We
open with the recycled film footage from
some junior high school biology class on
the gestation cycle of the Gallus
domesticus -- better known to you and
me as a domesticated chicken. And as the
miracle of poultry perpetuity percolates
inside the egg for our eyes, our ears are
assaulted by Bruno Maderna's score, where
he also appears to be involved with his
own scientific experiment: assaulting
every instrument in his orchestra with a
sledgehammer, and then throwing it against
the nearest wall to see what sticks and
what doesn't.
Then,
after
several more instruments meet their
untimely demise, senses sufficiently
addled and rattled, the audience is moved
to a high class hotel and a montage tour
through several rooms -- and apparently, the editor has A.D.D. and was armed with
his own sledgehammer, or in this case,
more probably, a meat-cleaver. Crashing
and zooming from room to room, we see more
than we probably wanted to see of several
occupants until we settle on one guest in
particular: a man, who is in the process
of pulling on some tell-tale black leather
gloves, going through a briefcase filled
with an assortment of sharpened cutlery
before using one of them to murder the
prostitute he was shacking up with.
Unbeknownst to the killer, however,
someone saw him do the deed, spying on
them through the balcony window. This
witness then covertly watches as the
killer cleans up and checks out of the
hotel, and then hops into the nearest phone booth. But it isn't the police whom
he dials up. Nope ... That would be too
easy -- and make for a really short film.
E'yup, we have a ways to go yet and this
is just one of the many sinister plot
twists and turns that the viewer will have
to unscramble over the next ninety or so
minutes in Giulio Questi's oddball entry
into the world of Italian whodunits, Death
Laid an Egg.
Honestly,
despite it's pedigree, subject matter and
country of origin, I'd hesitate to call Death
Laid an Egg
an authentic giallo -- a term
derived from the book covers of some lurid
pulp novels and then co-opted to describe
a certain breed of Continental cinematic
thriller. Like Antonioni's Blow
Up,
both films contain some of the genre's
trappings, but in truth, they proved more
influential on the genre than the genre
had in inspiring them.
Defining
what makes a gialli a gialli as
opposed to a more conventional
thriller/murder mystery is like
trying to explain how a square can be a
rectangle while said rectangle can't a
square. The basic elements are present in
both: a murder or string of murders; a
murderer; a protagonist caught up in the
investigation to catch said murderer; a
few clues, a few suspects, and maybe a
late twist or two to add some punch before wrapping it all up for the closing
credits ... Where the gialli starts to
differentiate itself from this formula is
that it seems to be more interested in the
howtheydunit as opposed to whodunit
-- and the more baroquely theydunit
the better -- and whytheydunit is
basically irrelevant. The plots in these
things are absolutely Rube Goldbergian in
structure, starting with the protagonist,
along with the audience, witnessing
something -- usually a murder -- that sets
off an unstoppable chain-reaction of other
nefarious events/murders, usually made
worse by the protagonists efforts to stop
them. False starts, false leads and a
healthy dose of red herring doesn't help
make things any easier to unravel and
decipher what's really going on. Nothing
appears to be what it seems on the
surface. Nothing is concrete, and
confusion the norm. And while the
audience, through the protagonist, is
focusing on one thing, nine times out of
ten our eyes and attention should be
focused somewhere else. For once the
dominos start falling in these twisted
menageries, it's hard to keep up with each
separate line of falling blocks ... Some
stall out, others reach a dead end, and
some make pretty designs and a lot of
noise but in the end prove pointless and
irrelevant to the bigger picture. Which is
usually why, when the climax is reached
and the whys and whyfores come out, a
viewer's frustration factor might be
needling into the red a bit. And that's
completely understandable when the big pay
off craps out, but sometimes ... sometimes,
the view along the way is still worth the
trip.
In
Death
Laid an Egg,
using the gialli as a template,
Questi presents a spectacular panoramic
vista for us to view. Setting us up
comfortably with the murder at the hotel,
the director, just like his composer,
editor and cinematographer, then brings
down his own sledgehammer, reducing the
film to a jumble of puzzle pieces, and
then proceeds to throw everything out the
window, convention wise, with much
ferocity and flair, shattering the
audiences expectations and leaving them to
sort through the wreckage to try, and
ultimately -- hopefully?, put things back
together and solve just what the heck goes
on here.
