Deadly Sweet (1967)

 

a.k.a. I Am What I Am

Director: Tinto Brass

Screenplay: Tinto Brass, Francesco Longo and Pierre Lévy-Corti

Based on a novel by Sergio Donati

Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant as Bernard; Ewa Aulin as Jane; Roberto Bisacco as David; Charles Kohler as Jerome; Luigi Bellini as Jelly-Roll; Monique Scoazec as Veronica Yassupova; Vira Silenti as Martha

Canon Fodder

 

Let's burn the mini-skirts...

Almost every director in the Italian genre industry, within its golden age, made a giallo, as with many of them making a western among other genres. There are rare cases, such as Dario Argento almost always staying to horror and giallo thrillers, but even those who developed trademarks like Enzo G. Castellari, the action specialist, made a giallo in Cold Eyes of Fear (1971) as a one off. Tinto Brass, who was more focuses in erotic drama even before his softcore run, did make a giallo too, and predating his two experimental films Attraction (1969) and The Howl (1970), he made Deadly Sweet. They are effectively siblings, despite Deadly Sweet being a straight forward film, from their lineage of experimentation. They share footage from each other, such as material here of Jean-Louis Trintignant running being used for an almost Jean-Luc Godard cameo gag in The Howl.

Also, because, whilst very much your traditional giallo, what Brass starts as a film slow in getting going eventually stands out for being an unconventional and inspired piece just for the technical bravado it has. Admittedly, as is a common aspect of this film genre, this is a giallo story which does get a bit convoluted. To summarise it, an actor Bernard (Jean-Louis Trintignant) finds a contact he was meant to meet in a backroom of a club dead on the floor, a young woman Jane (Ewa Aulin) cowering in the corner, Bernard trying to find who is responsible whilst falling head over heels with Jane even if her life, including her relationship with her brother and step-mother, is a knotty one with secrets. Alongside an antagonist step-mother, a possibly incestuous relationship with her brother, and a group trying to get an incriminating diary and even kidnapping Jane at one point, Bernard is pulled into a complicated web.

Like many giallo, this is fascinating as a cultural hodgepodge, meant to be set in swinging London, with a French lead in Trintignant, Ewa Aulin Swedish, as an Italian post-dubbed genre film. Deadly Sweet to its credit among others, even before we get to the type of experimental tone Tinto Brass surprisingly brings to the table, is a compelling narrative. Jean-Louis Trintignant as your lead is inherently, even dubbed, a virtue for having such a compelling actor involved, able to still be seen as his own distinct figure as a performer even dubbed as this plays his character of Bernard as an everyman. He is a very sympathetic lead for a giallo, one capable of being hurt and caught off-guard but, when alert, is a resourceful figure among the trope of men who wander inadvertently into these types of mysteries. When the film has its lighter hearted moments, it is openly playful, whether the delightful sight of Trintignant bashing a drum kit or, within the same scene, doing a Tarzan yell and swinging off a rope. It is a little creepy Ewa Aulin's Jane is mean to be around sixteen or so, to the considerably older Bernard, but she is perfect as the figure that radiates an aura that entices him to her. Whilst one of the film's titles plays on a common trope, the femme fatale, Deadly Sweet to its credit is a lot more meaningful on this right to the bitter end.

It helps as well this film, even in the confines of a genre narrative, is where Tinto Brass's experimental work from this period is at its sharpest. This is a surprise, even after The Howl and Attraction show his experimental side, because of the knowledge of his later films in the erotica category where he restrained himself more. Here, even when the film feels its length, Deadly Sweet has some of the most striking moments you could actually find, avant-garde techniques brought in for drastic effect. Here, a contentious aspect of those two avant-garde films of his, using real footage of current events, works hereas it is footage of the Vietnam War in a newsreel within a cinema, not as extreme as in those works in their violent content where even a genre film entirely focused on its plot allowing him to nod to the real world. The frenzied nature of two of the scenes, using striking (if not suitable for everyone) avant-garde quick editing are two of the most incredible you can find in giallo cinema. One with Bernard being tortured for information on a diary of the initial murder victim, a vital clue, the other whilst being pursued when he is in seconds having to decide to flee into the London Underground. Even having scratched images for emphasis, this is incredible work to see.

