"Well, hello." "Welcome to the audio commentary for the film The Killer Reserved Nine Seats." "My name is Marcus Stiglegger." "Some of you will know me from my column in [the German magazine] "Deadline" or from other audio commentaries released by the outstanding label Camera Obscura and maybe even from my book "Terrorkino", who knows?" "Well, I got me some reinforcement this time." "Some of you might expect Christian Keßler but this time around, Christian Keßler will be represented as the author of the booklet." "So we have another personality here:" "The Mighty Kai Naumann." "Maybe you could give some information about you, Kai..." " ...since nobody will know you..." " Um, I'm not so sure about that but "Mighty" is dead on." "I'm a film and literature scholar at the University of Siegen at which we used to be colleagues for quite some time, Marcus." " Until I lost my job there..." " Yep." "All nice things must end some day, but this film is only just beginning." "And I will say something about it now." "We see something interesting right now during the title sequence:" "All important characters that will appear in the movie get a short introduction." "What's striking is the fact that the credits or rather the actors' names are superimposed when the corresponding character is in the frame." "That reminds me a little of credit sequences on or rather credit sequences of TV series, where that's done quite often." "In the crudest case with a stupid freeze frame at the end to make absolutely sure that the viewer understands to whom the name belongs." "Since we have quite a lot of characters here, ...nine of them, that is, or rather ten, since one more is actually present here, ...it makes things pretty clear and briefs us so we don't lose the thread." "An idiosyncratic thing that catches the eye here is that we only hear music." "We see people talking but everything is only accompanied by music." "And the music is rather buoyant." "Carlo Savina is credited as composer here." "He comes from the team surrounding Nino Rota." "Nino Rota is of course famous for his score for The Godfather." "The music is rather buoyant, like I said." "Today we'd say it has an easy listening touch or a lounge music character." "It might remind you a little more of sex flicks from the 70s." " Yes, indeed." " Not so much of a thriller or, as in this case, of a thriller that touches or even crosses the line to the horror genre." "But we will talk about this later on." " Yes..." " What?" "Yes, please." "No, excuse me." "Here you can already see the location, that crucial building." "That building is rather elementary and has its very own character." "And the film stands in the tradition especially of later films, ...such as Opera by Dario Argento, ...that take place in performance locales such as theaters and thus reflect in a certain sense their own performativeness." "That theatrical and staged character, that is." "The "staging" has multiple meanings here since the killer essentially staged this situation to enable himself to kill off his victims." "And that's just one level since there's also this ever-present impulse that these people really want to act that this theater-situation essentially seduces them to perform something in the classical sense." "This location itself is also charged with that tradition of acting." "Absolutely." "And we're about to see that this whole place, ...apart from the actual stage area, ...has been covered with a certain patina over time." "There are locations where everything is very decayed where you could easily lose your orientation." "Which can be - also in the good old Dario-Argento-sense since you've just mentioned Opera, ...interpreted as rooms of the human interior life or the subconscious if you want to read it in a psychoanalytic way." "It's still early in the movie but later on we'll see scenes where that is the case." "Since we have here, as you said correctly, a staging within a staging, ...basically a diegetic staging within the film, ...we might possibly even put the movie on the level of a meta-film." " We might have to discuss that." " "Meta" means "superordinated"." "And a meta-film is a movie that addresses its own mechanisms or the traditions in which it stands." "This, I think, plays a frequent role in the giallo genre, ...that its own "stageyness" is often put on display." "This can be seen especially in films by Dario Argento, of course, ...such as Four Flies on Grey Velvet and Profondo Rosso- ...when the staging or mise-en-scène is clearly indicated." "And here they even go one step further since you can see the stage itself." "This movie has, by the way, another companion piece that was produced later:" "Stagefright, the German title is Aquarius, by Michele Soavi." "That's another movie where we can see a limited number of people in the more or less confined terrain of a theater." "But there are not only Italian films that were made in that fashion:" "The Flesh and Blood Show by Pete Walker is a British film from the 70s which also has this character." "What's interesting about that film is that everything turns out to be faked." "It's ultimately an amicable resolution that the people are actually not dead." "That doesn't apply to neither Stagefright nor this film here." " Right." " Fortunately, of course." "Fortunately, yes." "We've just been granted a brief glimpse into the setting, ...everything's still lighted a little diffusely though." "And what's striking is this long carpet that is of course not unusual for a theater setting but which could be interpreted, in the context of a giallo, as a prolepsis." "Like some sort of blood trail that leads into the hall, if you will." " Explain "prolepsis"." " Okay..." "Well, we do have a very intelligent and well-read audience but of course I'll gladly explain it." ""Prolepsis" means "anticipation" or "flash-forward"." "Due to its red color, this carpet basically stigmatizes these characters." "Essentially, they're already walking on a trail of blood." " A nice metaphor." " A metaphor, right." "It could be read this way." "It's present in the picture and can thus be interpreted that way." "Another thing is striking and relatively typical:" "We're dealing here with a film from 1974, right?" "It was released in the heyday of the giallo thriller." "And what's interesting is that the movies that are well-known today films like Tenebre and such, were made during the genre's late phase." "Like New York Ripper and so on." "They hold a special status in that genre while the majority of the gialli with a classic structure..." " ...were made in the period from '68 to '75." " Absolutely." " In the actual heyday of the giallo." " Exactly." "So this is a film that was produced during exactly that phase and can therefore be taken especially seriously because if you can say that it already reflects its own mechanisms you have to say that it did so at a very early point in time." " Totally." " Whereas Argento's films..." " ...did this relatively late." " Absolutely." "In his day, with The Cat o'Nine Tails and so on, Argento was still very affirmative and totally fulfilled these mechanisms initially." "Absolutely, yes." "But only one year later, Profondo Rosso came out which, at least in the beginning was already steering, in a way, towards meta-reflexism." "That séance-sequence in the theater, I mean." "That's right!" "That's a scene - clue to the theater curtain and the location, ...where we very distinctly have this exhibited staging." "Well, please forgive me for talking about Argento from time to time but I noticed you do that just as often as I do." " Yes, you can't escape it." " It's an occupational illness." "I've been doing works on Argento for several years now so whenever I watch a giallo, the maestro is always quite present." " Yes." " Yes." "We should talk about this here for a moment:" "There is one exposed character, we just saw him, ...who seems quite mysterious and thus will be called the "Mystery Man" over the course of this commentary." "We can see him right here." "We call this character "Mystery Man" as a reference to the film Lost Highway by David Lynch, of course." "I wouldn't go so far and say that Lynch's Lost Highway was inspired by this film." "I assume that David Lynch has not seen this movie." " We don't know." " I hope he catches up on it, though since Camera Obscura is present all over the world." " He now has the chance to do so." " Right." "He now has the chance." " Finally." " And thanks to the English subtitles..." " ...he can even understand our commentary." " He can do that as well." " This is for you, David." " Mr. Lynch, we love you." " May he finally make another movie." " Well, he doesn't get any money to do so." " Yes, we digress." " Yes, right." "The Mystery Man - so we also have a mysterious character here the strange 10th protagonist who clue to his salient dandy-like attire..." " ...occupies a special position..." " Explain "dandy"." "A dandy is a style that played a special role in the late 18th and early 19th-century." "It's a person who lived for his spleens, his strange interests and who doesn't have to worry about existential things." "Basically a man living a life of luxury..." " ...who only lives for his own pleasures." " Like Alex in A Clockwork Orange." "Exactly." "Characters like that who don't have a daily working life and who display their eccentricity by behaving dandy-like, ...also expressed through their clothing." "In the 60s, especially thanks to the "Swinging London" there was this trend of preserving the dandy for the modern age with the "Carnaby-Street-Style"." "Several fashion designers established themselves back then in Carnaby Street, ...one of them who's still well-known is Ben Sherman, by the way, ...who transformed fashion influences from all over the world into a very colorful, but today, well, somewhat unintentionally funny form which would be described as "hippie-chic" nowadays." "And the Mystery Man here is wearing such a jacket which was called a "nehru-jacket" as I've recently learned, ...from our label boss, by the way." " Greetings, by the way." " Yes, greetings." "Which means, this jacket, for example signifies his singular position, well, his dandy-position a little." "Also this big amulet with the jewel." "It actually makes him look like some kind of theater