Review "Hexen morden um Mitternacht" (La Notte Dei Fiori) 1972 a proto-Suspiria italian Witch-Giallo-Krimi that goes WAY beyond the limits
It would not be too far a stretch to make a point that maybe Argento and Nicolodi were inspired by this one here....
So what's it all about? This movie is so obscure that I actually have to provide you with a synopsis as no-one in the rest of the universe and time seemed to have done so. Ok:
We start off with Macha (Macha Méril) and Jurgen-Chris (Jürgen Drews) walking alongside a road, obviously very much in love with each other. Macha takes Chris' guitar and starts to sing. As Macha feels unwell they are looking for a place to sit/lie down. Now Chris picks up his guitar and starts to sing. He tells a story about Hiram, the agent of a singer called Eva, that is pregnant....
 |
| Jürgen and Macha. What a couple!!! |
Now we switch to a POV shot outside of an old villa and we walk to a greenhouse. Creepy snythezisers and whispering voices (I told you!!) accompany us. Entering the greenhouse, we see blood on some plants and our hand reaches out to some dead body. Still in POV we leave the greenhouse and lock down its door.
 |
| Michaela Pignatelli who was a pshychic medium in real life (!!!!!) aaaah. |
We go to the villa and the cut shows us that we have been Hiram (played by Hiram Keller (Satyricon)) who obviously is walking around quite disturbed. Finally he settles in a heavily decorated living room, just as Michaela (Mikaela Pignatelli (What have they done to our daughters)) steps out the shower, gets naked in his face and wants some entertainment. She's a witch, you know (?)
 |
| The Key Lies under the Soles of her Shoes? |
Obviously Hiram is not up to it and so keeps on wandering through the house, looking for clues to find the killer (like looking beneath the "soles of the shoes" (get me?)). Now he stumbles upon Eva (Dominiqu Sanda (from the exquisit "Sans mobile Apparent" - french krimi/giallo)) who just happens to be lying there in the pillows with a negligé on.
 |
| Eva and the Chandelier |
He interrogates her and she tries to show him that her body is completely innocent, which he has to certify. While Hiram is exploring Eva's body for possible traces of her being the killer, we switch to George (Giorgio Maulini (Lisa and the Devil)) who is gay and so cannot be the killer. They all meet then later that evening where Eva leads them to have kind-of-strange excorcism/erotic games going on during which Michaela faints and George is found impaled on a chandelier (No! I do not make these things up!!).
Hiram obviously suspects Eva (1. She had no alibi as Michaela was unconsciuos and Hiram could not have been it himself and 2. she had sex with Hiram which made her guilty anyway) now to be the root of evil and attacks her. Strangling her, Michaela appears with a big knife and suggests that that would be the preferable method to kill Eva.
 |
| Well, this scene must be somewhere. It certainly is not in the print I saw... |
Meanwhile, heavily wounded George babbles about "them" being witches that want to have a baby..... Hiram leaves half-strangled Eva to aid George. Michaela finishes the job on Eva with her blade.
George dies and we see Michaela and Hiram standing there in agony. And now the big twist: As the angle changes we see that it is actually Chris that stands there with Michaela (admittedly both actors look kind of alike). Confused, he is leaving the site and picks up some flowers.
The movie now kindly informs us via an insert that this would be a fine moment to end the story, but tells us that they got another ace up their sleeve...
Back to singing Chris and Macha at the road. Macha asks Chris what this was all about and who was the killer and WTF?? but Chris sings to her that this is a story about love. Then Macha tells Chris that she just resurrected a sparrow that flew away (???) which Chris vehemently denies. Then Macha lies down to give birth to a baby.
FIN
Eeeehhhhh.
Well.
Gian Vittorio Baldi who directed this movie and was (at that time) the husband of Macha Méril had previously done documentaries and was big with socialist filming. And this is exactly how this looks like. More like one of those completely incomprehensible Czech or Serbian fantasy films about oppressed sexuality in socialist enviroments it is far too self-indulgent. Just imagine a Renato Polselli movie without balls (Addendum: now, knowing that I saw a cut print, I reconsider: The full-length movie obviously was right up there with Polselli). And we still do not know who the victim or killer was but I am sure we have to decode that clever piece of pretentious film-making to find the solution.
Or maybe there is no solution and we just grow as we experience the ever-frustrating path of our consciousness desintegrating while analysing this .... movie (??). [I do think that Macha's baby is by Chris who has it with Macha on Michaela's order...ok???]
Needless to say, German (co)producer Dieter Geissler obviously pulled out of this thing after he had seen the final cut, leaving the movie without any distribution. There is a full movie print under "Hexen morden um Mitternacht" (Witches kill at Midnight) in the German film-archives.
Aside from some festival appearences in Italy, France and the US. the movie is not recorded to have been properly distributed. Which leaves me very, very ... no completely dry with providing you with any marketing material. There simply is none.
I would bet that Argento saw this at the premiere at the prestigious 33rd Venice International Film Festival in 1972 under the title "Notte dei Fiori" (Night of the Flowers) with reportedly even Charlie Chaplin sitting in the audience.
Or maybe later Méril showed it to him and Nicolodi during the shoot of Profondo Rosso as Nicolodi had always expressed here interest in witchcraft.
Pignatelli (a real-life witch) is casted as a character that alludes, even in the make-up, to Anna Salvatore, a star of artistic Rome between the 50s and 60s, a successful painter and passionate about occultism and séances, a subject on which she in fact wrote a singular novel entitled Subliminal TU! and who was supposed to be a lover of Fellini.
The original negative runs at 1:31:08 minutes. The only available version misses some of the singing of Cris and Macha and obviously some hefty stuff (a prolonged shot of the detail of a real gaping vagina, from which the head of the newborn baby emerges, among rivulets of blood and placenta, is impressive. An image, today, that is even unthinkable).as the movie was cert. 18 by the italian (!!!) censors back in 1972 which was reserved for pornography. Just to make things clear: Profondo Rosso (uncut) got a cert. 14 !!!! back then...
Riz Ortolani claims to have written the soundtrack, other sources give credit to Peppino De Luca. It was never released. so we do not know.
Well, well.
Well
I don't know man.
I do think that this is "Cinema Verité" in one of it's purest form. The actors keep their real names. A witch plays a witch. A singer plays a singer. The deleted orgy-scenes were obviously hardcore. The birth is real and full-on. So I am unsure if the "games" that they play aren't real either as Pignatelli's exctasy/fainting sure looks real...which would consequently mean that we have a real witchcraft ritual on film..in the uncut version.
But I still do not get the corpse in the greenhouse...
Runs outside of the competition. So no KRIMIMETER here, but on the SCORA ALLA GIALLO, it hits the mark pretty well. You know what you got yourself into.
 |
| Uuuh I found something!!! Eva, George, Hiram and Michaela vLtR |
 |
| Eva in Bed |
 |
| Haha, der Jürgen!!! Bestes Foto!!! |
 |
| Masha and Husband on the set |
Comments
Post a Comment