The
man who murdered the prostitute is Marco (Jean-Louis
Trintignant). Obviously, Marco is
not a happy man and the main source of his
rancor is his wife, Anna (Gina
Lollobrigida), who controls nearly
every aspect of his life. Married to her
money, Marco is basically just another cog
in the wheel of Anna's highly profitable
and fully automated chicken hatchery and
processing plant. Tired of his listless
life as a limp, rubber-stamp executive,
Marco's been sleeping around with Anna's
waifish cousin and personal assistant,
Gabrielle (Ewa Aulin), and
desperately wants to dump his wife and run
away with her.
Gabrielle, in turn, teases him along but
always refuses his insistent offer, seeing
little prospect in him without Anna's
money. Besides, Gabrielle has a few ideas
of her own -- he typed ominously.
So,
his life sucks, his assertive wife, though
not the shrew some reviewers would have
you believe, dominates him because he's
almost pathologically passive, and his
mistress won't take him seriously; then is
it any wonder why the only time Marco
feels in control is in room 724 of the
hotel, where he does his dastardly deeds?
To make matters worse, Marco is almost
certain that Gabrielle is screwing around
on him with someone else -- most probably
his new hair-brained assistant, Mondaini (Jean
Sobieski), but he can't rule out
the possibility that Anna and Gabrielle
might be *ahem* up to something biblical,
too. Mondaini may also be sleeping with
Anna -- and did I mention he was the one
spying on Marco's murderous malfeasance at
the hotel? Blackmail appears to be his
game, but we don't know what he wants in
payment yet, or who it was he called on
the phone. Meanwhile, through an anonymous
tip, Anna has found out about Marco's
trysts at the hotel. But unaware of how those
trysts ultimately end, Anna, with
Gabrielle's help, conspires to win her
emotionally distant husband's affection
back. And as his world unravels around
him, Marco heads back to the hotel for
another round of carve a second smile into
a prostitute. And though he amps things up
a bit, terrorizing and torturing her
first, in the end, it seems to lack the
same old punch, which is why, then and
there, Marco decides to kill his wife,
take her money, and runaway with
Gabrielle.
All
that clear to everybody? No? Okay,
basically we're watching one giant
clandestine game of chess, with each
character being a pawn of someone else's
strategy to try and knock the other off
the board -- some more permanently than
others.
As
these pieces move and shift into place,
nudged on by others, things start to clear
up and solidify a bit as Marco starts to
work on establishing himself an alibi by
getting his wife a plane ticket out of
town for a conference; a ticket she won't
be using after he dispatches her. Unable
to do the deed directly, Marco sabotages
the guard rail overlooking the giant
feed-processor at the plant -- basically a
giant grinder and rotating millstone that
will reduce anything, like, say, a body,
into tiny little pieces, thus removing all
the evidence by turning it into chicken
feed. Now all he has to do is herd Anna up
onto the catwalk once all the bolts have
been removed. But as he finishes up, he
hears someone lurking nearby. Thinking
it's his wife, Marco retreats to the
control room and waits for the shadowy
figure to move into place. When it does,
he throws the switch, starting the
machines. When Marco hears a woman scream,
he flees the premises, thinking the deed
done, but it wasn't Anna -- it was
Gabrielle, and the only reason she
screamed was because the loud noises
startled her. In other words, his plan
failed.
But
remember, Gabrielle was also aware of
Anna's plan to get Marco back. And if it's
a dolled up slut that turns her husband
on, then Anna will give him what he wants
by slathering on some make-up and donning
some lingerie, a push-up bra and a skimpy
outfit. So won't that philandering
deadbeat be surprised when he shows up at
the hotel and finds her instead of one of
his whores culled from the hotel lounge.
Well, some surprises are definitely in
order, for everyone, as we move on to the
final, fatal gambit.