magician." " Absolutely." " Here." "It separates him visually from the others because otherwise, considering his hairdo, he fits the group pretty well." "But his gear..." "Whereas the others also... well..." "Well, that's the next point." "He's a little..." " Well, this also seems to be a velvet jacket." " Nice and soft..." "You could say, of course, that this is a group of people, ...which we can gather from their conversations, ...who just came from a party." "Which means they all are a little dolled up." "A little extravagantly, with the ladies wearing furs and so on." "All of these things show us that we're dealing here with a privileged class." "These are people who are wealthy who are able to follow their own special interests..." " ...and also embody a certain decadency." " Absolutely." "Right." "Here we have Howard Ross." "Maybe we should say something about him." "I'm very familiar with Howard Ross from watching New York Ripper where he plays a potential culprit who at one time also has sex with a female protagonist, ...if you can even speak of female protagonists in that film," "...and who has this badly faked mutilated hand." " Oh, yes, yes, right." " He has this SM-sex-scene." "That film shouldn't be watched in HD." "To get back to the theater for a moment:" "If we define the theater as an "art space", which it actually is, ...it gains, of course, in the context of this somewhat decadent group here also a slightly negative connotation." "The theater is basically presented as a space for the elite that's only accessible to a special group of people who indulge in art, so to say." " Which also has that dandy..." " And not only in art, as we can see." "Not only in art, right." "And it's nicely staged with that mirror." "This mise-en-scene with the mirror reflects what you just said." "That it's a space of reflection, of mirror images." "The world in the mirror is on the one hand a reflection but on the other an inverted world, a mirror-inverted world which is completely immaterial, which doesn't have substance since the mirror image is an illusion." "And the idea of an illusion is very important in a mise-en-scène with mirrors." "It also needs to be mentioned that a mirror image also has this "doppelganger character" and the doppelganger is, ever since the dark romanticism of the 18th and 19th century, a synonym for one's own death." "So when you encounter your doppelganger, you encounter your own death and if you look into a mirror, you can see your doppelganger..." " ...and thus your own death." " Taking all that into account this sure is staged relatively appealingly and intelligently, isn't it?" " That needs to be said." " Yes." "Another thing springs to mind:" "There's a quote by the great Jean Cocteau, ...the French multimedia artist who's also shot famous films like The Blood of a Poet, ...which goes "Film watches Death do his work"." "And the giallo as a genre takes this extremely literally." "Absolutely." "Now right here we could say that "Film watches life do its work"..." " In its most beautiful form." " In its most beautiful form." "However, sexuality and death are heavily linked in the giallo." "You could speak of a "Thanateros-genre":" "Eros and Thanatos entwined like these characters here." " Entwined like a Laocoön group." " Absolutely." "Exactly like that." "And here's another fascinating scene:" "They are entering the costume stock now..." " ...where we see that mannequin..." " Which is very obviously alive." " Which is very obviously real." " I mean, you can see it." "And still is." "And... yes." "There's this permanent intermingling of illusion and reality going on." "That blurring of boundaries is very important here." "And that character symbolizes the uncanny, of course since it should actually be a mannequin." "In this case it's alive while the doll as such, in the psychoanalytic sense is in actual fact a lifeless, anthropomorphic, humanoid body that gains a soulfulness through the humanization." "By "anthropomorphic" Mr. Naumann meant "humanlike"." "That's what I meant, yes." "And the "uncanny" is a very important term which we might have to talk about some more since the uncanny is a basic principle of this film's mise-en-scene." "I'd like to hint at this point at the book of a Swiss colleague I hold in high regard:" "Johannes Binotto's "Tat/Ort" ["Crime/Scene"] which is incidentally lying right here." " He actually prepared something." " Yes, I placed something here." ""The uncanny and its place in culture."" "In this book he indeed starts out from psychoanalytic concepts and defines via reference to our friends Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft..." " Our personal friends..." " Fritz Lang and Dario Argento..." " Oh my." " Oh my he defines what rooms can be uncanny which he then labels "Crime/Scenes"." "Meaning "scenes/places" that themselves become perpetrators." " Oh, interesting." " And that's exactly the case right here." "That means that this world of appearances and masks and traps is itself a "crime/scene" as opposed to a personified perpetrator." "And he proves this on the basis of wonderful examples like that the mirrored space is not only present in the mirror image but is also depicted in movies such as Secret Beyond the Door by Fritz Lang." ""The secret behind the door" is a room which is the identical counterpart of another room in the house and that's the uncanny." "So the same thing exists twice, which raises the question "why is that so?"." "Something new comes into existence." ""Das Unheimliche" [German for "the uncanny"] is derived from "heimelig" ["homely"] which is something where you feel comfortable hence "das Unheimliche" ["not homely"] is the total opposite of that." "Here the room itself, as we can see right now, ...with all its elements like this thing which," " ...why is that hanging there anyway?" " In case you want to kill someone." "That's right... because right now it doesn't make much sense to me." " Why was that beam up there?" " It was just hanging around." " And just on one rope, unsecured..." " It was a little negligent." " Yeah, yeah." " These guys should be sued." "Yes." "Well, the theater hadn't been visited for a long time." " They said so previously." " Yes, true." "So this is a room that has been empty for a long time and seems to have cultivated a life on its own because of that." "That's very important." "So we also have a haunted house motif here." "Absolutely, yes." "The uncanny building that is burdened by the past." "Yes, exactly." "The house also seems to be alive in some way." "Which can be verified in the picture, of course:" "The color red can be seen frequently and red, of course, always embodies something interior, organic." "That can't be denied." "And as we will see, the house has many corridors and, well, openings through which you can watch other people." "Over the course of the movie, the house develops into its own character that, together with the other characters, can be further explored by the viewer." "That's beautifully done." "And here, the mirror again." "There's a very interesting "view dramaturgy" coming up." "Because she looks in our direction, or rather the direction of..." "Jesus, that's complicated." " Start afresh." " You explain it, Marcus." "Well, the viewer will know what I mean." "In any case, we have two views here which actually go in two different directions..." " ...but clue to the mirror they meet again." " Exactly." "There are always several lines of sight in a mise-en-scène between the camera and the looked-at object." "And we as the viewers are forced to occupy the camera's view." "Now the view passes indirectly over the mirror." "The view runs over the mirror and the reflection." "That was a totally genius cut there!" "With the movement of the door, the room seems to shift and he cut with that." "That's a very nice, basically invisible cut..." " ...which we don't really notice." " Absolutely." "And he always stays with this mirrored room and in there we now see the other character enter." " That's truly brilliantly done." " Well, it's a Bennati." "Yes, tell us something about him while I watch the scene in the meantime." "Well, unfortunately, there's not that much to say about Giuseppe Bennati." " The director of photography, right?" " Um, nope, the director..." " The director of photography..." " We have to do this again now!" " What?" " No." "The director of photography whose name is?" " I forgot it..." " Nobody knows that." "Never mind." "But there must have been one because otherwise we wouldn't see anything." " Anyway, Giuseppe Bennati..." " I will look that up now." "Yes, do that." "Alright, the director, Giuseppe Bennati doesn't have that many films in his filmography." "Apart from this film - which should at least since the purchase of the DVD or Blu-ray be familiar to everybody - there's one more worth mentioning by the title La Mina aka The Mine from 1957." "And, well, what caught my eye there is that he worked together with Dario Argento's editor on that:" "Franco Fraticelli, who, very revealingly, stopped working for Argento after Opera, ...right after the phase that many fans regard as the end of Argento's major work." " Yes." " Yes..." "Apart from that, Bennati shot many documentaries and shorts in post-war Italy." "Then several genre films, also gialli like this film here which was actually his last film, in 1974." "Since Bennati died in 2006, there was a long dry spell for, um, Bennati fans." " Should they exist." " If they exist out there, right?" " Yes." " Nothing came after that." "I just remembered, by the way, that Giuseppe Aquari was the director of photography." " You do have a good memory." " Yes, well, sometimes..." " ...you mix things up." " Sure, you have to think of so many things." "Yes..." "Yes, these are two important names." "No..." "Well, we have to say it's interesting that, ...especially in the Italian genre cinema, ...there are people who had been active for a long time before in the Italian cinema and went through lots of different phases." "Many people don't know, for example that Lucio Fulci has actually produced the major part of his oeuvre before his successful and well-known films." "He's directed sex comedies and things in the 50s and 60s which have totally faded into obscurity." "That's something that also