Throughout there is a lot of style. From the music to its playful use of comic book illustrations for effect, this feels of the late sixties but is alive in its form. Even when the ending is a bleak one, for an obvious conclusion a viewer probably should have seen coming, it feels app for a film that, light hearted at times but also able to be serious, has felt like a rollercoaster. Deadly Sweet was a delight in mind to its creator's future, an argument positive of Tinto Brass' talents alongside his experimental side even existing.

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

‎Attraction (1969)

 

Director: Tinto Brass

Screenplay: Tinto Brass, Gian Carlo Fusco and Franco Longo

Cast: Anita Sanders as Barbara; Terry Carter as the American; Nino Segurini as Paolo

An Abstract List Candidate

 

He's putting on contraceptive fingers....

Attraction is going to be a dense production to deal with, but it is amazing to think, for the initial thoughts, that Italian director Tinto Brass is most known throughout his career, after his disastrous and miserable experience on Caligula (1979)¹, he devoted himself to softcore erotica with a fixation of the female derriere (for the lack of graceful words) for most of his career. Brass having an experimental late sixties period does seem a huge curveball, but at the same time it befits any artist (or person for that matter) that they evolve and change over the decades. Attraction however, for all the admiration I have for it, is absolutely too the worst definition of experimental post-hippie psychedelic cinema, something you are dumbfounded by upon experiencing.

A strange voiceover talks of peace and love, of Mao, and Attraction is definitely a historical item to examine from the era worthy to examine in how it tries to talk of the time altogether, if however at the same time the equivalent of being stuck in the mental recesses of the era. The voice over, following what is effectively a feature length proto-music video, in which a woman Barbara (Anita Sanders) is considering a sexual fling with a handsome African-American man only dubbed the American (prolific actor Terry Carter) in the streets of English metropolis, is on the nose immediately and is part of the worst aspects of the film, in terms of being as subtle as a sledgehammer and pretentious. From the get-go however, just from the editing alone, this film however comes as a shock to the system for a director who, Caligula to the softcore films, made very traditional (and sometimes cheesy) erotic stories and also expresses how much is also exceptional here too. Attraction is a true paradox of great cinema but also so much unintentionally ridiculous and in one case completely ill-advised, and trying to deal with this is going to naturally cause the review to possibly be confused as a result.

Trying to explain what will happen in this film too in it's entirely is impossible, even at just eighty minutes Attraction managing to feel its length. It is an odyssey of eye catching and completely bizarre moments, some incredible technical work, but also making some misguided choices alongside never really becoming as profound as it thinks. When the film randomly cuts to Un Chien Andalou (1929), and its famous eyeball cutting scene, contrasted to a all nude male band with body paint murals on their chests, we are dealing with something truly weird even in my experience of this type of cinema. And for emphasis, as the film is designed to have Anita Sanders walk through various scenes and topics, this baring the voice over and some plotting feels like a prototype of a music video over a feature's length, as the film is as much carried by songs by Freedom, founded by members of Procol Harum. This does not prepare you however, early in the film, alongside Freedom being a Greek chorus performing onscreen, for the film being strange and unpredictable as it is. The introduction, where Tinto Brass in his late sixties films was quite inventive in how to have opening and ending credits, here playing under the footage, has Barbara wander through a park full of eroticised hippies and nude people cavorting around, and soon into this film you already have the hairdressers sequences. At first it seems merely playful, with fast-forward footage, until when the customers turn into cows, done with fake cow heads and, set to the song lyrics "A cow in your bed/Always well fed" with intercut sequences of a man trying to get an actual cow out of his bed.

