FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON aka LE ORME

Luigi Bazzoni, 1975

Starring: Florinda Bolkan, Klaus Kinski, Nicoletta Elmi

A translator named Alice is haunted by nightmares and memories of Footprints on the Moon, a film she saw as a child that follows astronauts stranded on the moon. She is soon fired from work after she completely misses three days. Unable to recall any events from this period, she follows the only clue she can find — a postcard from a resort town called Garma, located on a Croatian island. Once she arrives, a little girl mistakes her for another woman named Nicole and some of the other townsfolk also find her familiar or act strangely as she comes closer to discovering what she did during the three missing days.

Enigmatic giallo star Florinda Bolkan of Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Don’t Torture a Duckling, and Investigation of a Woman Above Suspicion gives one of her best performances here as the panicked, disoriented Alice. While the lost memory trope is fairly common in giallo and mystery films, it’s used exceptionally well here thanks to Bolkan’s lovely, if somewhat blank expression that lends itself well to confusion and paranoia. She’s joined by other giallo and cult film regulars, including Ida Galli (The Weekend Murders), Caterina Boratto (Salo, Danger: Diabolik), Lila Kedrova (The Tenant), Peter McEnery (Radley Metzger’s The Cat and the Canary), a brief appearance from Klaus Kinski as a demented scientist, and giallo’s most demented child actor, Nicoletta Elmi (Deep Red, Demons). 

Though a number of cult, horror, and giallo films are described as dreamlike, Footprints on the Moon is one of the best examples of this blend of the uncanny, nightmarish visions, dizzying logic, memory loss, and scant clues (a postcard and a yellow dress) that lead the protagonist to reconstruct the past. This investigation — which is peppered with science fiction, Cold War suspense, and personal trauma — is also a reconstruction of Alice’s identity. Unlike the standard giallo, there is no gratuitous sex or nudity, no string of attractive victims slain by a masked, black gloved killer and perhaps this is what makes it so compelling. While there are the same nonsensical leaps of logic and an almost mind-numbing number of red herrings, Footprints on the Moon came after the giallo boom — which lasted roughly from 1971 to 1973 — and is definitely not a film for someone looking for a good introduction to the genre.

Bazzoni manipulates nearly every standard giallo trope. The candy-colored visuals schemes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento are turned sickly and menacing here — strange blues stand in for nighttime shots and the beautiful natural environment becomes alien, likely a nod to the film’s lunar themes. These are worked into the scant plot brilliantly, as Alice is tormented by visions of a science fiction movie she was made to watch as a child. This ties in with her professional responsibilities as an adult — she was serving as a translator at an astronomy conference — and with the hint of abuse and trauma. In the film, a scientist (Klaus Kinski) observes coldly as astronauts are abandoned on the moon and left to suffocate to death.

There’s a chilling score from Nicola Piovani (The Perfume Of A Lady In Black) and some excellent cinematography from Vittorio Storaro (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Last Emperor, Last Tango in Paris), the latter of which is one of the film’s finest points. Director Luigi Bazzoni (Pride and Vengeance) doesn’t have a lot of films to his name, but he helmed the somewhat similar The Possessed, an early proto-giallo about a man who travels to an abandoned seaside town to find an old lover, and The Fifth Cord, about an alcoholic journalist who can’t remember the events of a party, after which someone was murdered. Bazzoni’s themes of memory loss, tormented love, abuse, murder, and fractured identities are some of the most compelling in all of giallo cinema and it’s a shame he didn’t make more of these.

Footprints on the Moon also juggles suggestions of drug addiction (Alice has began taking large doses of sleeping pills to help with her insomnia and nightmares), mental illness, and even espionage with her position as a translator at a major international science conference. Like many other giallo protagonists, Bolkan is an unreliable narrator, but Bazzoni does what few other giallo directors/writers are willing to do and bravely does not insist on explaining away everything at the film’s conclusion. Bolkan is also de-feminized — she has short hair, wears little or no make up, and has drab clothing — and is tormented by her unseen double, an eroticized version of Alice with dresses, long hair (revealed to be a wig that Alice becomes obsessed with), and a sex life. Like so many of the best giallo films, this sexual element is a source of anxiety, claustrophobia, and, eventually, violence.

Footprints on the Moon comes with the highest recommendation and it has fortunately been given an excellent DVD release by UK company Shameless. If you’re new to giallo films, this might not be the best place to start, but it is an excellent, one-of-a-kind film. I’ve seen it compared to L’Avventura — as is Bazzoni’s The Possessed — and it’s certainly more like Antonioni’s film than it is any other giallo film with the possible exception of other strange cases like Autopsy, The House with Laughing Windows, The Perfume of the Lady in Black, and Death Smiles on a Murderer (which also features Kinski as a demented scientist) — all some of my favorite films of the ‘70s.