holds true for this director." "That he had been active for a long time, also in very different areas and that this is basically his late work, if you will." " Even though he was still rather young." " He was indeed in his early fifties, so... yes." "Yes, but after this it was all over." "And I don't know what he was up to in the meantime." " I'm terribly sorry." " Might have opened an olive shop." "Possibly." "Or a men's fashion store in Wuppertal or something." " Or a sausage stand." " A currywurst stand." "There is a lot to say about the actors, though." "As you said before, they've all been in the game for a while at that point." "It's tough to pick a main character here." "In the relevant specialized literature the role of Vivian usually gets emphasized since, and I will spoil this now..." " Yes, spoiler." " Spoiler, yes." "But I think everybody knows the film by now if they're listening to the commentary." "She's the only one who will survive, which makes her the main character here since she goes through a transformation over the course of the film." "In any case, she's played by Rosanna Schiaffino who was in many other genre films as well." "I could mention a few of them:" "The Heroes by Duccio Tessari with Rod Steiger." "Or The Witch in Love by Damiano Damiani La strega in amore is the original title." "She also was in Castellari's Das Pferd kam ohne Socken [German title of Hector the Mighty meaning "The Horse Came Without Socks"]." "What was it thinking?" "Um, from 1972." "She was in that too." " A comedy." "And the others..." " The forgotten film of Castellari." "Right." "Unjustly so..." "Almost all of the other actors were also very active in genre productions." "We can get back to them from time to time over the course of the commentary." "The Mystery Man, for example, who's played by Eduardo Filipone was also in Pasolini's Arabian Nights which is not... well, which is in the broadest sense also a genre work." "Yes, Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" as it's called was Pasolini's venture into the commercial Italian cinema of that time by creating a mixture of an episodic structure similar to the mondo films, along with the depiction of foreign cultures and times," "...and the conventionalized portrayal of sex which dealt more or less openly, foremost, with nudity." "And that was actually perceived as genuine genre cinema." "And it got criticized as some sort of decadency by Pasolini." "But what you can take from that, and that's interesting is that the production designer of this film, The Killer Reserved Nine Seats has later on, and now I'm wondering..." "it actually wasn't later but previously, ...had previously worked on Luchino Visconti's Ludwig starring Helmut Berger and Romy Schneider." " Wasn't that two years before?" " It was two years before." "One of the qualities we have here, right next to the cinematography is clearly the production design." "Namely this theatricality which we see in the picture right now this emphasized theatricality where the stage scenography along with this world of appearances which it represents oftentimes transitions seamlessly into the characters' reality." "And that's very obviously also the work of the production designer." "Absolutely, yes." "Especially since this character here," " ...what's her name in the film?" "Kim!" " Is that Janet Agren?" "Yes, that's Janet Agren, and in the movie her name's Kim." "We saw her previously with the other party people when they arrived and when I first saw the movie I really needed a moment to understand that she really gives a performance here." "That the others are actually watching her, mesmerized." "We're watching the end scene of "Romeo and Juliet" here the death scene at the end and you can't put it into pictures any better than that, ...fiction will become reality in a moment." "It's what we've said several times before:" "This movie plays with the mechanisms of art, theater, performativeness, ...of performance in general, ...and this subject matter is very obviously put into pictures here." " Did she stab herself now?" " I think so." "Ah, yes, I see it now." "She gets killed at the same time from behind now, right?" "Janet Agren was, by the way, a Swedish photo model but had a career first and foremost in Italian cinema and many people will know her from City of the Living Dead." "Isn't she the one who vomits the intestines?" "I... will have to take a look behind me..." "to the experts, but they don't know either." " Wait a minute, we are the experts." " Oh, we are the experts!" " The spectators don't know either." " They don't know either..." " Now we wasted that joker." " Oh, now all we can do is call Mr. Keßler." " Right, the telephone's right here." " But I think it was her." "It was her." "And here we see the killer with the mask running away." " The mask is incredibly ugly." " Yes, it looks so disgusting." "In a wonderful review I read it looks like Cameron Mitchell..." " ...in..." " That's bad enough!" "...in Blood and Black Lace." "But didn't someone wear a stocking mask in that?" " Yes, I think so." " Cameron Mitchell with a stocking mask." "I think the killer here looks a little like the killer in Frenzy." " Oh yes, the red-haired guy." " Yes." " Wasn't his name Barry Fraser or something?" " I don't know." " Barry Foster, I think." " Barry Foster." " That's what he looks like." "Like Barry Foster." " Um, but he has these bushy eyebrows." " It's terrible!" "A horrible mask." " A mixture of Theo Waigel und Barry Foster." "Yes, exactly." "In any case, it's really scary." "I really find it a little creepy, I must say." "If we've now made a mistake, we'll get it stuck in our faces later on..." " ...by attentive..." " ...by whom?" "There are two or three people who actually listen to our commentaries..." " I see..." "People listen to this." " These guys just listen to it to find errors and complain about them in forums." "Ah, yes." "Well, we gave them some footage now." "And there's more to follow, I can tell you that." "Um... yes, did you want to say something?" " No, I was finished." " Then I'll say something." "Oh, we're zooming on exactly the actress I wanted to talk about." "That's Lynn..." "What's the name?" "Davenant is her family name?" "I can't read today, as you know." " Lynn Davenant." "Or is it [Davenah]?" " Lynn Davenant." "Since we were talking about Janet Agren... who was, apart from City of the Living Dead..." " ...also in Umberto Lenzi's Eaten Alive." " Yes, and her too." "Right." "She plays her sister, if I remember correctly." " You mean the dark-haired one, right?" " No, the red-haired one." "Lynn." " Who's not in the frame right now." " The daughter of Patrick Davenant." " I feel like..." " The old guy." "The old guy, who doesn't look that old, actually." "It's like in Lindenstraße [German soap opera] right now, ...everybody is sleeping with everybody." "Yes." "Which is also the problem in this house, as we will see later." "In any case, these two were also in Mangiati vivi!" ", which means Eaten Alive." " Lebendig gefressen." " Lebendig gefressen in German." "They play sisters but don't resemble each other at all." "I just wanted to say that." "Now it happened." "This is a turning point in the movie as they're now completely isolated from the outside world and the doors are locked." " And there's only one door." " Yes." "As it's usually the case in theaters..." "Yes, um..." "Oh, "the telephone is also broken"." "In just one scene they checked off all possibilities of rescue." " Right, and the sign back there reads "Exit"." " Maybe someone should go there." " Nobody got that idea." " Right." "Yes, they're Italians, they don't speak English." "As I know from sorrowful experiences." "I find this whole thing also has a touch of Phantom of the Opera, right?" "Yes, that's right." "Especially clue to that ugly mask." " That's true." "Whereas I find this uglier..." " I think you're right that..." " You find these people uglier than the mask?" " No!" "I find this mask here uglier than the one in Phantom of the Opera." "In which version?" "In the classic version..." "the Andrew Lloyd Webber version." " I have to banish you from the room." " Yes, please." "Well, the masking with the cloak..." " ...always has this..." " The cape." "Right, the cape, which refers to this Shakespearian, classic theater look." "Yes, and these doors..." "That struck me earlier." "Here you can see it, for example." "They seem unnaturally big." "That reminds a lot of The Trial by Orson Welles, and things like that." "It gives the film a Kafkaesque touch - just to throw a real heavy word in here." " Yes." " Um, well..." "The building thereby gains a surrealistic... surreal..." " A surreal character." " ...a surreal character." "This has to be differentiated:" ""Surrealistic" means that something can be attributed to the Surrealist movement which applies to very few films." "Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou and The Golden Age are surrealistic films whereas later films like the ones by Jodorowsky and Lynch which are often labeled as surrealistic, are actually surreal." "They're working with surreal iconography with pictorial worlds that seem dreamlike and are drawing from the subconscious." "And that's what you meant." "The surreal element here is that the doors are larger than life-sized making the people look shrunk and therefore like they were catapulted out of their everyday life." "It's a world out of the ordinary." "And it is..." "Here they're walking on the red carpet again." "It is a world that's the "last stage", as they say, for all of them." "And that double meaning of "stage" here is very beautiful." "Yes, for sure." "And here they once again gather in the auditorium in front of the stage." " That's a great scene, by the way." " Yes, it's great." " It has a touch of Mario Bava." " Absolutely." "We should have mentioned Mario Bava - well, Blood and Black Lace is his film, ...way earlier since he was much more around at that time." "Argento at that time, one has to say, made films on the same level as this one while Mario Bava was actually the pioneer." "And there's also this gothic horror touch, which is particularly present in this scene." "Due to these blowing curtains for instance." "When it comes to this Italian gothic style, Bava's name has to be mentioned