This would suggest Attraction is going to be a playful erotic farce, where Brass predating his most reoccurring work will have a l-o-t of female nudity throughout, but we will have to address one of Attraction's biggest divisive issues, how it clearly wants to be profound in its state-of-the-world address, and the drastic and inappropriate tonal shifts as a result. Against what does feel like both a great technical experiment contrasted by pretence clearly from a male gaze view of sixties free love and a lot of sex, you do have a lot here which does not work, and especially does not qualify as a black comedy despite how the film is advertised as. If more of a pop art experimental farce, we would have less of these issues even if the voice over stayed.

Tinto even here is still obsessed with nude women as he would be later in his career, and at first, this does feel playful if weird in a compelling strange way. It is, as mentioned, a prototype of a music video in theatrical length, such as a scene with Barbara looking from a boat to the various apartment homes. Shown through a first person circular image against a black screen, like a periscope or a peephole, you see a variety of people including a woman with a giant fake flower trying to shot herself, which is dark but still in keeping in terms of the tone so far. It may seem dated, but this far you are still seeing a director, with legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis early in his career funding this, even if bumbling through the culture of the time still cutting his teeth with his production team (especially cinematographer Silvano Ippoliti) to make something this impressive. Knowing Brass was his own editor here especially is incredible as, regardless of what I think of Attraction as a whole, there are moments are true surreal joy here and Brass's editing is a thing to admire for how ferocious and mind-bending it can get.

Whether this all is actually profound is the issue however. I like many of this idiosyncratic late sixties cinema, even ones most would view as utterly pretentious, but definitely the term indulgence and pretention has to be thrown around. Even one of the more famous ones I grew to admire, Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend (1967), comes from the knowledge I hated that film for the first six viewings until admiration and an obsession to watch it still came to win me over, and that is still a film with stuff of its era and stuff even back then you would have scratched your head at. It is apt as a film to evoke as, with Tinto Brass' The Howl (1970) evoking Godard's in tone, this is such an alien time in the modern of a specific Western and European cinema, not excluding American and British entries², of films that would never be funded two decades later existing with carte blanche to experiment and try whatever came to mind. You are dealing with so much cultural baggage, however, now of what many were getting at, and if this was plain alien weirdness, this would be less an issue. The sexual and gender politics have to be pondered and frankly questioned at times, even when there are still (unintentionally?) funny lines like chin-ups causing orgasms, or how much the voice over does obsess over sex to the point you see Tinto Brass of his later softcore years secretly within this, but the additional state-of-the-world address the film has also raises issues.

Moments, like Terry Carter's character swapping a young Chinese man's copy of Mao's Red Book with the autobiography of Malcolm X does also cause one to wonder with European and Western filmmakers what exactly they truly thought about when they threw their gauntlet into topics like China's Red Revolution and the racism. Godard, at this point into his infamously dense and messy Dziga-Vertov Group era, succumbed to really never making cognisant points and bad ideas alongside good productive concepts, so someone like Tinto Brass throwing himself into this alongside a pop-music set tone is tripping through so much baggage that even highly admired European filmmakers of art cinema succumbed to.

This comes to ahead, when Attraction failed completely for me as it is still a compelling artefact to witness, when an Italian Catholic priest appears to inform the viewers the sexual content, inappropriate, will be replaced with "suitable" violent and war based ones. It shows, entirely in voice over, that this is an Italian production just masquerading in the real streets of England, but it is one of the cleverest moments. It does however lead to the sequence, with footage re-used more appropriatly in The Howl, that is probably one of the most tonally inappropriate I have seen in a film in a long whole. As is, it involves real footage and images of war, execution footage, footage of a mass grave with real bodies being thrown in, and slaughterhouse images, all contrasted to lots of nude imagery. If Brass still wanted, for a film about sexual liberation and escaping a bland married life, to signpost that this is made during the Vietnam War and juxtaposed with the history of World War II, which he explicitly does in the later film The Howl, it makes sense to if done right. (Deadly Sweet (1967), a giallo he made, has a scene in a cinema where news footage of the Vietnam War plays on the theatrical screen his characters are watching, and that works perfectly in context). When the tone before has been light with dark humour, with very pretentious dialogue and scenes in aesthetically bold sequences of humdrum married life, this is such a misfire.