Thinking
his wife is dead, either to bolster his
alibi or a need to be in the only place he
feels safe, Marco heads back to the hotel
through the rear entrance. Unlocking the
door to his usual suite, just imagine how
surprised and startled you'd be if you
found Anna there, sprawled out on the
floor, dead. Well he did, and she is --
most definitely. After taking a few
moments to process this development, Marco
snaps out of his stupor, and as he
scrambles to clean up the mess, we switch
down to the hotel lobby bathroom, where
Mondaini tends to some deep scratches on
his face. Then the police arrive, having
received an anonymous tip about a girl
murdered in room 724 ... As they question
the clerk, several call girls lounging
nearby laugh (--
a few of them looking awfully familiar),
saying a lot of girls have died in that
room -- some of them more than once! Seven
floors up, as he furiously scrubs at the
blood, Marco flashes back to those
"murders" and we see it was all
an elaborate and morbid role-playing game,
where he only pretended to kill his wife
on a weekly basis.
Sure
enough, by the time the police investigate
his room, Marco has already snuck out the
back with Anna's body. And though they
find no evidence, and the call girls insist
that sweet little Marco could never hurt a
fly, the police intend to press on and get
to the bottom of this on "public
morality" grounds.
Meanwhile,
back at the chicken ranch, in the main
house, the grand conspiracy between
Mondaini and Gabrielle is cemented: the
whole thing was to set-up Marco for Anna's
murder. Thinking Marco was an actual
maniac, they were the ones who tipped off
Anna to his adultery, and it was Gabrielle
who then pushed her into getting him back by
posing as a prostitute. Of course,
Mondaini killed Anna, and then tipped off
the police. Now, with Anna dead and Marco
inevitably incarcerated, as the only
living relative, Gabrielle will inherit
everything and the two will live happily
ever if they keep playing it cool ... And
with
what Gabrielle saw earlier in the plant
with the feed processor, Mondaini sniffs
out that Marco was probably going to kill
Anna on his own, anyway, and kicks himself
for not letting that scenario play itself
out. Still, their plan seems to have gone
off without a hitch, and Marco arriving
when he did at the hotel was just a piece
of pure luck in their favor. But just as
the couple starts to spend all that
ill-gotten loot in their heads, they hear
the machinery start up at the plant and
head over to investigate.
Turns
out it's Marco, turning the feed-processor
on. His intentions are clear: he still
plans on disposing Anna's body through
the grinder. But as he unwraps the body,
he spies Mondaini's charm bracelet
clutched in her hand. And as it all clicks
together and the quarter finally drops,
Marco is so flummoxed by this revelation
and Gabrielle's betrayal that he stumbles
back against the railing, the railing he'd
sabotaged earlier, and promptly falls to
his death. And after the grinder churns
the body into mulch, Mondaini and
Gabrielle arrive and find Anna's body just
as the police show up looking for Marco.
Caught red-handed, both conspirators deny
any involvement with Anna's body and cast the
blame on the missing Marco. Though the
scratches on Mondaini's face are going to
be hard to explain away, they continue to
deny everything as the police escort them
away -- but you get a sense it won't be
very long until these two start pointing a
finger at each other, because we know that
Marco will never be found alive: he's
currently being eaten by the thousands of
caged chickens nearby. And as they
contentedly cluck away, we close on the
chief inspector sucking on a pilfered egg.
Nice.
The
End
Like
a lot of the experimental "new
wave" filmmakers/auteurs of the
1960's, Giulio Questi started out as a
film critic before switching sides and
putting his avant-garde theories on cinema
to the test -- first as a screenwriter,
and then as a director. And if I can sum
up his personal style in one word that
word would probably be exhausting.
Now I know that's probably putting a
pretty negative connotation in your head,
but that's not necessarily the case here.
The man had something to say on the human
condition and a valid point to make, but
he liked to hide that point with a whole
lot of noise: jarring cuts, ear-splitting
soundtracks, schizoid cinematography, and
a metric ton of surreal eye-candy in his
set-ups and set-designs does make it a
hard slog to sit through. But like I said
before it can ultimately prove rewarding
if you pay attention and give it half a
chance. So fair warning, that by the end,
though you may realize and concede that
you've just witnessed a brash artistic
assertion, you probably will have no clue
as to what that assertion really was
let alone what it really meant.
See!
Exhausting.