while Argento continued and also perfected it in a certain sense." "Suspiria and Inferno would probably be the most famous examples for that." "The mise-en-scene of the stage here is an image that seems a little like Suspiria." " Totally." " Suspiria is set in a ballet school and ballet is of course a stage discipline." "If you look at Suspiria's wide shots and production design it also has this stage-like feel." "Especially at the end, when the house explodes and burns, and so on." "And Inferno, as the next step after Suspiria basically only takes place in the mind, you could say." "The people there are no longer moving in identifiable rooms anymore but in rooms that seem to lead from one to the next completely associatively." "And this right here is also a disintegration of space by only showing these veils." "That means everything concrete disappears, everything material dissolves." "And these veils are moved by something intangible, the wind in this case." ""Where's the wind coming from?", one might ask now." "So that indeed bears a strong reference to inferno." "And later on, we will even see a scene which somewhat anticipates a sequence that can be seen in Inferno." "We will talk about that then." "The veil also has - if we lift the movie on that frequently mentioned meta-level again, ...yet another meaning:" "In art theory and thus also in film theory there's the term "velum" that also means "veil"." "It's an invisible membrane which essentially separates the auditorium from the action space of the artwork." "In theater that's easy to identify:" "It's the curtain, most of the time, at least." "It's a visible boundary." "In film, however, it's more difficult." "Because what's film anyway?" "It's light reflexes on a screen." "So you could regard the screen as a velum, a veil." "It's also difficult with paintings since the paint is applied to the canvas, ...so where's the boundary there between art space and reality space?" "I think you can really make this connection, ...clue to this really long depiction of the curtains which is truly beautifully shot with the wind and all, ...if you already consider this film as being a little self-reflexive." "Yes." "Yes, definitely." "It's interesting that the characters have to time and time again reassure themselves of their own position in this situation." "Which means, they constantly discuss this with the others." "This makes the film relatively complicated since it adds new elements and puzzle pieces all the time." " I'm glad that not only I feel that way." " Yes." "I think so too." "If you've seen the film only once so far, you'll probably share our experience that it's hard to fully comprehend all motivations and every stimulus and that's made more difficult in these scenes." "The characters do reflect their position but it's not that illuminating in the end." "Yes." "Yes, exactly." "Oftentimes they act, which is not unusual for this genre, ...as a pure projection surface for the viewer." "It is a try to give the protagonists more character, more flesh on the bones but ultimately they remain very cut and dried." "In terms of how the viewer pigeonholes these characters, ...except for a few exceptions like "I like him", "I don't like him" "he stays unsympathetic from the start", "he's a little impenetrable", and so on," "...there's not a very big development." "That's not untypical for this kind of film, though." "A complex character-painting is more of a rare occurrence." "I think that's very important." "The characters reflect our position as the viewer." "Which means they also reflect what we could or should feel." "So when she approaches him now, telling him she's scared then that's something the mise-en-scene also demands from us." "The uncertainty the viewer experiences is addressed here in this dialogue." "Which makes her the main protagonist." "Or at least the person you identify with." "In this scene and actually in several others as well." "That might be a hint that she's one of the most important characters, ...for the viewer at least, who's supposed to see himself in her in some moments." "It's very important here that we bring to mind this film's genre blendings:" "Firstly, the psycho thriller or the giallo thriller." "Many gialli aren't simply crime films but also feature elements citing psychological motives for the crime or put the protagonists' fear into the actual focus and not just the solving of the crime." "Whereas there's not even an investigator-character here." "You could say now that all the characters investigate on their own and that several persons are perpetrators here - two of them and one character remains impalpable:" "The Mystery Man." "Then again, as we see here, there are attempts at investigation attempts to solve the mystery." "There's no official investigator-character, though." "There's no private eye or something as in several other films." "Then there is this element of..." "Um, that's a "Hui Boooh"-effect now." " The goofy ghost..." " Yep." "Then there's this gothic element, the gothic horror we know from literature from the 18th and 19th century, ...especially Edgar Allan Poe plays an important role there, ...which brings in the ensouled space, of course." "I called that the "crime/scene" earlier, as according to Binotto." "The building itself becomes a potential culprit and due to its uncanniness, gets branded as a haunted house." "This is something that was put into the mise-en-scene very consciously." "And now we have to address a third element which is also a form of literary template, namely Agatha Christie which is something of its own entirely." "Now it needs to be said that the term "giallo" has been explained about 3,000 times in audio commentaries." " Make that 4,000 times." " Yes, 4,000 times." "I'm too modest today." "Now this was brilliantly faked here..." " Knocks over his pal there." " Yes..." "Albert, you twat!" "Russel, you "Russel", you!" "[German for (elephant) "trunk"]" "You "Rüssel"..." "Hit him right on the "Rüssel", that jerk." "He obviously didn't watch Alexander by Oliver Stone." " That was the "Rüssel"-film, right?" " It didn't exist back then, though." "What I wanted to say is that the original giallo as literature originates from a series published by Mondadori that came with yellow covers." "And in this series not only the hard-boiled novels by Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain were published, ...which actually were templates for 40s film noirs, ...but also novels by Agatha Christie." "Now you might say:" ""Hm, Agatha Christie..."" ""...is more on the stuffy side, very British and rural."" "At the same time, however, the narrative patterns in Christie's novels and especially in the novel "Ten Little Indians"..." " Um, what was the German title again?" " I think it was "Ten Little Negroes"." " Oh yes..." " But I'm not sure if it got changed by now." "In "Zehn kleine Indianerlein"?" "[bad German for "Ten Little Indians"]" " Maybe..." " I don't know..." "I think in Germany it's usually also called "Ten Little Indians"." "Anyway, this novel has an action pattern which shows up in lots of gialli, well, not lots of, but in some." "And Camera Obscura's last..." " Oh, here we can see the ugly mask again." " That's so disgusting." " Those eyebrows... so revolting." " A nightmarish mug." "Oh man..." "Well, Camera Obscura has recently released Nine Guests for a Crime which is basically a combination of an island and a yacht giallo." " Aw, that's so ugly." " The worst thing I've ever seen." "It's traumatic." "And that film also bears strong references to "Ten Little Indians" by Agatha Christie." "It always comprises a secluded location a murder that's committed, several murders, they pile up, ...and of course the solution." "And this is very important as once emphasized by Hitchcock:" "...It makes no sense to pull the culprit out of the hat at the end and nobody knows the man or woman." "There are films that downright fail because of that." "I remember William Friedkin's Jade, for example an erotic thriller from the 90s where at the end they pull the mask off the killer's face and you just think:" ""Huh?" "Who the hell's that now?"" " That's totally unsatisfying." " Yes, yes." "It's the deus ex machina principle." "Yes, right." "Which is not the case here, as you know if you've seen the film but it's also not that exciting since you do want to be able to guess along." "Whereas the actual value and the entertainment value of this film as well as the suspense stems from the performativeness of what's happening in the very moment." "And this here is one of these wonderful scenes which you can also experience in later films, such as Inferno." "Namely a character moving through a completely ambiguous uncanny, unreal room." "Just look at the stacked chairs in the background." "These are ultimately also purposeless rooms." "Rooms that are only there to have something creepy happen in them." " Jeez..." " Man, that fugly mask." "That's... oh, well." "That's the scene you were referring to earlier, right?" " Yes." " Her killing scene which reminds of Inferno." "That's true, yes." " There we have Irene Miracle, I think..." " Oh, in Inferno." "Yes." " No, it's Daria Nicolodi..." " Oh, yes, right!" "She's killed with..." "Naw." " Naw?" " Who gets beheaded by a windowpane?" "Daria Nicolodi gets beheaded by the windowpane." "Didn't she get mauled by cats?" "Well, doesn't matter." " No, doesn't get mauled by cats." " I do think so, but never mind." "Once upon a time I did an audio commentary for Inferno..." " Once upon a time, yes." " Well, I'm over 40 now." " Everything got harder now." " No need to apologize, Marcus." " Yes, you know that too." " Well, I'm way younger than you are, but..." "But that's actually kinda hard to tell..." " But..." " Wait, we're not here for fun." " Um, I wanted to say something..." " Please do." " No, you do." " Oh, that's so disgusting." "Look." "Yes, ugh..." "Makes you wanna puke." " She's not so sure what he's up to." " But he's pretty pragmatic." "Well, I mean..." " I mean, why did he have to undress her?" " To confuse her." "Women are easily confused when you undress them without motive." " Makes them run around in confusion." " Yes." "And ask:" ""Why are you doing this to me?"" "Right." "But she's actually very..." "Oh, yes, well, I think she