Libido

Four Play

Libido
Directed by
Ernesto Gastaldi & Vittorio Salerno
Italy 1965
Severin Films US Blu Ray

Warning: Some very small spoilers here.

Directed by Ernesto Gastaldi & Vittorio Salerno under Americanised names (as many Italian films of the period were), Libido is an early example of the Italian giallo, released just two years after Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much (reviewed here and generally thought of to be the first giallo movie... although those kind of claims are always a bit iffy, depending on your definition). This one was released a couple of years ago in a wonderful transfer from Severin films and, yeah, it does look stunning.

The film starts off with protagonist Paul, as a child, playing with a kind of music box style Jiminy Cricket toy (I’m guessing Disney didn’t sue or this film would probably be more well known). He lives in a huge house, almost a castle, with his father... who turns out to be a sex maniac killer. Alerted by screams, the child rushes upstairs to see a woman tied to a bed in a room full of angled mirrors, being killed by his sex maniac parent. The camera lovingly dollys around multiple shots of the lady in her struggles as the credits play out over these titles, with a beautiful Carlo Rustichelli score swelling up (which is, alas, not available on any commercial recordings... come on people, seriously? Where’s a CD please?).

The film then jumps 20 years with Paul now in his late 20s and played by Giancarlo Giannini in his debut film (his IMDB listing on his own page starts a year after this film and doesn’t mention it at time of writing, for some reason)... some of my readers may remember him best as a much older actor in the Daniel Craig Bond films Casino Royale (reviewed here) and Quantum Of Solace (reviewed here). He is recovering from the trauma of his childhood and is returning to his ancestral home after 20 years with his guardian, played by none other than Luciano Pigozzi, ‘the Italian Peter Lorre’. They also bring their respective wives played by Dominique Boschero and Mara Maryl. And, as they stay there to check out the place with an eye to selling it once Paul comes into his inheritance a month later, it’s established that the body of Paul’s father was ‘never found’ (a red herring if ever I heard one) and someone is making nightly visitations to the place wearing his father’s boots, smoking his skull pipe and playing with the somewhat triggering Jiminy Cricket toy while sitting in a rocking chair (or is he?). Of course, always disappearing before the increasingly agitated Paul can get a good look at him.

And that’s as much as I’ll tell you of the story other than... I think I must have seen too many of these things. I correctly guessed exactly who was behind the ‘conspiracy’ to gaslight Paul very early on with a shot which deliberately withheld the identity of one character visiting another. So when another conspiracy was pushed later on in the film... I didn’t believe a word of it and I was right to stick to my guns. Although I was also very disappointed in that aspect of the film, for sure... I’d much rather be surprised at the end.

The film is shot in black and white but with rather more mid-range greys than I’m used to in these... which certainly doesn’t deter from the crisp look and the design of the shots. It’s essentially just four people in a big house and grounds sneaking around somewhat silently, with some superb cinematography. As such, it did at times remind me of the atmospheres created in those old Edgar Allan Poe movies that Roger Corman used to direct for AIP.* When Paul takes out his sports car in pursuit of a red herring, the pacing speeds up and the jerky hand held camera used on these shots seems almost at odds with the rest of the movie. There is actually a fifth member of the cast who walks past Paul in one shot at the tail end of that sequence but, even the IMDB doesn’t mention a fifth cast member so I’m assuming this was a cameo by one of the crew... perhaps one of the directors or a producer.

All in all... although I was somewhat let down at how easy the real ‘mystery’ of the movie was to solve, it kinda makes up for it with a nice ‘four way denouement’ which is impressive in its bleak outlook and, I’d have to say I really enjoyed Libido, despite the story. But who watches a giallo for the story anyway, after all? And, surprisingly for an Italian giallo, the acting in this one was superb, especially a rather intense turn by Giannini and a wonderfully ‘dumber than dumb’ blonde performance by Maryl (which was, alas, also a ‘tip off’ to one of the film’s ‘not so hidden’ secrets). It’s everything you’d want from what the giallo would progress into in a few years’ time, with some beautiful mise-en-scène and a wonderful score by Rustichelli. Definitely one to watch if you have an interest in the early works in the genre.

*For the one reader I know who will moan at me for not qualifying that very famous company name it’s... American International Pictures.