THE FIFTH CORD aka GIORNATA NERA PER L’ARIETE

Luigi Bazzoni, 1971

Starring: Franco Nero, Silvia Monti

Andrea, a journalist with a drinking problem, is at a New Year’s Eve party where one of the guests is attacked and hospitalized. The man is convinced that it was an attempted murder and soon enough the bodies – mostly guests from the party -- begin piling up around Andrea. In order to avoid becoming the main suspect himself, he begins investing the crime; even though he was at the party, he was too drunk to remember the events of the evening. He learns that his mistress and his former lover may be involved, and the only real clue is a series of black gloves with various fingers cut off left behind by the killer.

Clearly building off the success of Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Fifth Cord – the title actually translates to Black Day for the Ram and it’s also known as Evil Fingers or Silent Killer – is an underrated effort with a solid lead performance and some effective moments of suspense. It borrows The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’s composer, the great Ennio Morricone, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (also known for his work with Bernardo Bertolucci), and the premise that the protagonist saw something of vital importance, but can’t remember exactly what. While Bird’s protagonist didn’t realize exactly what he was seeing, The Fifth Cord’s Andrea is simply an alcoholic – a device that believably wipes his memory and also makes him something of a likable scoundrel.

Italian B-movie star Franco Nero – mostly known for his spaghetti western roles – was excellent in the earlier proto-giallo A Quiet Place in the Country and is really the best thing about The Fifth Cord. His character is sort of a raconteur; a not so hard-working journalist who specializes in whiskey and women and is charming despite his many flaws. In typical giallo fashion, he’s a reluctant detective, driven to solve the crime only to keep himself from being arrested (or killed). I am perhaps biased writing this review, as I would watch a movie where Nero scraped paint off the walls (which he nearly does in A Quiet Place in the Country) and probably walk away content. He is certainly the film’s weighted center and remains a stable presence – despite his character’s unstable personality – in the face of dozens of characters and a somewhat flimsy plot.

POTENTIAL SPOILER: The primary plot issue is that Andrea wades through a series of clues to uncover an underground sex ring that involves minors. This sleazy element is disappointingly forgotten by the end of the film and it winds up as little more than a red herring. The overall tone is not quite lurid enough to be in league with a Lucio Fulci movie, but it goes a long way towards making everyone – including Andrea – a potential killer. The stylish cinematography, which eschews the vivid color palette of many giallo films, is dark and moody, with an emphasis on nighttime shots, overcast skies, and heavy blues. The death scenes have an especially grim feeling, certainly more so than The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and tension is ratcheted up by a number of creepy moments – such as when the killer records a confessions and plans for future murders.

Director Luigi Bazzoni didn’t make a lot of giallo films, but the three he did helm are some of the most unusual entries in the genre. His early film, The Possessed (1965), dealt with a woman’s mysterious suicide at a lake resort and plenty of sleazy sexual intrigue, while the latter Le orme aka Footsprints on the Moon (1975) is a delightfully chilling tale of psychological disintegration complete with a woman’s haunting dreams of an astronaut. What Bazzoni really brought to The Fifth Cord was the sense that all the characters are corrupt, morally flawed, or at least carrying a dirty secret, and that violent could erupt at any moment in such a compromised universe.

Fortunately available on DVD, The Fifth Cord might not be in the very top-tier of giallo classics, but it’s well worth seeing. Even if it’s sometimes difficult to keep the characters straight, there are a lot of familiar faces, including giallo actresses Rosella Falk (The Black Belly of the Tarantula), Silvia Monti (Lizard in a Woman’s Skin), and Ira von Füstenberg (Five Dolls for an August Moon), as well as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’s Renato Romano. There are effective death scenes, a particularly chilling concluding sequence where the killer menaces, a child, and plenty of suspense. But hey, if all these pictures of Franco Nero haven’t convinced you, nothing will.

THE POSSESSED aka LA DONNA DEL LAGO

Luigi Bazzoni, Franco Rossellini, 1965

Starring: Peter Baldwin, Salvo Randone, Valentina Cortese, Pia Lindström, Piero Anchisi, Virna Lisi

Bernard, a writer, returns to a small, lakeside town hoping to rendezvous with an old lover, Tilde, a maid at the hotel he typically stays in. But Tilde is missing and the locals are reluctant to explain why. He eventually learns from the hotel owner, Enrico, that Tilde killed herself, but soon finds out that there is more to her case. He discovers contradictory information: she was pregnant before her death, but the coroner’s report declared her a virgin. She was poisoned — and her throat was slit. And something sinister seems to be going on at the hotel, but Enrico and he recently married son and unhappy daughter.