really asked for it now..." " ...by trying to seduce him." " Ooh, now this is..." " This wasn't a stunt." " You could hear the rips break." "Well, that's it for her." " Wait, won't there be something else?" " No." " No, that's it." "Ooh..." " The beautiful corpse, right?" " Yes." " A hint of Edgar Allan Poe again." "How did it go? "The death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in the world."" " Or something like that?" " Yes." "I might have misquoted him but that's the essence of it." "There's a whole tradition of the depiction of beautiful corpses." " Also in film, by the way." " Whoa!" "Oh, that's even more repellent." "That's... what's his name?" "From Planet of the Apes..." " Dr..." " Dr. Zaius." " Yes, Dr. Zaius." " Who likes to lobotomize people." " Brilliant." " Yes." "No, it's..." "What was it you wanted to say?" " The beautiful corpse?" " That made her horny on the spot." "Well, him too." "She actually looked..." "Never mind." "The mask became her well." "Here's another opening I was talking about earlier." "And essentially the canvas within the canvas, the inner framing." "Inner framing, right." "You wanted to say something about beautiful corpses." "No, well, there's a book called "Over Her Dead Body" by Elisabeth Bronfen." "So if you're interested in that motive, and frankly, who isn't interested in that, ...this gets an in-depth explanation in that book." "May it be read." "About that house..." "You threw in the cue "haunted house" earlier." " Yes." " One might ponder whether this theater house isn't also a heterotopia in the sense of Foucault." "Ah, yes." "Explain "heterotopia"." "Well, um... um..." "I wanted to sound smart for once and now I have to explain it..." "A heterotopia is, according to Foucault - Foucault is a philosopher, Michel Foucault..." " Yes... not the one with the pendulum." " No, that would be Eco." "Well, a heterotopia is, if you will, a place beyond all places." "If you want an example, a prison would be a heterotopia." "Or, in a certain sense, probably a hospital." "It's a place that works according to its own laws which are somewhat different from the laws outside this place." "That's a heterotopia." "And this house has, in any case, symptoms of that, I would say." "That's often the case in haunted house movies, though." "Yes, and that's absolutely linkable to the model of the place as a "crime/scene"." " In that sense." " Yes." "Right." "Exactly." "Meaning places that have a character and attributes of their own and which claim the characters inside them through these attributes." " Yes." " For example..." "Yes." "I don't even know why I'm laughing right now." "In any case also, what was the title, ...Marialé, which was also released by this wonderful label would also be a heterotopia." "The house in that one also had symptoms of this." "Maybe the listeners should buy that movie as illustrative material for a heterotopia." "It's worthwhile anyway to buy the whole collection again from the start." "Over and over again." "Yes." " It would help us out." " That's what you do." " You could do that." " Yes." "You only harm yourself." "As the saying goes:" ""it only harms your wallet."" "Yes..." "This is a scene, by the way, that reminded me a lot of the previously mentioned film..." " ...by Fritz Lang." " There!" "Yes..." "And that's interesting:" "The film Secret Beyond the Door by Fritz Lang which is the forbidden room or Bluebeard's room in the fairy tale..." "And the face here was painted in there extremely badly." "To make it look like that guy, the Mystery Man." "Brilliant." "But anyway..." "Secret Beyond the Door refers to Rebecca by Hitchcock." "That's interesting since this is almost a Rebecca-scene here." " The entering of the uncanny room..." " Right." "And the penetration into the past." "And in the past lies, of course, the solution to a mystery but once you solved it, you wish you'd have never done so." "That's right." "Yes, this is a Rebecca-scene." "Definitely." " Good!" " Thanks." "That's what I'm known for." "And that's Linda Hamilton, as we just saw." "At least that's what the sign said." "Or did it say something else?" "No, it read "Hamilton"." "That's Linda Hamilton." "Um, yes..." " Ugh!" " Disgusting." "We should examine what's so nasty about that mask." "I don't know, but it's something I would have found incredibly disgusting as a child." "But we have to make sure it's not clue to the red hair." " Ah, yes..." " That would be discriminating." " And it's not." " Naw, it's not." " Naw... naw, naw..." " It is clue to the bushy eyebrows and that rigid face in general." " And the eyes are alive." " Right." "The mask-like look." " Here's another Argento-room." " Absolutely." "Now that's really..." "He would have probably lit it differently, though." "Yes, it's like Bava as well." "I mean this expressiveness we know from Bava films is definitely implied here." "Now he wants to kill her with a cigarette..." "He wants to kill her with a cigarette, yes." " Right in the eye, I'd suggest." " Yeah, right." "That's actually a nice way of killing someone, with a cigarette." "Oh, but here comes the savior." "But that's something that makes the killer a little more, well, "homely" that he has to react to profane attacks from others." "Oftentimes the giallo killer is an other-worldly being." "Divorced from reality." "And since this is set in an almost sacral room, ...clue to this church-like architecture with the columns here, ...it seems almost a little ironized." "Involuntarily in this case, naturally." "But here we have to say that we see something that's left open in other gialli clue to the masking:" "It's obviously a male killer." "We have a clearly male physique here." "It all will be resolved differently later on, though, since we have two killers, ...it's basically a couple." "Oh, right, her name's also Rebecca, I just remembered." "Good..." "And..." "No, a man-on-man-struggle like that is indeed a little unusual since usually the giallo killer, clue to his anonymity and the superhuman threat that he poses..." " ...dominates very quickly." " Absolutely." "Especially since he embodies a chaos-principle clue to his androgyny." " Right." "That means..." "Yes." " The fusion of the male and female is a chaotic..." "Excuse me." "It has a connotation of chaos." "Think of the devil figure in The Passion of the Christ." " Yes, absolutely." " That would be a prime example." "Yes, if you'd like to see a truly chaotic indefinable creature the one in The Passion of the Christ is very well-made." "And that's a frequent occurrence in the giallo thriller because the killer, clue to his colorlessness and his consequent androgyny - as he's usually wearing unisex clothing, ...and his existence in a very colorful world," "...since the mise-en-scene in a giallo is oftentimes very colorful at least in the films by Bava and Argento, ...poses as a counterpoint." "What's striking here is that the lighting - we've just mentioned that, ...can't be that expressive since it's not that low-key, as they say." ""Low-key" doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't much light but that the light is often utilized in a way that you only get a light edge or as a backlight which creates a gloomy atmosphere." "This film here is lit relatively brightly." "Even though the film might benefit from it, ...I could imagine it working more with low-key lighting, ...it features only few zones of secret and shadow." " Definitely." " As we can see now in the background everything is clearly visible, which poses the question:" ""How carefree are these people?" One after another is killed off but they're totally relaxed, reflect a little, and..." " And have sex in-between." " Right." "Well, dangerous situations and mortal fear can make you horny." " Allegedly." " Yes." " Haven't experienced that myself, though." " No, but there are reports from the Roman Colosseum, for example that the spectators actually had sex..." " Oh, you mean..." "I get it." "The spectators." " ...during the gladiator fights." " Right, the spectators." " I thought someone who's in deadly peril." "No, not really." "But the presence of violence and death can indeed make you hot." "But that doesn't apply to us because we're scholars." "Right." "We're totally un-hot." "Now that only applies to you." "Look here." "Here we actually see the patterns for the murders." "Now, in the giallo, there's the law of the creative killing." "The creative killing is basically an expectation that is being fueled and which we and the valued viewers listening to us right now have of the movie." "Namely that you think that the kills should be original and that they have a goosebumps-effect on you." "The scene where she gets squashed in that sliding door and things like that definitely have that quality." "And it's interesting that the movie reflects that again by having this anticipating element." "Or rather the realization that actual and also historic but thus also recounted and thus fictionalized events of death which have been artistically portrayed in these little drawings..." " ...are the pattern for the murders." " Yes, definitely." "Also interesting:" "Library scenes." "The library was back then, today it's different since we don't use books anymore, ...but in the old days you did research in libraries if you wanted to find something out." " In the old days..." " In the old days, back in the 70s." "In the glorious 70s." "Also in Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, for example or the eye-catching library scene in House by the Cemetery." "Basically in all those films that feature research moments and where knowledge about the present is gained from the past." "Naturally it's much more exciting to show someone browsing through these rows of books and discovering this picture, as in this case for example than showing someone sitting at the computer googling a little." "I was just thinking it's actually interesting that there's a library in this theater." "Well, you could say that a lot of time has settled in this theater." "I mentioned this patina earlier and some parts also have a baroque touch." " How do you mean that?" " Well, exaggerated, grand... baroque." "I'll just continue..." "So the library fits in there pretty good since time has also settled in the books." " Right, it's conserved in