The Taviani brothers' Sotto il segno dello scorpione (1969) is a VERY disappointing film.
The Taviani's had a great concept here, but really failed in the execution of that concept and the resulting finished film is just unconvincing, in my opinion. I had to stop watching this film after about sixty minutes because I just couldn't take anymore.
The behavior of all the people in this story just contradicts normal, common sense assumptions of how people behave. Most evident is the fact that people isolated on an island in such a primitive state would literally be spending every minute of the day trying to generate enough food just to survive, either through gathering, farming, hunting or fishing, and not spending the bulk of their day playing the social games that these people do. The whole thing with the visitors wearing an exceeding amount of cowbells and dancing in such a choreographed manner is just absurd, least of all because there was no herd of cattle shown to even warrant such an extravagant amount of cowbells, not to even mention the seeming lack of technology on this island to even be able to manufacture such a stockpile of cowbells.
The editing in this film was radical, but to a negative effect. With great frequency, the viewer is suddenly transported to a scene that is framed by a set of totally new conditions, without the benefit of having the film tell him how this set of new conditions ever came about. The scene where we suddenly find all the male visitors to the island seemingly trapped in a very deep, neatly dug pit is a case in point. How did all these men end up in that pit?
Efforts by me to see the unlikely behavior of the people on this island in some allegorical, or symbolic manner didn't work for me either, because the storyline on the literal, straight level is such an unreal, fractured, and unexplainable mess that associations at a meta-level of elements of the literal storyline is just not possible for me.
Overall, I am compelled to place this film in my own personal genre of Cinematic Oddity. In fact, this film is such an oddity, so unconvincing, and, ultimately so irrelevant that it isn't even worthy of Cult Film status, at least in my opinion.
This film is just a WASTE of valuable filmmaking resources that could have better spent on another film, ANY film but this one.
The Taviani's had a great concept here, but really failed in the execution of that concept and the resulting finished film is just unconvincing, in my opinion. I had to stop watching this film after about sixty minutes because I just couldn't take anymore.
The behavior of all the people in this story just contradicts normal, common sense assumptions of how people behave. Most evident is the fact that people isolated on an island in such a primitive state would literally be spending every minute of the day trying to generate enough food just to survive, either through gathering, farming, hunting or fishing, and not spending the bulk of their day playing the social games that these people do. The whole thing with the visitors wearing an exceeding amount of cowbells and dancing in such a choreographed manner is just absurd, least of all because there was no herd of cattle shown to even warrant such an extravagant amount of cowbells, not to even mention the seeming lack of technology on this island to even be able to manufacture such a stockpile of cowbells.
The editing in this film was radical, but to a negative effect. With great frequency, the viewer is suddenly transported to a scene that is framed by a set of totally new conditions, without the benefit of having the film tell him how this set of new conditions ever came about. The scene where we suddenly find all the male visitors to the island seemingly trapped in a very deep, neatly dug pit is a case in point. How did all these men end up in that pit?
Efforts by me to see the unlikely behavior of the people on this island in some allegorical, or symbolic manner didn't work for me either, because the storyline on the literal, straight level is such an unreal, fractured, and unexplainable mess that associations at a meta-level of elements of the literal storyline is just not possible for me.
Overall, I am compelled to place this film in my own personal genre of Cinematic Oddity. In fact, this film is such an oddity, so unconvincing, and, ultimately so irrelevant that it isn't even worthy of Cult Film status, at least in my opinion.
This film is just a WASTE of valuable filmmaking resources that could have better spent on another film, ANY film but this one.