The Howl (1970)

 

Director: Tinto Brass

Screenplay: Tinto Brass, Gian Carlo Fusco, Franco Longo and Gigi Proietti

Cast: Tina Aumont as Anita Annigoni, Gigi Proietti as Carlo detto 'Coso', Nino Segurini as Berto Bertuccioli

An Abstract Candidate

I questioned a corpse.

At first The Howl may suggest the tonal inconsistencies of Attraction (1969), another film from when Tinto Brass, an Italian director who eventually would focus on softcore erotica, had an experimental late sixties period. A man's future wife, our lead Anita (Tina Aumont), is bailed out of jail by his influence, only to be told her tale upon being arrested of being raped with a policeman's truncheon by a gang of them. When she flees her wedding however, The Howl intends to be a more morbid, bleaker view of the world which just happens to have moments of farce and levity. It was also wise for her to fled him, a man of power in all its flatness, especially when he does not bat an eye to that tale, even if she tells it with almost humour, deciding instead to flee into this surreal dreamscape capturing the era.

Pale faced, from having fled her wedding, she ends up on an incredibly surreal farce which at times cannot be viewed as anything else as truly dreamlike, even if unintentionally when it was trying to be politically relevant. Early on, this is stated as intent when immediately into this, the film has a horde of English policemen running down a hill and, in one of the many eye-catching moments, a double decker bus burning on fire at night.

The Howl does have its shock value and time stamped content, a film which precariously plays to a profoundness but also nastiness for the sake of it, such as juxtaposing eroticism that is meant to be positive with an off-screen rape scene by soldiers meant to be taken seriously. It throws a giant gauntlet down when its first scenario is a hotel Anita enters which caters to all kinds of sexual perversions and kinks - a mass of imagery, as throughout too much to absorb, including a reference to Leda and the swan, necrophilia, bottomless female teachers and much more. It evokes Jean-Luc Godard's political farce Weekend (1967), a bizarre road trip, whilst in mind that this particular journey exists out of space and even time, further than Godard's did sticking to the French country motorways. But it still has cannibalism like Godard's, in this case a philosopher in a loin cloth and 18th century wig whose family captures and eats people.

With a character at one point, in clown face paint having murdered someone in a train passenger seat, says "I awoke from the dream..." repeatedly, this film shows its hand as intentionally illogical in form, but probably to its advantage is that, whilst full of surreal and intentionally slapstick material, this feels a darker film. Even when Anita befriend and is tagged along by a slapstick male comedy figure Coso (Gigi Proietti), this for all the moments which still have aged badly feels a more powerful work, a memoriam of the state of the world. This is especially the case as it explicitly evokes World War II and its destructive influence on the world from an Italian filmmaker. Explicitly as a stand-in for Benito Mussolini and Hitler, a raving clown of a dictator, is machine gunned down by Anita and Coco.

The film presents moments which are delightfully strange, such as a ducking peeking through a post box slot on a door talking, but most of the film exists from a bleaker worldview, or at least a more sombre reflection of the world. It stops to follow the male sidekick interacting with a ghost of a young woman who has spent her eternity weeping at train tracks, feeling of more appropriate tone here with what it wants to evoke than, as I have seen, Tinto Brass trying to capture the times and, for all the incredible skill still involved, also showing his hand badly. When this film, using the same footage, uses real life mass grave and war footage as Attraction did, it is still questionable to have even brought it in onscreen, but feels more appropriate as the characters end up in a village that clearly encapsulates World War II.

That sequence, an extended one alone, makes this film more profound than even its surreal tone may initially suggest even if just evoking emotions for more real from its creators than they may have realised. Of soldiers, terrorising the town and shooting the populous lined up against the wall, heads on spikes and skeletons everywhere. Even when the film returns back to slapstick, including an entire stint within a mental asylum built in ancient Roman architecture, the title is apt as a deranged howl, as the protagonist herself is going on a downward spiral as the world is. It does feel its length, a journey even in ninety minutes which leaves one exhausted, but you are taken for a ride through such a surreal landscape that is completely admirable in form. [Major Spoilers] It feels more apt, than trying pretence of being about free love as Attraction was, when here instead the narrative conclusion is death by car crash in reality, the delirium collapsing in on it's being [Spoilers End]. Here when a cry of rebellion is broadcast in a sound recording stage, Tina Aumont throwing herself into this role, and in that scene shouting with magical intensity this speech, to rebel against the soldiers in the WWII town, it feels powerful as it is spoken less with latching on just the times, but an ageless form of rebellion stemming with influence of the horror of that war that is magnificent.

The Howl's dreamlike, deeply strange nature will still put people off, a languid work at times which yet can be explicit, nasty or just plain weird. For me, waiting to see this film for a long time, it thankfully has less of the pretentions of the other Brass production from this era, something that is difficult and really feels more a string of consciousness than cohesive, but apt in terms of what it wants to get over. There are better, even more difficult to grasp and more illogical films in this same vein, in just that The Howl does have the issue of what the politics and use of gendered takes on sex involved, when others have nudity and violence but feel more provocative to an advantage, but this is the kind of film that is an acquired taste I open admit an admiration too. When this is focused, this surrealism even if in the end it never had a point gains one with feeling like the creators' and casts' emotions spilling out onscreen, being stuck in the journey swimming in this fully.

Abstract Spectrum: Absurd/Grotesque/Surreal/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High