them." " Conserved." "Exactly." " The knowledge of the past." " Knowledge of the past." "And we also see now that the building is quite labyrinthian like these hallways the woman just ran along." "It's all very narrow..." "Well, inner worlds, as we said earlier." "What's interesting is that "crime/scenes" according to Binotto's book..." " ...are also the labyrinths inside pyramids." " Does the man pay you for this?" "Nope." "No, I just read it recently - in preparation for this commentary by the way." " Because I actually prepared something." " Um, me too." " Right, you got something there." " I brought a water bottle." "You brought a water bottle, yes." "Uh-huh..." " I didn't want to interrupt you." " Yes, well, Piranesi." "You know him?" " He drew these labyrinthian..." " The Carceri." "The Carceri, exactly." "He did things like that." "And of course there are the labyrinths by Escher." "Since they depict impossible rooms, these are also uncanny rooms, of course." "And if you'd walk around in these rooms, you'd constantly fall down from something." "So these are rooms that could actually kill you." "Yes, yes, that's true." "These kinds of rooms are pretty frequent in gialli especially with Bava and Argento." "As you said earlier, also the color red and especially the combination of red and gold as we see here." "This reflects the past and something menacing at the same time." "And it's also interesting that this also has the color of dried blood." "That's something that also recurs in David Lynch's Lost Highway that he shot in his own house which he designed himself." " And it's painted with exactly this color." " Is that so?" " Yes, yes." " Oh, okay." "That's interesting." "It's red?" "Yes, very dark red, bordeaux red." "Brownish red." " I have to look out for that." " Yes." " Not that it turns out now that it's untrue..." " That it's blue or something." " It's not." "No, no." " Okay." " Yes." " Greetings to David Lynch, by the way." " We already greeted him." " Yes, but if he made it this far..." " ...he deserves one more." " Yes, from me too." "Yes..." "This here is Patrick, he's the father of Lynn." "There's this slightly incestuous relationship that shines through here and there." "Patrick is played by Chris Avram." "Did I pronounce that properly?" " It seems so." " I can't read as I told you before." "So..." "He also was in many genre productions." "Amongst others, also in So Sweet, So Dead, of course which might have even been his most important role..." " Yes, an important film..." " An important film..." " ...also released by Camera Obscura." " ...which is available for purchase." " Right." "In its second edition by now." " In the second already?" "Well, in the pared-down version without digipak and all." "Well, but still beautiful." "And what's very important..." "And "nude" and "horny", not just "beautiful"." "[German title is "Beautiful, Nude and Horny"]." "And "nude" and "horny", sure." "We could skip the "beautiful", the two others would suffice." "Naw, it's all important." "Just like "Nude and mauled" [German title of Cannibal Holocaust]." "Since being mauled is being nude." "It's basically a paraphrase..." "Well, you're pretty nude when you were mauled..." " Never mind." " That's true." "Go on." "Well, well, well..." "In Bay of Blood!" "That's what I wanted to say." "By Mario Bava." "He's in that too." " Twitch of the Death Nerve..." " Twitch of the Death Nerve, yes." "Which is probably the role most genre nerds, ...oh, I'm sorry, genre fans know him from." "Um, yes..." "And he worked with Franco Prosperi in Il commissario Verrazzano..." " I can hear that you're Italian..." " And he was in California." " Yes." " With Giuliano Gemma." "For example." "Yes, it's interesting that he was in every genre that was popular in Italy." " Inner framing with a nasty face." " That's so disgusting." "It has something of the witch looking out of the gingerbread house." "The camera often occupies a voyeuristic perspective." "Right." "Which, however, isn't connected to any character." "Absolutely." "It's an uncanny view, if you will." " Disembodied." " Disembodied, nobody carries the view." "Which means that there would have to be a camera present in the cinematic space if you'd want to describe it really bluntly." "So the camera reveals itself in a certain sense." "Now this is really Inferno-like." "In regards to the colors and this strange room, why do they keep on walking into these strange rooms?" " That's totally insane." " But you're not safe upstairs either." "He's everywhere, that geezer." "But she gets it the worst now, if I may say so." "I don't even know what she did to deserve this." "Well, it's a scene that reminds of New York Ripper a little." " And of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage." " That too." "Especially this scene." "And this knife penetration here is cited pretty often." "It happens off-screen, however but it's nevertheless absolutely drastic." "It's acted out very drastically." "And if I remember correctly, there's a giallo called What Have They Done to Solange?" "... ...where you can see that saber in her lower abdomen." " Didn't Fuchsberger star in this?" " Yes, I think so." "I think it was marketed in Germany as an Edgar Wallace film." "Well, I wouldn't want to watch this on Blu-ray..." " ...because now the mannequin is nailed on." " But it's beautiful..." "But above all, it doesn't really make much sense, I have to say but it's also, in a way, a mockery of Christian iconography." "Also thanks to the fingernails." "But that's about it." "If there's more to it, I don't know." "We could think about it, but I don't know if we can get any more out of it." "But you made an interesting point since Italy is a culture that is strongly marked by Catholicism." "And even if these things weren't worked in here consciously it's fair to assume that the Catholic influence has deeply implanted Catholic iconography into the artists." "And later on, with Fulci, we have crucifixion scenes in The Beyond for instance." "Or these martyrdom elements that show up again and again that people are getting tortured and abused before they die." "In Don't Torture a Duckling, for example where that woman is lynched with a chain by the villagers." "All these are things that utilize Catholic iconography." "And I think this here refers to that a little as well." " Simply a national reference." " No, a religious reference." " Yes, sure, but nationally characterized." " Yes, indeed." " By the way, I really like this scene." " Yes... what happened again?" "The scene were the Mystery Man stood at the end of the corridor and basically dissolved behind Patrick's body." "They became congruent and then he vanished." "It's a great effect, I think." "It works really well." "It's an effect that shows up from time to time and I think most strikingly when it's reversed like in Tenebre." "I mean when one body becomes two while here two bodies become one." " It's another uncanny effect." " Totally." "Plus it plays with the doppelganger element." "And of course the Mystery Man's character gets fleshed out for the first time..." " ...as a potentially supernatural being." " Yes." "You could only surmise that up until now." "Which definitely pushes the movie into the context of a horror film since we actually have supernatural elements at play here." "That wouldn't be the case in a thriller since the thriller resides more in a rational environment." "Well, not environment - it has a rational character, so to speak." " I have to differentiate that, Mr. Naumann." " Please do." " The thing is that the psycho thriller..." " Yes, but not the thriller." "Yeah, wait a minute." "The psycho thriller as a subgenre of the thriller can penetrate so deeply into the subjective perception that we can indeed find irreal and also surreal elements in it." "For example in Hitchcock's Marnie or even more extremely in Polanski's Repulsion and The Tenant where we very consciously perceive the subjective as a frightening and definitely also as a horror element." "However, the whole thing gets explained in most cases." "It's perfectly clear in Repulsion that we're dealing with the subjective perception of the unhinged or disturbed young woman." "Here, this is not quite clear, and you're absolutely right about that, ...which makes this movie also a horror film." "Or rather a hybrid, a horror giallo, if you will." " Or a gothic giallo." " Yes." " Has anybody called it that before?" " You wanna get a patent on this?" "No, no, you just have to be the first one to say it." "Verifiably so." " Well, then." " Then everybody has to quote you." "This is a "gothic giallo"." "I just said that in minute 70." "Yes, I'm a witness." "Yes, now also her character, what was her name again?" " Isn't it Vivian?" " Vivian!" "Vivian it is." "My God, so many names..." "She becomes more distinguishable now since she confesses her love for him." "Right?" " Yes." " But it will have no consequences, right?" "This whole scene here." "I'm asking myself how it'll play out." "It's important that the curse can only be lifted..." " ...by stopping the incest." " Yes, right, right." "And by giving him the prospect for a non-incestuous love and a desire outside of this complex she might bear the power to lift the curse." " Yes." " Period." "Yes." "That's right." "So this is another turning point in the film, a plot point." "This is clearly a plot point." "A very essential point." "It's a little astounding that this point is presented so dialogue-heavy." "That even though the movie has a lot to offer visually it relies so much on dialogue here which renders the scene astoundingly conventional." "There's a massive advance here." "There really is desire." " The sparks really fly between them now." " Yes." " What are they doing there?" " Whispering in each other's ears?" "Oh, wait, they're kissing!" "That's how they did it in the 70s." " That's how they did it?" "Okay..." " Yes." "And the film also has a severe case of the typical 70s Italo-cinema zoom-disease." "And the zoom is quite frowned upon in movies." " Yes." "Explain." " Why it's frowned upon?" " Yes." " Because it's a purely technical device of the film language since it can't be reproduced by the eye in everyday life." "A tracking shot can be imitated by moving towards something but the zoom is just a