La Quattro Volte

Where better to watch a beautiful, artfully presented gem like La Quattro Volte than north Leeds’ premier arthouse cinema, The Hyde Park Picture House? Relaxing into the comfortable surroundings with a cuppa it was entirely possible to become lost in the stunning scenery and intimate details of the film. Or at least it was until a female customer admonished a sweet-rustling gentleman for his noise-making. Thankfully he accepted his ticking-off with good grace.

It’s a film about everything and nothing. There is virtually no dialogue but for muffled voices in the distance, no through-plot, no heroes or heroines. It touches on themes of religion and faith, reincarnation and the values of tradition. But these are subtle suggestions and the audience is left to interpret them as they will.

Every shot is beautiful, every movement of either the camera or its subject is deliberate. The first act is filmed in totally static shots, often in intimate close up. They show an elderly goatherd tending his flock. He’s desperately ill, coughing and spluttering from one day to the next. In providing such an intimate snapshot of his humble life, director Michelangelo Frammartino has created a truly captivating character study filled with outstandingly framed shots: not least a lingering view of an ant crawling across the old man’s face.

Having been captivated by the shepherd’s place in his rural community he departs in a set piece of great ingenuity and intricacy. Filmed in a single shot it features a vicious dog, an Easter parade and goat-pen being demolished by a runaway car. It’s a wonderfully choreographed and manages to be both touching and hilarious – and a lesson for any aspiring filmmaker in using a visual medium to tell a story.

Thereafter the camera sweeps in and out of the action, tracking the goats on their journey to pasture, following the townsfolk as they transport a felled tree back to the village and observing the ritualistic production of charcoal which ensures the film ends where it began – offering a pleasing circularity to the narrative.

La Quattro Volte is certainly not a film for everyone. It exists somewhere between art, documentary and philosophy, representing as it does the four stages of life outlined by the most famous of Calabria’s sons: Pythagoras. He spoke of the four lives within us: human, animal, vegetable and mineral. And all of these are represented as the story (such as it is) moves from man to goat, then tree to charcoal.

But the underlying meaning is secondary to the experience. The stunning cinematography, sedate pace, evocative sounds and sense of tradition are what makes this truly original, poignant, funny and remarkable film a welcome antidote to the multiplex dross served up in Leeds’ more mainstream cinemas.

Giallo

The giallo genre originated in Italian literature where cheap crime novels with supernatural (and often erotic) elements were produced as cheap paperbacks. The word ‘giallo’ is Italian for yellow – the trademark background colour of the books’ covers. For Italian film audiences the term became a catch-all phrase used to describe the all thrillers – but rapidly became a sub-genre of its own. Characterised by gruesome murder sequences and stylish visuals, the theatrical and stylised movies reached their high-watermark in the 1970s – and at the forefront of the movement was Dario Argento. Films like Cat O’Nine Tails and Suspiria proved hugely influential – Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a clear homage to such pictures. Now, following legal wrangling with star Adrien Brody over pay, Argento’s return to the genre will be released on DVD for the first time.

Set, unsurprisingly, in Italy, the film concerns the hunt for Celine (Elsa Pataky), a model who’s been abducted by a serial killer.

Leading the investigation is Italian-American detective Enzo (Adrien Brody) alongside her sister, Linda (Emmanuelle Segnier). Known only as ‘Yellow’, the killer’s modus operandi is to kidnap beautiful foreign females in his unlicensed taxi before drugging, mutilating and murdering them.

Will Enzo and Linda manage to locate Celine before she becomes another of the killer’s fatalities?

Rarely has a horror movie relied so heavily on stereotypes and clichés. Giallo contains not one single original idea, seeming to hope instead that its association with big names like Argento and Brody, as well as proven talent like Segnier, will elevate it above the competition. Sadly, each of the aforementioned individuals fails to raise their game appropriately.

The acting across the board is dubious. Pataky is required to do little other than scream and shout, whilst Segnier looks harassed and bedraggled and little else. It would be churlish to criticise them for this: there is no sense that either Argento or the film’s writers have made any attempt to craft rounded characters – they merely serve the flimsy plot.

Although a ‘twist’ is not a prerequisite for a horror film, audiences have clearly come to expect one. Giallo fails to deliver in a completely linear narrative. The riddle of the kidnapper’s identity and whereabouts (such as they are) are resolved in one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment and the action gets no more interesting after that. Arguably, this can be attributed to the decision to introduce the audience to the villain very early in the piece.

Almost from the outset, ‘Yellow’ is seen on screen, initially as a hooded reflection in a rear-view mirror, but soon afterwards in full frontal. Despite being a mass-murdering sociopath, it’s difficult not to laugh at his very presence. Very clearly played by Adrien Brody (despite being credited as Byron Deidra), he hobbles around the set mouthing threats in a hilariously bad Italian accent. His skin is literally yellow – an affliction explained through a torturously hackneyed back-story – and his face looks like a particularly unthreatening Bo Selecta mask. It’s impossible to take him seriously – not least when he’s seen sucking a child’s dummy.

Brody is barely any better in his larger role as the noirish detective. He phones in his performance as the jaded cop so half-heartedly that it’s little wonder people were reluctant to pay him for his role in proceedings. It’s a real shame, as the opportunity to play two conflicting parts would be attacked with relish by most actors. But again, some of the blame for this must lie with the writers who completely fail to capitalise on the interesting notion that the policeman and the kidnapper are two halves of the same coin. It is an idea which is explored to a degree, but it never goes far enough and seems like an afterthought rather than a key plot-point.

