notices its resemblance to the one painted on a damaged tapestry.

The second story, William Wilson, is directed by French film-maker Louis Malle. It tells a familiar doppelgänger story of the wicked William Wilson (Alain Delon) who is also interrupted by his 'better half' who shares his name and his appearance, but none of his evil ways. After winning a card game against Giuseppina (Brigitte Bardot) through repeatedly cheating, his other half exposes him, and the two face a duel. The third, directed by Federico Fellini and entitled Toby Dammit, follows alcoholic Shakesperean actor Toby Dammit (Terence Stamp) who is brought to Rome to star in an adaptation of the story of Christ, re- imagined as a western. Haunted by visions of a blonde girl who has lost her ball, he goes on a drunken ride through Rome in a Ferrari.

The biggest problem with this film is the variations of quality in the different episodes. Vadim's opener is a pretty poor effort, with a strange storyline focusing on a woman's obsession with a horse. It seems to be nothing more than an excuse to get Jane Fonda into some skimpy medieval outfits. That is all well and good (it was one of the key reasons why I loved Barbarella!) but it's a silly story and a waste of some beautiful cinematography. Malle's second story is a big improvement, but it is clear that his heart is not really in it. Apparently he agreed to take on the job in order to raise money for Murmur of the Heart, and compromised to make the film more accessible to mainstream audiences. But the eroticism of the card game, and the strange atmosphere that is evident throughout make it an enjoyable 40 minutes.

Fellini's final segment is very much the director's own vision. It is so far gone from anything resembling Poe's original vision, it could be easily called Fellini's own. Thematically similar to most of his key works, Terence Stamp's crumbling lead character is the main focus, and his disintegrating sanity is laid out on the screen with a collection of flashing images, bizarre characters, and unconventional camera-work. It is also an attack on celebrity, as the characters that Dammit comes across don't react or flinch at his increasingly strange and unpredictable behaviour. It's a shame that Fellini is restricted to a 40 minute portion of a 2-hour film, as I would have quite happily watched Toby Dammit as a full-length feature. An enjoyable, if unspectacular overall film, with the stories getting notably better as the film goes on.

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Three Edgar Alan Poe stories, three directors, a genius director, a great director and a director. The top international stars of their day: Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, Terence Stamp, Alain Delon and Brigitte Bardot. The Roger Vadim episode with the two Fondas is quite terrible, Jane with her left over costumes from Barbarella, is always watchable but what a mess. Delon and Bardot are fun to watch but the piece looks more a rehash of one of the weakest Hammer horror flicks than a film signed by the great Louis Malle. However, I wouldn't mind sitting through those turkeys once again for the sheer pleasure of the third segment: Fellini's "Toby Dammit" with a superlative Terence Stamp. Unique, unnerving, jaw dropping, funny, delightful gem of a film.