magnification which can only be done technically." "Hence the film reveals itself with every zoom as a film." "Here again:" "The two of them are talking and the camera zooms in." "It's a magnification of one section." "We seem to see something more up close but it's actually just embiggened." "And we as the viewers can actually sense that." "We have a feeling for what's a tracking shot and what's a zoom." "In most cases it's easy to tell." "And despite the approximation via zooming, we still keep our distance." "And this distance remains tangible which leads to the fact that especially in the American film language which more or less became the standard you very rarely see zooms." "It's very interesting that European and particularly the Italian cinema and also Hong Kong cinema, by the way, rely very heavily on zooms and that the influence and the success of genre cinema from Italy and Hong Kong in the late 60s and early 70s caused people like Sam Peckinpah, for example in 1969's The Wild Bunch to employ the zoom again, inspired by the Italo-westerns." "Which is actually very unusual." "It's also present in the works of Stanley Kubrick, in Shining for instance." " That's also a zoom-film." " That's a beautiful tableau, by the way." "A "tableau" is an artistic arrangement, and..." " Yes, he..." " I just had to laugh because of the bitchslap." " He calmed her down with the bitchslap." " The classic way of calming people down." "Right." " Tableau..." "Yes?" " A tableau with these two corpses." "And that also explains why he nailed her on:" "To make her stay in that shape." "Right, yes..." "Good." " That's also the..." " ...cover motive." "Yes, the cover motive." "Whereas it's not quite clear on the cover motive that they're arranged corpses." "I can't comment on that." "You can only comprehend it now, in the context of the movie why they are lying around there so strangely arranged." "Yes, right, but it's actually a beautiful image, beautiful corpses." " Yes, beautiful corpses." "Absolutely." " A beautiful image." " In the sense of dark romanticism." " Oh yes." "Good." "You should look at the cover again, it looks great." "The interesting thing is, however, I'm looking at the cover right now, ...that on the cover, the nail through the hand has been replaced with a rope that's holding her hand in place." "And they're also clothed with some strange dark stripes over their breasts." " So both corpses were censored." " Censor bars." "That's interesting because it doesn't compromise the poster's effect but at the same time it's clearly censored compared to the more revealing movie still." "Yes, that's right." "Now there are not that many left." "The other guy also snuffed it in the spectator perch." " Yes, he strangled himself." " He strangled himself..." ""Now strangle yourself."" "And now there are only..." "No, Patrick's still alive as well." "It's interesting that the Mystery Man shows up only once in a while." "That has a bit of something that's called "McGuffin"." "It's a trail that's been laid out but which actually leads to nothing." "Hitchcock did that a lot, if you want to know how this works." "For example the embezzled money in Psycho is a classic McGuffin since that element gets the plot into motion:" "The female protagonist flees with the embezzled money then arrives at the motel of the killer, as we will find out later..." " Thanks." "No need to watch it anymore." " So I just spoiled Psycho..." "I'm so sorry." "And the thing is..." "I didn't give away that she gets killed, did I?" " Then I'll watch Psycho II instead." " The money is a McGuffin, a red herring." "Of course you can also establish characters who seem to be important for the story and the resolution of the story problems but who actually aren't." " That's the prime example of a McGuffin." " Yes." "It really carries the plot in that film." "In other movies such as Pulp Fiction where there's that suitcase the two killers are after that's also a McGuffin but only sets a part of the story in motion." " At least in one episode." " Yes, correct." "It doesn't carry the whole movie." "There are of course also movies which forget their characters along the way." " Yes, there are." " That's no McGuffin then." " That's just sloppy." " It's an inability." " Yes." "Incompetency!" " Yes." " He's about to destroy the whole house." " No, he's about to destroy the hammer." "Massive oak here..." "Oak would be darker." " It is a little frightening." " Absolutely." "Well, he's almost done." "But he stops in a moment, right?" "I would just carry on." "Eventually..." "Never mind." "Now she's dropped some ecstasy or something." " And has to dance naked now." " That's what you do." "Now that's really staged for us, the viewers." "Exactly." "That's what I always like to call a performative moment." " Right." " To be even more precise:" "A performative cadence - one of the scenes that are so beloved in giallo films because of their eccentricity." "I mean, she's even mirrored multiple times, by the way, to reflect that." "To totally put it on display." "This is exhibited." " Not only the boobs, but also the rest." " Won't we see it in low-angle as well?" "I think so, right?" " I'm not quite sure, but it's likely." " You've watched it a couple times?" " Just this scene." " Okay." "Yes, and this is indeed something that was staged for the viewer." "Primarily to bridge the current slump in the plot a little." " "Slump" is a good word in this context." " Slump..." "Wait a minute." "Now that's a little mean." "That's not true." " Here's the low-angle shot I meant." " Yes, very good." "It's funny, this scene reminds me of the one with Valérie Kaprisky in The Public Woman by Zulawski." "The big dancing scene that almost gives the guy a heart attack." " Right." " The one who photographs her." "And here we also have the old guy watching her." "So a situation with a watcher is established that reflects our own voyeuristic position." "Correct." "Yes." "And here we have indeed the incestuous element." "Absolutely." "Yes, absolutely." "Which has always been taboo-breaking, we have to say, incest, I mean." "Across all cultures, isn't it?" "Well, yes..." "It varies actually." "What's considered as incest is defined differently in various cultures." "One has to say that nowadays, it has very rational reasons since the blending of congeneric genes makes the occurrence of hereditary diseases more likely." "It's grounded on scientific facts while the prohibition of incest in other cultures has oftentimes religious or spiritual reasons." "But it has to be said that some cultures have marriage laws that would clearly be incestuous according to our laws which isn't the case there." "So it's very different." "Which makes you think that a taboo is relatively arbitrary." "That they are always defined anew and differently but are nevertheless important." "The prohibition of incest, as you said, is present in all kinds of cultures and is taken very seriously." " Oh, this guy is so disgusting." " Yes." "But we're about to get a relief here since that's not really him." "It's a pretty nasty joke, I'd like to remark here." "Yes..." "Now the search for the culprit gets more concrete since many characters are gone." "And now we realize that those two, not these two, but the others Lynn and her squeeze, are in cahoots with each other..." " Yes." " ...and want to play a game." "Yes." "Yes, this game character is also important, by the way." "In German language usage, the word "Spielfilm" ["play film" (= "feature film")] has a "ludic" element as we like to call it in scholarly terms..." " ...from "ludus" which means "game"." " "Ludwig"..." "The ludic element, the playfulness, is always part of the mise-en-scène." "And that's why we have movies, like David Fincher's The Game, and so on, ...which basically, to use the word once again, in the meta sense don't only reflect their own constructedness but the whole Hollywood-system." "And it's the same here, of course:" "The game is staged for us as the viewer so we can observe this spectacle with great tension and they talk about it here very openly." "That reflects it." "You don't need Godard for that." " Yes, that's true." " He does that too, of course." " He does, yes." " But not as suspenseful." " That's right." " But he has just as many tits." " But it's important that..." " Godard." " He personally now?" " No, in his movies, damn it." "It's very important that you mentioned it." " Because that's often..." " The tits..." "These movies..." "These movies like the one we're watching usually aren't mentioned in the academic discourse." " They're marginalized." " Marginalized in the best case or are simply hushed up or they aren't even known, that happens as well." " With most movies." " Yes." "And what you just said is, how shall I put it, an offer to take a closer look." "Because in the works of Fellini, Godard and the other great art house artists you can find the same things you can find here." "It needs to be said, though, that what you just remarked, and rightly so, ...is a phenomenon that's prevalent primarily in Germany:" "That these films are principally known and being watched by the valued fan audience and that it's almost a wonder that as a film scholar we are able to reflect on these films the way we do right now." "That's a tradition you usually see in English-language countries, ...in the UK and the USA, that is, ...where the quality of these films was recognized relatively early on and where the reflection on the genre cinema as a culturally productive and important task was practiced." "You have to consider that it already began in the late 80$ with Maitland McDonagh and several others that particularly the giallo as a highly interesting genre was reflected on." "And there's always this question that's also discussed in forums and so on..." "I will say it again:" "It's not relevant whether the director said back then:" ""We'll do it like that because then it somehow reflects its own genre."" "It's irrelevant if he thought that." "It's a fact that we're watching a film that does so, and that's more important." "The director is probably not the only one who made a creative contribution to this." "Especially with a director who's relatively hard to comprehend through his work such as the one at hand, we have to say that it's absolutely possible that many ideas could have been contributed by other participants." "There could've been a lot of reflective elements in the screenplay, in the dialogue which the director simply put into action." "It's not important to say whether the director intended something or not." "We can't say that." "We can only say what the film does." " And the film has that." " Right." "Hence it's not an over-interpretation." "It's an interpretation of something." "It's not something you squeeze into it." "That you would do by simply claiming things you don't see in the images or hear in the dialogue." "And that's what we do right now." "For our discussion and interpretation..." " ...we stick to exactly what you can see." " Right." "This problem stems from the famous phrase "What does the author want to tell us with this?"