Based on a novel by Giovanni Comisso, this unsettling, proto-giallo bears some things in common with surreal Euro-thrillers like Last Year at Marienbad or The Man Who Lies, though The Possessed — literally translated as The Lady of the Lake — is more grounded in reality. It also begins the giallo practice of familiar names and faces. Director Luigi Bazzoni would go on to greater heights with The Fifth Cord and the equally unsettling Footprints on the Moon. Co-director Franco Rossellini worked more frequently as a producer on films like Pasolini’s Decameron, Medea, and Teorema, as well as Caligula. For the script, they were joined by giallo and spaghetti western director Guilio Questi (Death Laid an Egg and Django, Kill… If You Live, Shoot!) and prolific Italian composer Renzo Rossellini (Germany Year Zero, Caligula, General Della Rovere).

This chilling, moody film is not strictly a giallo, but bears enough in common with the emerging genre that it could be seen as a precursor. The protagonist, Peter, is a writer who is a stranger to the area (two common giallo tropes are the writer and the foreigner) and there is the sense that he can trust no one. This air of menace and paranoia was particularly found in the less common rural giallo films — such as House With the Laughing Windows and A Quiet Place in the Country — but is palpable here. Though there are several deaths, all violence is shown off camera and instead exchanged with a haunting sense of reverie shown through hazy flashbacks, claustrophobic hallways, and feverish fantasies.

Though Peter Baldwin (The Weekend Murders) is technically the star, this is a film without a true protagonist. Nothing is revealed about him other than the fact that he’s a writer and carries a flame for Tilde, though he once may have treated her badly. He is not an active figure, but is relegated to a passive role. Even his detection skills are limited and he relies on others to share information. It is the film’s three women — Virna Lisi (Queen Margot) as Tilde, Valentina Cortese (The Girl Who Knew Too Much) as the hotel owner’s daughter Irma, and Pia Lindstrom (daughter of Ingrid Bergman) as the wealthy new wife of the hotel owner’s son — who linger in the imagination and, whether living or dead, exist as spectral presences throughout the narrative. Like Citizen Kane or Hiroshima mon amour, The Possessed is essentially a study of identity, a somewhat failed attempt to uncover a person’s past. This sense of mystery and foreboding is certainly common in giallo films, where characters are revealed to have hidden motives, dark secrets, and traumatic pasts. 

Another element in common with giallo films is the theme of sexual perversion. Many rely on the conceit that the deranged killer murders because of some violent perversion. Here — SPOILER ALERT — it is revealed that the kindly hotel owner, Enrico (Salvo Randone of My Dear Killer), had been having an affair with Tilde, as had his adult son, Mario (Philippe Leroy of The Frightened Woman). When she became pregnant and insisted that one of them marry her, Mario is ashamed at the thought of continuing to share her with his father. This sense of contamination has spread to the other two women — Mario’s sister and his new wife — and, like the gods righting the world of pollution in a Greek tragedy, the women are sacrificed.

The disorienting sense of isolation — which I’ve seen compared loosely to the art house films of Antonioni — is countered with a claustrophobic paranoia. Eyes are everywhere and just as Bernard watches and judges the townspeople, they seem to be constantly watching him, waiting for him to uncover their collection secret. Though not everyone was in on Tilde’s murder, many conspired to make it seem like a simple suicide. There is also the constant sense that things are happening out of sight — even just off camera — that adds to the rapidly building sense of unease.

One of the best things about The Possessed is the black-and-white cinematography from Leonida Barboni (Divorce Italian Style) with some camera work from regular Fulci collaborator Sergio Salvati. Barboni’s camera softly fixates on Virna Lisi and Valentina Cortese, as well as the foreboding lake, and beautiful snow-covered cemetery. He uses some kind of filter that gives the light sources a hazy, mirage-like flavor, contrasted with deep blacks where detail — and misdeeds — fades away.

The Possessed will be of interest only to giallo fanatics, or those who like their thrillers heavy on mood and light on gore. Art house fans may also find a lot to like here, and it certainly bridges the distance between the two. As far as I can tell this has never been released on DVD, though bootlegs have been making the rounds for years. It’s certainly worth tracking down, though I am predisposed to love atmospheric, oneiric mysteries with beautiful cinematography and a dose of sleaze.