‘Is it that my skin is like silk?’
An artist living alone in a rundown cottage struggles to sell his work. Some hippies leave a store mannequin on his property, and he brings it into his studio to work on it. After a while, it seems to turn into a beautiful woman, but is she just a manifestation of his increasingly fractured psyche?
Somewhat muddled Italian-Turkish Giallo from writer-director Renzo Russo that benefits from some good lead performances but little else. The Turkish financing leads to some aerial shots of Istanbul, but otherwise has little impact on proceedings.
John Ward (Farley Granger) is a long way down a slippery slope into alcohol dependence and mental instability. Most of the time, he sulks alone in his cottage studio, working on pictures he struggles to sell to gallery owner Erol Keskin. One night as he lies in a drunken stupor, a mysterious burglar breaks into his home but steals only a photograph of the artist with a young woman.
The next day Granger finds some hippies on his land, but they’re happy to move on after using his grounds as an outside toilet. They leave behind a battered old shop mannequin, which he takes into his studio. Interaction with local prostitute Mala (Ivana Novak) proves unsatisfactory, so Granger begins talking to the dummy instead, and he’s rewarded when it comes to life as the silent, smiling Subservient Doll (Krista Nell).
But this modern-day Pygmalion story takes a strange twist when the drunken Granger makes love to Nell on the rug in front of the fireplace. When he wakes up, she’s transformed into Erika Blanc (‘The Sensuous Doll’), who is anything but quiet and demure. While he’s off trying to sell his pictures, she starts a passionate fling with shotgun-wielding Venantino Venantini and entertains art buyer Aydin Tezel on Granger’s sofa. When he finds out, the artist’s thoughts turn to murder.
This is a strange, ambiguous piece that struggles to establish a coherent, consistent narrative. There is nothing wrong with non-linear storytelling, of course, but with events being further complicated by Granger’s deteriorating mental condition, it’s hard for the audience to get invested in the drama. On reflection, the inclusion of Nell’s character is a particular head-scratcher with no apparent payoff other than to demonstrate Granger’s fragile grip on reality.
The second act emerges as an extended flashback, triggered by the painter’s delusion of the mannequin coming to life. Granger and Blanc’s behaviour strongly suggests a long-term relationship, and she interacts with other characters when he is absent. However, this assumption is called into question by a couple of late twists, and the scenario is never entirely resolved.
The good news is that Granger and Blanc are both excellent. Neither of their characters is particularly complex, but both manage to exploit every nuance that Russo’s script can offer. The strong inference is that the Granger’s artist is impotent, which has driven him to the bottle and her to other men. He gives a fine, sensitive performance, hinting strongly at times at the good man who is still buried beneath the booze and the torment. Blanc shows us a woman who struggles to resist her impulses but can’t overcome her physical needs and the resentment she feels toward Granger. Later on, she becomes an active sexual predator as her repressions dissipate.
Unfortunately, apart from their work, the film has little to recommend it. Russo’s handling of his material lacks any real imagination and drive. These are significant problems when your story doesn’t have enough development to fill even a scant 78-minute running time. The project would probably work far better as an episode of a TV anthology rather than a full-blown feature.
Russo doesn’t try to play on audience sympathies when he presents his broken characters, which is admirable. However, more context, or past character history, might have helped to alleviate the effort that the audience has to make with such an ambiguous set of circumstances. The lack of information does make for a frustrating experience, especially on first viewing.
The film was unsuccessful, and Russo never appears to have directed again. It was his first film in eight years, and, prior to this, he seems to have worked in the adult film market with titles like ‘The Kinky Darlings/Per una valigia piena di donne’ (1964) and ‘Europa: Operazione Strip-tease’ (1964) on his résumé. There is little biographical information on him and this, his most notable project, is still a little bit of an obscurity. Some sources even misidentify actor Tezel as a separate performer called ‘Aydin Terzel’.
Granger was a Hollywood star who failed to make a significant impact the first time around before re-signing with movie producer Samuel Goldwyn after the delayed release of Nicholas Ray’s low-budget but critically acclaimed ‘They Live By Night’ (1948). Several prestige projects followed, including two appearances for Alfred Hitchcock in ‘Rope’ (1948) and ‘Strangers On A Train’ (1950), the latter being the role for which he is best remembered today. Although the remainder of the decade found him regularly working in the big-budget arena, leading man status was never assured. On those occasions when he did achieve it, he was usually billed below his leading ladies, such as Alida Valli in Luchino Visconti’s ‘Senso’ (1954), his first brush with European cinema. By the early 1970s, he was living in Italy, his work in America generally confined to the theatre and the small screen.
Blanc was born in Lombardy as Enrica Bianchi Colombatto and has enjoyed a long and successful career in film and television, which continues to this day. She began with small parts in Eurospy features, such as ‘Espionage in Lisbon/Misión Lisboa’ (1965), before her obvious abilities led to more featured supporting roles in similar films such as ‘Spies Kill Silently/Le spie uccidono in silenzio’ (1966) and early Giallo ‘The Third Eye/Il terzo occhio’ (1966). Cult director Mario Bava cast her as the female lead in his classic ‘Kill, Baby… Kill!/Operazione paura’ (1966) that same year, and Blanc was on her way to a prominent cult movie career that included more horror, ‘Devil’s Nightmare/La plus longue nuit du diable’ (1971) and Gialli such as ‘So Sweet… So Perverse/Così dolce… così perversa’ (1969) and ‘The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave/La notte che Evelyn uscì dalla tomba’ (1971). There were also further spy adventures, comedies, crime pictures, and Spaghetti Westerns like ‘Vengeance is My Forgiveness/La vendetta è il mio perdono’ (1968) and ‘Sartana’s Here… Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin/C’è Sartana… vendi la pistola e comprati la bara!’ (1970). After the 1970s, she mainly moved into television but won the award for Best Supporting Actress for ‘Sacred Heart/Cuore sacro’ (2005) at the Flaiano Film Festival.
The two leads elevate the material as far as it will go, but script limitations drag the movie down.
Mark David Welsh 