." "It's a phrase people should forget if I had my way." "Yes, the idea that "the author is dead" as the before-mentioned Foucault has said, amongst others doesn't imply that you can forget about the author himself but actually that what happens between the work and us as recipients produces a whole new authorship and that the original authorship of the person who originally created the work is not the only authority in this case." "Yes, that's right." "It is, as you just said, a German phenomenon especially regarding the fact that the genre film is not so big," "Well, "big"..." "Well, the genre film in Germany has pretty much relocated to TV, I'd say." "Such as the Tatort crime series [aka Crime Scene], and so on." "There are still directors like Dominik Graf, or back then there was Eckhart Schmidt..." " ...and people like that." " Who are huge fans of these films." "Absolutely." "And who kept the genre film alive for some time in Germany." "That, however, has something to do with German post-war cinema which clue to the New German Cinema by Fassbinder, Wenders and others got pushed away a little from genre cinema or entertainment cinema from cinema that can, in a way, be pressed into prefabricated standards or can be recognized by them, or fulfills expectations." "They wanted a political socio-critical cinema." "And traces of that are still visible in Germany to this day." "That's why genre films still have to struggle around here." "One shouldn't forget, however, that there were a whole lot of genre films around while the just mentioned New German Cinema was established as auteur films." "It's just that film history has pretty much forgotten about these movies." "And that's the main problem." "Then people like Quentin Tarantino have to show up and say..." ""Oh, these great Edgar Wallace films from Germany!" to make people say: "Oh, right, in the 60s and the early 70s..."" ""...we did have a massive presence of very successful genre films."" "And those were the Edgar Wallace films, the Winnetou films and later on also sex films that were extremely successful." "And only over the last few years, these films have started to gain recognition." "Plus, these movies actually reflect their times way more than other films." "Totally." "Sure." "I mean, the value of a Werner Herzog film cannot be diminished, that's for sure." "However, Werner Herzog's Aguirre, which is great, ...tells us probably less than Schoolgirl Report, Part 2 about the times and the mentality of the times in which it was made." "You might have to part with an either/or." " Yes." "Exactly." " Both have their pros and cons." "And actually both kinds of films have only pros, I'd say." "Now here we are, to go back to the movie, in Bava-land." " We're clearly in Bava-land." " "In Bava-land"..." " Not to be confused with Disneyland." " No, it's Bava-land." "She ushered that in with the words "We're going underground" while they're actually going into the subconscious." "And when you're going into the subconscious you'll naturally encounter dreams and particularly nightmares." "And here, of course, is our nightmare figure again, the Mystery Man who then indeed clarifies that inside the guts of this building, ...he just said "uterus/womb" and so on, this incest-curse is lurking which was in the true sense of the word "implanted" into the bodies of the ancestors and has created the "guilty seed" which in regular intervals, also in the future, has to exterminate itself." "And now this character vanishes in mysterious ways when the torch is thrown at him." "All these things move the film clearly in the direction of gothic horror." "Here totally." "Yes, sure, totally." "Here, the Mystery Man basically gains the character of the reincarnation of guilt itself." "And with that also a certain, well, a touch of Satan, of the seducer, the devil." "All this really has a connotation of hell with all the fire and so on." "It also feels rather warm down there." "It probably can't be denied that the film could be interpreted that way without it going into even more detail." "It has something Mephisto-like." "Indeed." "I said "Bava" because shortly before, Bava's Lisa and the Devil came out... where Telly Savalas plays a similarly mysterious figure which could be interpreted as the devil." "Here's of course the certainty that has to be delivered subsequently." "This is something we could find in a story by Edgar Allan Poe:" "The awareness becomes more concrete." "It also happens that the woman here, Lynn, probably falls victim to madness and clue to this awareness literally loses consciousness." "She loses consciousness." "All these things have a lot to do with the Freudian model that we're actually moving inside the subconscious here." " Right." " And that completely physically." "Yes, absolutely." " These are the freshest graves." " Exactly." "That's the father, right?" "That's the father." "There he drops the torch after about five minutes of reading..." "And now the exit is barred, they're trapped inside the subconscious." "And, yes, it'll stay that way." "And she's hyperventilating because she sees herself." "Her own death." "This takes place, by the way, on February the 25th." "It was mentioned before." "That's the father's birthday, isn't it?" "No..." "Or how did that go?" "I don't remember." "February the 16th is my birthday." " Congratulations!" " Thank you, thank you." "Mine's the 26th, by the way." "Of February." " Ah, yes!" " Ten days later." "Ah, yes, good." "Good to know." " We should celebrate together." " We will." "And you people are welcome to send us presents." " Then we really go on a bender." " Yes." "Now that was it for her." "Right?" "Lynn's kicked it." "And what's interesting, we've already discussed that before the commentary, ...is that we don't see her boyfriend's death." " No." " It seems to take place off-screen." "Well, she falls down." "She somehow loses consciousness." "And indeed, it remains unclear what happened to him." "That brooch here, by the way, has saved her life which is also a really bizarre thing." "And here we have a motive that's clearly a fairy tale motive." "She escaped the inferno." "And it's very noticeable how the mise-en-scene clearly emphasizes that the night is over." "She awakes to a new dawn." "That's something we know from other films." "If you take a look at other Italian gothic horror films like Suspiria they usually end with the final girl - in Inferno it's a man, by the way, ...leaving the building as the sole survivor leaving the building, just like the past, behind her." "Exactly." "And she will also go upstairs..." " ...when she's left the building." " Oh, yes, interesting." "That's very important." "That's simply firmly grounded in the viewer's subconscious as a rebirth." "Right, but that's purely intuitive." "The viewers don't need to have it explained by us as "Erklärbären" [= "Explain-Bear", a German TV comedy character]." ""Erklärbären"?" "This is the "Erklärbär"-commentary, you know?" "I only know the "Leisefuchs" [= "Hush-up-Fox", inappropriate handsign]." "That's too inappropriate." " Please go on." " Alright." "This is staged so intuitively that the viewer just notices it as such." "As soon as she walks out and the sun is shining and so on it simply suggests this new beginning." "It's understood without having to put it in words." "It's totally fascinating how she walks down this spiral staircase." "The spiral staircase is yet another symbol." "It's the vortex which has a lot to do with psychoanalysis and the subconscious." "There's this wonderful film The Spiral Staircase by Robert Siodmak..." " The great one." " The great one." "A gothic film noir, if you will." "Another hybrid which has again a lot to do with the giallo genre since it's about a killer who murders young women with a physical handicap." "And it's all staged very similarly." "I find it in this film much more striking than in others, that it..." "Here only now the door opens, by the way." "Interesting." " Yes, a door that's not a real door." " Not a real door, that's the point really." "This would have been the exit." "Or rather, the exit is only for her." " Yes, sure." " It's her own personal exit." "Yes." "Since she embodies the escape from the curse since she offered the prospect of love to the man burdened with the curse." "Yes, and here everything's beautiful, albeit a bit cold." " Which you can see by her breath." " Indeed, her breath." "I could imagine that this is a film that would be fascinating..." " ...for the directing couple of Amer..." " Oh, yes, definitely." "Since they set their film in a country manor like this." " Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani." " Yes." "Yes, we're getting closer to the end now and we'd like to thank you for your attention." "I think we made this film quite fruitful and have experienced it in a very exciting way." "This is always a great experience really." "And we hope we could convey some of it to you." " Definitely." " And I hope we will hear each other again." "In the future and in different lineups." "But hopefully also again in this magnificent one..." " ...with Kai Naumann." " It just works!" "Yes, it's smooth, right?" "Yes..." " And now we have a booze." " Now we have a booze, yes." " Yes, right, booze." " Yes." "No, that's not appropriate." "We're having some apple juice." "Sorry..." "I don't believe this..." "It was such a nice outro." " Could be cut out." " Yeah, right." "Fade it out." " Alright, until next time." "Bye." " Ciao, ciao."