With little beneath the surface, the action is extremely superficial. Thankfully it zips along to the predictable conclusion fairly speedily. Occasional graphically violent episodes punctuate the plot – and these vary greatly in their quality. Some are genuinely shocking, others shockingly bad. There also seems to be a preoccupation with ejaculation as the killer towers over Celine watching her blood pumping from her severed finger as he squirts anaesthetic from a syringe. As with many of the themes touched upon here, the killer’s sexual interest in the girls he kills is only partially explored – yet another strand which might have been expanded on rather than trying to jam every hoary old cliché into ninety minutes of action.

Giallo is a hugely flawed movie. With an unconvincing pantomime villain at its heart and a series of one dimensional characters making up the numbers, Argento needed a strong storyline or some original ideas to carry the movie. Instead, he throws every cliché in the book at his production in the hope that some of it sticks – it just makes a mess. Better writing and a more focused figure at the helm might have rescued a half-decent film from the footage on display. Brody will be breathing a sigh of relief that Giallo never made it to the cinema.

Four Flies On Grey Velvet

To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of its original release, Dario Argento’s Four Flies On Grey Velvet has been restored, remastered and rereleased on DVD. This release comes from the original negative and includes a semi-mythical selection of four hitherto unseen scenes. The original English audio (and Ennio Morricone soundtrack) has also been remastered for the release. But aside from the bells and whistles, just how good is the film?

Roberto Tobias is the drummer in a 1970s prog rock band. He’s cool, successful and has an attractive blonde wife, Nina. The only dark cloud on his horizon is the constant presence of a stranger clad in black.

Tired of being followed, Roberto decides to turn the tables on his stalker – pursuing him into an abandoned theatre. Here, a scuffle leads to a knife being pulled and inevitable tragedy: Roberto escapes unharmed, but the stranger is stabbed in the stomach and falls into the orchestra pit. A sudden flash blinds Roberto and when his eyes adjust, he finds himself staring at a camera-wielding figure in a childlike rubber mask. As he stares in bewilderment, numerous incriminating photographs are taken.

The next day Roberto receives the dead man’s ID card in the post and automatically assumes it’s been sent by the masked figure. Puzzled by the lack of a blackmail demand, Roberto becomes increasingly paranoid about his situation – and his state of mind becomes yet more confused when his housekeeper is found murdered in a local park. Who is the cameraman? And what do they want with Roberto?

It seems that Four Flies On Grey Velvet’s reputation has been earned largely in absentia. Having been unavailable to home audiences for twenty years, this repackaged release has not aged well. Whilst absence might have made the heart grow fonder, it certainly hasn’t made the movie any better. The visuals might be slicker than ever, but they are, at times, extremely dark and difficult to make out. The dubbing is utterly appalling – the majority of the actors seem to be mouthing English words but it’s apparent that many of the voices attributed to them are not their own. It’s an unusual way of working and an unsuccessful one – why use a multi-lingual cast and have their dialogue dubbed by English speakers regardless?

The actors are not given much to work with anyway. Characterisation is poor throughout – the cast are asked to fulfil embarrassingly shallow clichés (a gay private detective is particularly lazily written), which they do with the minimum effort. Attempts at humour are even more misguided – a ‘comic’ postman appears periodically for seemingly no good reason whatsoever.

There are, however, plenty of reasons to praise Argento’s visual and technical flair. Four Flies On Grey Velvet is crammed with arresting images, creative camera work and slick set pieces. It seems that the director provided early inspiration for The Matrix’s ‘bullet-time’ sequence with swooping, sweeping shots which feature throughout the film. Scenes of deaths and murders are inventive, too – although one stair-based disaster owes more than a debt to Alfred Hitchcock.

Where the film really falls down is in its narrative – it’s extremely slow and very predictable. A twist early on hints that things might not be quite as they seem – but they are. Guessing the identity of the supposedly mysterious cameraman is absurdly easy – and even Argento seems to be aware that he needs to do more to inject interest into proceedings.

As such, a pretty unbelievable affair and a naked bath time romp are employed to kill a few minutes of screen time before a completely ridiculous resolution to the whodunit is offered by a new medical technique which can record the last image imprinted on a murder victim’s retinas. Although the film doesn’t take itself too seriously, this development is so silly as to be jarring – it doesn’t belong here and the plot could easily be wrapped up without resorting to such a daft device.

The nature of Four Flies On Grey Velvet ensures that such matters do not linger long in the memory. The storyline is easily the most forgettable part of Argento’s creation. Instead, what remains in the memory are images and scenes which show a real horror talent at work: a beating heart, a recurring nightmare and, best of all, a car crash in extreme slow motion. It’s a stunning set-piece – mere seconds stretched out to around a minute with every crunch, pop, scratch and screeched amplified and made hyper real and even more horrific.

Four Flies On Grey Velvet shows enough of Dario Argento’s talent to be of interest, but as a stand-alone film, it’s ultimately unsatisfactory. The occasional flashes of brilliance are not enough to compensate for the movie’s many deficiencies and, as such, it’s a release which will excite nobody other than the most ardent horror fans or Argento completists.