Body Puzzle (1992)/Il Cappotto (aka The Overcoat/1952)/Murder Obsession (1981)/Venga
a Prendere il Caffe… da Noi (aka Come
Have Coffee With Us/1970/Raro Video DVDs)
Picture: C+ Sound: C+/C+/C/C Extras: C/B-/C/C+ Films: C/C+/C/C+
Raro
Video has been releasing one of the most underrated series of foreign film
releases on DVD, pretty much from Italy and though I have not liked
every single film, they have all been interesting even when they did not
work. It has previously included a few I
had not seen in decades and some of those in versions that were censored in the
U.S., but they have made great efforts to issue their films in the best
possible versions available and the density gives one a deeper look at Italian
film all too rare in the U.S. save for some Horror pictures, international
classics and rare hits that get awards-season attention.
Lamberto
Bava’s Body Puzzle (1992) is the
newest of the four new DVDs released, as well as among the newest Raro has
issued to date. A latter-day giallo
without much of that cycle’s style, but it has some very bloody moments and
becomes unintentionally funny as the killer attacks listening to his Walkman to
the classical music staple Night on Bald
Mountain (not the Saturday Night
Fever disco version, but if that had been the case, this would have been a
howler) and is something we have seen before (the killer assassin in the 1987
Bond film The Living Daylights
listens to The Pretenders (in a song recorded especially for the film) before
strangling them or the like), so this becomes a one-joke film. Too bad it does not have enough ironic
distance. Still, it is a curio and some
scenes work. It is a shame it is not
more effective overall.
Alberto
Lattuada’s Il Cappotto (aka The Overcoat from 1952) is considered a
classic and is more of an independent Sicilian production that your usual
mainstream Italian comedy. Considered a
classic by some, I may not have been as impressed, but I liked the themes and
ideas, though I bet I missed some Italian items simply by not being from Italy. In it, Renato Rascel is a poor clerk who
wants to have a better life, move up ion society and have a more exciting
future. In postwar Italy, he
zeroes in on the one item that could be just the ticket: a fancy overcoat made
like few others that makes him look great, gives him respect, cache, class and
brings him into contact with the kinds of people who can help bring about his
plans for a more exciting future to fruition.
However,
he has some obstacles and getting the money to have it tailor-made, but he has
to find the exact right one and then, he could be on his way. The darkest joke here is about Italian
Fascism and the sick myth invented by fascist theory that no matter your body,
if you had the right (maybe with a capital ‘R’) clothing, it would make you
stronger, more immortal and more impervious to a tough life. That fashion itself is a ticket to an
imagined utopia and no doubt that had to be on the minds of the original
Italian audiences seeing this film for the first time.
I like
that the film never allows our protagonist to let go of his obsession and it
makes him the target of more ridicule, vulnerability and insanity that if he
had just stayed humble and quiet, but he decides such a coat with complete his
life and the ramifications are taken to their ultimate extreme. It is amusing, but it also comes across like
a sitcom at times, though always seems Italian all the way. Maybe the Sicilian angle makes the film’s
darker side work since it is a discourse that is harder-edged and deals with
reality in a more brutal fashion. Now
you can see for yourself.
Our other
thriller here is Riccardo Freda’s Murder
Obsession (1981) has a film actor (played by Stefano Patrizi) going home to
his mother’s mansion only to find something very different going on. He has a dark secret, but it will be more
than just the return of the repressed when people start turning up dead,
ritualistically killed and there is the hint that something supernatural is
going on. This also has some good
moments, but it is uneven and the pay-off is weak. Still, like Puzzle, it is at least ambitious.
Our final
film is also a comedy by Alberto Lattuada, but Venga a Prendere il Caffé… da Noi (aka Come Have Coffee With Us) was made much later on, yet it also has
his sense of a goofy guy getting himself into more trouble due to character
flaws than anything else, but since the man has nothing to do and several
people here seem sexually oppressed, wacky things are about to happen. The Church figures in this comedy too, but
much more directly, yet the freedoms the screen offered at this time allow all
to go further, yet I noticed all the women in one way or another are unusually
matriarchal and in some way, suffocatingly so, even when they are young and
themselves having their own sexuality as no longer repressible.
The
acting is again good and some of this is amusing as well, but it was also
predictable, though not in a sitcom way this time. It was rather predictable too, but even in
this, the ending was bolder, sadder and Lattuada does manage in his script to
go all the way (no pun implied) in the story he tells. I also very much liked the look for the film
the most of the four here, making all the more of a pleasure to watch.
The anamorphically
enhanced 1.66 X 1 image on Puzzle
and Caffé, along with the
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Murder
and even restored 1.33 X 1 black and white image on Overcoat are about even, but for different reasons and with
different flaws. Puzzle (again the newest film here) has some color issues, but
makes it up with definition, Caffé
has the best color of the three color releases here but some softness and minor
flaws hold it back, Murder has
softness and flaws but an appropriate style that fits the film in place of
clarity/fidelity and Overcoat is
about as restored as a film of its time could be. The print still has flaws, but the obviously
extensive work has made this more watchable than many films of its time and is
to be commended. All the films have
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sound with the usual practice of adding the
dialogue after filming, more obvious in some of the films than others. Remarkably, Overcoat sounds a bit better (despite its age and the limited
fidelity of the older sound source) than Murder
or Caffé, which sound more
compressed too often and choppy in the dubbing.
Extras in
all four release include a nicely illustrated booklet on the film including
informative text, while Overcoat
adds the best extras including a feature-length audio commentary track (to be
heard after seeing the film) by film historians Flavio de Bernardinis &
Gabrielle Lucantonio and an interview with writer and sometimes director Angelo
Pasquini for the best extras of the four, S. Stivaletti (a friend of Freda and
sometimes director himself) is interviewed on Murder and Caffé adds an
on camera interview with film historian Adriano Apra.
- Nicholas Sheffo
