People love anti-heroes (the
archetype, not necessarily the band).
People love regular heroes.
People love superheroes. But the
antihero, at least from my perspective, seems to top most people’s lists. Folks complain that these protagonists in
cinema are often unlikable. I believe
this is a specious criticism. I believe
that what people actually mean when they say this is that they find the
characters uncompelling, and since they do things which are immoral, illegal,
whatever, they are therefore “unlikable.”
Thing is, anti-heroes are supposed to be unlikable. Snake Plissken in Escape from New York is not a nice, personable guy. Leon from The
Professional is a hired killer. Tony
Montana in Scarface is a drug dealer
and a murderer. Nevertheless, audiences
want to follow what happens to them and even (wrongheadedly) model their lifestyles
after them. In part, this is because the
lives of anti-heroes are abnormal to our own experiences. They are heightened beyond humanity, they are
calm under pressure, they are (sometimes) more glamorous than our everyday
mundanity. They are fantasies of how cool
we wish we were. This is despite the
very clear drawbacks of their lives (getting shot at, murdered, etcetera).
The other part, and I think the
more important part, is that there is something about them that we do connect
to. This may not be a redemptive value
(like Leon’s rule of no women, no kids and his caring for a child in peril),
but it has to be a human value. We get
the ultimate emptiness of Montana’s naked ambition, and we sympathize for this
man because he got what he wanted but not what he needed. The best anti-heroes are flawed (often
deeply), but there is something of ourselves that we discern in them, an
honesty, no matter how oblique. This is
why we want to follow Giorgio (Stelio Candelli) in Leopoldo Savona’s Death Falls Lightly (aka La Morte Scende Leggera). He’s a drug trafficker, but he’s also
unjustly persecuted (or thinks he will be, not unreasonably), and this is
something most people have felt at one time or another (just maybe not for homicide).
Returning from Milan, our
protagonist discovers his wife murdered.
Exploiting his political connections, he and his girlfriend Liz
(Patrizia Viotti, a beauty who died far too young) are whisked off to a
purportedly empty hotel while his friends concoct an alibi for him. Things take a turn for the weird when the
couple’s isolation really kicks in.
Savona’s film depicts a cynical
world. Giorgio thinks nothing of the
life he leads. He thinks nothing of
cheating on his wife (despite his later declaration that he was divorcing her),
stating that, “Marriage is a mistake,” as if that applies to all
marriages. He drags Liz along with him,
not because he craves her specific companionship (he does say he loves her, and
maybe he even means it), but so that he has someone to fuck when he gets
bored. His friends aren’t friends at
all. In fact, they don’t even like each
other when Giorgio isn’t around. They
are people using each other for their own ends.
This is illustrated at several points in the film with voiceovers of the
various characters’ thoughts, and all of them are essentially the same
(everyone else is a son of a bitch and a degenerate, but not me, and I’ll fix
them). The drugs that Giorgio traffics
in are used to fuel political careers so power can be attained and
maintained. They are vampires, draining
the life’s blood of the people they pretend to serve (something limited to
Italian politicians, surely). Liz is the
audience perspective character, outside of Giorgio and company’s world, but
still willing to go along with all of it, thus conflating her with the rest of
these people. In a particularly telling
sequence, she and Giorgio watch a porn film as they have sex. While their lovemaking is passionate, it also
feels empty, because it’s fueled by the prurience reflected off the movie
screen rather than any feelings they should have for each other. Even the police are disenchanted (likely from
seeing the worst in people every single day), and they are not above
manipulation of (assumedly) innocent people, even to the point that putting
their lives in peril is okay, so long as the case gets solved (this is nothing
new in Italian genre cinema).
Death Falls Lightly is different from
many gialli, while keeping some of the things that define the genre. It has a mystery killer, represented by POV
camera shots (alas, no black gloves). It
has a lurid quality to it, mostly delivered by Viotti and her willingness to
get naked. It has a few final twists
which are both ridiculous and satisfying.
But, at its heart, the film is an Old Dark House story filled with
bizarre scenarios. The hotel is a large,
empty space. The dining room looks like
it was abandoned mid-celebration rather than shut down. The place houses the ghosts of better times
sent crashing and burning down to Earth.
Giorgio and Liz are shut in, not allowed to even open a window and look
outside. Thus, they have to deal with
each other in a more intimate way than they likely have before (see Giorgio’s
distaste for marriage and its implications).
Rather than coming together spiritually, the vacuity of the hotel only
exacerbates the couple’s frictions. Enter
the “spectres.” It seems the hotel is
not so empty as Giorgio was led to believe, as evidenced by the appearance of
the Owner (Antonio Anelli). He has
killed his wife so he can be with his mistress Marisa (Rosella
Bergamonti). Sound familiar? Immediately, the Owner enlists Giorgio in
removing and burying her body, and this he does without putting up much fuss. This leads to the appearance of the owner’s
daughter Adele (Veronika Korosec) and some strange encounters, like when she
takes a bubble bath while a monkey swings around a portable clothes rack, or
when she stabs herself (or does she?) as a part of some arcane ceremony. What happens after these folks show up is a
swift descent into Hell and insanity for Giorgio. This is also the point in the film where
Savona ratchets up the psychedelic trappings, with all manner of odd angles,
handheld shots, jump cuts, and so forth.
Giorgio is never certain of what he’s seeing or how to act in response,
but he always finds himself going along (just like the viewer). These scenarios are manifestations of his
life and situation (directly and indirectly), and by forcing Giorgio to
confront these things, he is forced to confront himself. This isn’t to say that the resolution he
comes to is positive, but it is, ironically, more honest than the world in which
he had been living.
MVT:
The fever dream/experimental elements are macabre and intriguing.
Make or Break: The
arrival of the Owner takes a tense, freak out situation and spins it into
surreality.
Score:
6.75/10
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