Likewise, when then wishing to deal with the civil rights moment and racism, the film dances a dangerous line about this being a potential romance or romantic fling between a white married woman and a very charismatic black man. They cross paths with him constantly flirting with her, and she struggling with pronounced sexual fantasies, with nothing at first to never feel an issue, but you get a tone-deaf song from an all-white band about racism, with very obvious lyrics, contrasted to real images and footage of a lynching and KKK cross burnings. The Howl, off-mentioned, has drastic tonal whiplash, but that feels a much darker morbid film with moments of playful farce sprinkled through for levity or to reveal in a corporeal nature. Attraction, alternatively named the eyebrow raising The Artful Penetration of Barbara, has moments which are artistically inspired, deeply weird and was a compellingly bizarre film worthy to return to, but it is also the worst excesses and artistic ideals of this era of experimental and cult cinema on full display. This is not going to defend sixties experimental cinema, and it feels like Tinto Brass punching far higher than he was capable of. If you focus on the technical achievements, as his own editor and the artistic ambition on display, with its cutting of multiple shots at once or peephole camera shots of only a circle of an image onscreen, it is incredible even today. But the violent juxtapositions to real grotesque atrocity of human kind, when Brass is mostly exposing a very heteronormative take on free love and indulging in sex of the late sixties hippy movement, is the one moment even over very pretentious and mockable voiceover dialogue where most viewers will hate Attraction if they have not beforehand.

Attraction, when it is just charmingly strange and gibbering, is what I would gladly rewatch and revisit. A love tunnel with painted face hippies is something only of the sixties, including the fact a real grotty love tunnel you would find in my country at this time is preserved on celluloid, causing one to wish that Brass had not had a decision to be profound. He even snubs what is not a tasteless plot of two people of different ethnicities have a romantic tug-and-pull over their various encounters at first, but even later on the film flunks this however when one voiceover, and I apologies for having to quote the term, has Barbara dubbing Terry Carter's American as a "negro" without thinking more of who he is as a person. That he never gets a name, and is another, particularly as the film ends reverse to what it begins, with her returning to her husband as if a sexual fantasy he is happy with, negates what does a lot which stood out. When even the sexual fantasy shown before repeatedly of both of them nude in a jungle/woodland does not actually play to offensive stereotypes, just the pair of them, beautiful in the nude, frolicking in dense woodland naked, this could have been a much more compassionate film than it turned out to be. Terry Carter, without any dialogue, manages to radiate personality to the point you never even had to bring race into the narrative, just that Barbara is stuck in a marriage of dullness, meeting this charismatic well dressed man completely understandable for a beautiful woman to fall in love with even if with a conflict. Knee deep in psychedelic late sixties weirdness, we could have had fun with this, and it is not a surprise, and a happy epilogue, knowing Carter was a very busy actor in cinema and television.

The result is a mess. This will be a confusing conclusion for many when, having said so much of why this film is a failure, I still find Attraction a compelling experience. When Attraction is weird, like a scene taking place in a museum instillation of what is effectively people sculptures made from trash bags fornicating, than it is memorable, truly a one-off of pure strangeness that I would gladly revisit. But it unfortunately has the price attached to it of how much is antiquated and even back in this era really not profound. This is definitely a case of warning viewers of this being only for a few people. For those few, this will be a special experience even if a difficult one a lot of time.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Grotesque/Surreal/Weird

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

 

=====

1) The tale of Caligula is long and infamous, one probably told by many professional writers, and testimony from its cast, for very good reason. It is worthy of its own review another day even if I could never write as sufficiently as those testimonies and stories on the production history on how insane its existence is.

2) And yes dear readers, let us not forget the Japanese films of this era, or other countries such as Cinema Novo and the likes of Glauber Rocha in Brazil, so please do not think this is Anglo-European bias. They will not be ignored, and goes to show why I love sixties and seventies cinema and can trip up even over a low budget genre film that can be inventive or just bizarre at any time.