The 10th Victim. We Still Kill the Old Way. Property Is No Longer a Theft. Todo Modo. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion. Elio Petri made movies that challenged viewers and sadly, he died at 53, an age well too young and one that should have left many years to continue pushing cinema.
Based on The Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions - where do you think the soundtrack team got their name? - A Quiet Place In the Country stands between and yet above so many genre. Is it giallo? Gothic horror? An art film? Comic book trash, as The Boston Globe wrote? Can it be all of those?
Leonardo Ferri (Franco Nero) hasn't been able to paint for a long time. His girlfriend Flavia (Vanessa Redgrave) keeps pushing him to get back to painting so she can sell his work at her gallery. She rents him a mansion out in the countryside, but he feels lost. Then he notices an abandoned property and moves in, a place once taken care of by Attilio (Georges Géret). He hires a housekeeper, Egle (Rita Calderoni in her first world, not yet entering the psychosexual world of Renato Polselli's films) and begins to make the place new again.
Yet there are noises everywhere and strange feelings. A shopkeeper tells him that a girl, Wanda (Gabriella Boccardo), died there during World War II, shot by a plane. He keeps seeing a man leave flowers on his property every day. Flavia leaves when the house itself seems to attack her, as a hole opens under her feet and a bookshelf nearly falls on her.
Without her, Leonardo becomes obsessed with Wanda, learning how every man in town was in love with her and every woman hated her. Was she a nymphomanic using everyone? Was she looking for love that she didn't have anywhere else? Was she using everyone or were they using her? He finally tracks down her mother (Madeleine Damien) to Venice where she lives in a small apartment. Telling her that he's a journalist, he takes photos of her back to the house.
The person leaving the flowers ends up being Attillo. He tells her that he never cared that she loved anyone else, that they had a secret room where her mother watched them make love through a mirror, that the only time he ever grew jealous was when he watched her be mounted by a German soldier who he killed. She helped him bury the body on that day, the same one she died in the air strike.
Flavia comes back and learns that Leonardo has given up on everything. Even his attempts at romance are too rough and between an electric current that strikes her and being strangled by unseen fingers during a seance, she knows she can no longer stay. As the guests department, Leonardo follows her, stabbing her before tearing her to pieces with a shovel. He also attacks his maid and her boyfriend, using them as part of his art before his mind goes a series of visions in which soldiers force people to paint on the grounds and Atillo reveals that Wanda survived the air attack and he was the one who killed her. As the police come to arrest him, he realizes that Flavia stands in the crowd with the onlookers.
Months - or years? - later, he is confined to a mental institution. All he does is work, finally being able to paint sexualized artwork, living off pornography and chocolate. The orderly takes his work, telling him he needs even more and delivers them to Flavia, who hides from his window. She remarks that she wishes that she had his life, as it looks so relaxing.
This movie made me cry more than once and sometimes from joy and other times from the abject nature of my sadness. Perhaps also the Ennio Morricone score. It's emotional when a movie works so well, when you realize that this is the only first-time watch that you will ever get. And it strikes a nerve that Franco is looking for someone who was never there, a woman who is perfect because he only sees her in his mind, but every man, even the ones who touched her before, cannot forget her, as her ghost - memories and not supernatural, mind you - will remain burning hot in their memories as they settle for their wives and lives. Is Franco's character any different than them? Is Flavia not attacked at all by the supernatural but perhaps the one who engineered all of this, a non-horror ending that turns this into the giallo? Did anyone die? Did anyone live?
Based on The Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions - where do you think the soundtrack team got their name? - A Quiet Place In the Country stands between and yet above so many genre. Is it giallo? Gothic horror? An art film? Comic book trash, as The Boston Globe wrote? Can it be all of those?
Leonardo Ferri (Franco Nero) hasn't been able to paint for a long time. His girlfriend Flavia (Vanessa Redgrave) keeps pushing him to get back to painting so she can sell his work at her gallery. She rents him a mansion out in the countryside, but he feels lost. Then he notices an abandoned property and moves in, a place once taken care of by Attilio (Georges Géret). He hires a housekeeper, Egle (Rita Calderoni in her first world, not yet entering the psychosexual world of Renato Polselli's films) and begins to make the place new again.
Yet there are noises everywhere and strange feelings. A shopkeeper tells him that a girl, Wanda (Gabriella Boccardo), died there during World War II, shot by a plane. He keeps seeing a man leave flowers on his property every day. Flavia leaves when the house itself seems to attack her, as a hole opens under her feet and a bookshelf nearly falls on her.
Without her, Leonardo becomes obsessed with Wanda, learning how every man in town was in love with her and every woman hated her. Was she a nymphomanic using everyone? Was she looking for love that she didn't have anywhere else? Was she using everyone or were they using her? He finally tracks down her mother (Madeleine Damien) to Venice where she lives in a small apartment. Telling her that he's a journalist, he takes photos of her back to the house.
The person leaving the flowers ends up being Attillo. He tells her that he never cared that she loved anyone else, that they had a secret room where her mother watched them make love through a mirror, that the only time he ever grew jealous was when he watched her be mounted by a German soldier who he killed. She helped him bury the body on that day, the same one she died in the air strike.
Flavia comes back and learns that Leonardo has given up on everything. Even his attempts at romance are too rough and between an electric current that strikes her and being strangled by unseen fingers during a seance, she knows she can no longer stay. As the guests department, Leonardo follows her, stabbing her before tearing her to pieces with a shovel. He also attacks his maid and her boyfriend, using them as part of his art before his mind goes a series of visions in which soldiers force people to paint on the grounds and Atillo reveals that Wanda survived the air attack and he was the one who killed her. As the police come to arrest him, he realizes that Flavia stands in the crowd with the onlookers.
Months - or years? - later, he is confined to a mental institution. All he does is work, finally being able to paint sexualized artwork, living off pornography and chocolate. The orderly takes his work, telling him he needs even more and delivers them to Flavia, who hides from his window. She remarks that she wishes that she had his life, as it looks so relaxing.
This movie made me cry more than once and sometimes from joy and other times from the abject nature of my sadness. Perhaps also the Ennio Morricone score. It's emotional when a movie works so well, when you realize that this is the only first-time watch that you will ever get. And it strikes a nerve that Franco is looking for someone who was never there, a woman who is perfect because he only sees her in his mind, but every man, even the ones who touched her before, cannot forget her, as her ghost - memories and not supernatural, mind you - will remain burning hot in their memories as they settle for their wives and lives. Is Franco's character any different than them? Is Flavia not attacked at all by the supernatural but perhaps the one who engineered all of this, a non-horror ending that turns this into the giallo? Did anyone die? Did anyone live?