Delitto D'autore

"How strange, Marco. I sense fear and my head feels light."

Countess Valeria Volpi Gerosi (Wilma Casagrande) has generously donated a painting by Peter Paul Rubens as the prize for a prestigious music festival. In attendance for the event is her niece, Milena (Sylva Koscina) who is secretly married to Marco (Pier Paolo Capponi), because Valeria doesn't approve of Marco. When a mysterious phone call threatens misfortune if the painting is donated, nobody takes it seriously, but soon after, Milena is kidnapped, the painting is stolen and Valeria is murdered. Bloody priest's robes are found at the scene, but could the killer really be the kindly Don Lino (Luigi Pistilli)? Who stole the painting? Who kidnapped Milena and why? The police have a web of motives to untangle!

Delitto D'Autore (not to be confused with Delitti) is a tough watch - not for the content, but because its plot is absolutely inscrutable. I appreciate the neorealist approach of dropping the audience into a naturalistic conversation, but there are so few context clues in the dialogue that it's challenging to figure out what's going on, who the characters are and what their relationships are to each other. It all becomes more clear as the movie goes on, but writer/director Mario Sabatini was obviously more interested in style than a coherent plot. The mis-directs seem forced and the ultimate motivation of the killer is sadly anticlimactic.

• The movie was apparently never released with an English title, but it translates as "Copyright Crimes," which doesn't make sense until the final minutes of the film. The only alternate title I could find is the Greek O dolofonos me ta kokkina heili, or "The Killer With Red Lips."

• Despite the rickety final product, the movie has a star-studded cast - Luigi Pistilli (Bay of Blood), Sylvia Koschina (Crimes of the Black Cat), Pier Paolo Capponi (Seven Blood-Stained Orchids) and Krista Nell (So Sweet, So Dead) are giallo all-stars

What the Hell Am I Watching?

With a run time of only 75 minutes, I wish the filmmakers could have taken more time with the plot. But instead, they chose to pad the film with two scenes of naked frolicking women. First, there's a pool party that devolves into a giddy lesbian grope session. Later, we take time for a topless dance party, which looks like an X-rated episode of Laugh-In. Obviously, neither of these scenes has anything to do with the rest of the movie and are just awkwardly shoehorned into the edit.

Dream sequences are always fun, especially when the character is drugged. Milena tells Don Lino about her drug-induced dream, where she was dancing feverishly with shadowy figures.

 

 

 

She then woke up to find a pair of leather gloves. If an intruder was in her room while she slept, why would he take off his gloves and place them on her blanket before leaving? This is the kind of style-over-logic thinking that we find throughout the film.

The movie ends with a climactic car chase, in which the drivers zip up and down staircases, which is pretty fun. In one shot, you can clearly see the camera operator's shadow on the roof of the car as it passes by.

Fashion Moment:

There wasn't a lot of thought or effort put into the script and, sadly, this laziness carries over into the production design and costumes. The cast gets glammed up for a night of dancing, which is about it. Also, the mid-70's European swimwear is on full display at the pool (before it gets tossed aside).