While
researching this film there was no real
gray area when it came to opinions on it:
Some found it to be a one of kind gem ...
beautiful and brilliant, while others
found it haphazard, incoherent and an
over/ self-indulgent mess. Also, another
word that kept popping up on both sides
was esoteric, and this being a
website that bases its reviews on how much
beer it will take to get to the end -- yeah,
I had to look that up to see what it
really meant:
es-o-ter-ic
- adjective: [1.] understood
by or meant for only the select few who
have special knowledge or interest;
recondite: poetry
full of esoteric allusions. [2.] belonging
to the select few [3.] private; secret;
confidential. [4.] of a philosophical
doctrine or the like) intended to be
revealed only to the initiates of a
group: the
esoteric doctrines of Pythagoras.
Seems
kind of elitist, don't it. And I've never
really bought into that kind of film
theory, either: the whole "you don't
like it 'cuz you just don't get it"
spiel just doesn't fly. Art is art, and
crap is crap, right? Well, one man's crap
can be another man's art and ... wait --
What were we talking about again?
Anyways,
Questi made his first big bona fide
assertion a year earlier with the offbeat
spaghetti western Se
sei vivo spara
a/k/a
Django Kill
... If You Live, Shoot!
Collaborating
on the script with his editor,
Franco Arcalli, this
peculiar and weird tale of frontier
justice opens with the hero of the piece
clawing his way out of his own grave.
Nursed back to health by a couple of
shamans, armed with golden bullets, the
Stranger then sets off on a quest for
vengeance on those who left him for dead,
only to wind up in a hell of his own
making in a brutal little town called The
Unhappy Place -- and that's all I'm gonna
say except I strongly suggest you all
check the movie out; it's a real
head-trip. So, having already turned the
spaghetti western on its ear, Questi and
Arcalli then executed
the same kind of Jedi-mind@#%k
on the gialli with Death
Laid an Egg.
These two co-conspirators definitely liked
to pull the rug out from under an
audience, and from the opening credits on,
and everything that follows is a frenetic
shell-game to keep the audience off
balance and on their toes to try and keep
track of the pea. But the question is: is
it the pea we should be keeping our eye
on, or something else?
Heavy.
I know.
And
exhausting.
Now,
the plot I just described up above
probably sounds fairly standard and
conventional, right? And if we boil all of
Questi's excess meat off the plot of Death
Laid an Egg
and get it down to the bare bones I
transcribed, things are surprisingly
simple and fairly straight-forward once
you figure out that basically everyone is
screwing around with everyone else as a
means to their own ends, and in the end,
everyone, except maybe Anna*, gets exactly
what they deserve. But it is the meat that
makes the broth, not the bones, and that's
what really sets this film apart from its
contemporaries.
*
I'm not sure I get all the hate that's
heaped on Anna. Sure, Marco's balls
might be in her hip pocket, but let's be
honest, he's the one who put them in
there. And it's only because the schnook
is cheating on her that she plots to get
back at him. Admittedly, I was a little
confused on whether the point to tart up
was to win him back at the hotel or some
bizarre need to become what he likes to
justify her infidelity with Mondaini.
Regardless, Gina Lollobrigida is a
stone-cold fox, no matter what she's
wearing, and I was looking for any
excuse to post this pin-up of her -- so
here ya go:
Now
back to the review already in progress...
I
mean, we haven't even talked about the
bizarre subplot of the bio-engineered
chickens -- an accidental mutant strain
brought on by Marco's clumsiness in the
lab and the addition of one errant puppy
into the feed mix (-- this is where
Marco gets the idea for disposing a body
at the feed mill), that have no
beaks or claws and no real bone structure.
Marco is appalled by them, feeling they're
an abomination and should be destroyed;
but all Anna can see is more meat with
less fuss, and more meat with less fuss
means more money. Yeah, it's not a really
subtle plot device reducing the chicken to
an impudent lump, so it's no surprise that
Marco breaks into the lab and violently
destroys them all with a really big stick.
His manhood fairly recovered, only then
does he actually entertain the notion of
killing his wife for real instead of
pretending to kill her surrogate.
There
are several other bizarre set-pieces that
Questi uses to speed up and then derail
the film's momentum: Like the scene on the
highway, where Gabrielle explains to Marco
how she became an orphan when her parents
died in a fiery car crash. With each shift
in gears, we cut back and forth between
the present and the past, from close-ups
to speeding lines on the asphalt, faster
and faster, until we see the twisted and
burning wreck. And then there's the scene
at the party where Mondaini and Gabrielle
turn up the heat on their two marks by
flirting with them and with each other,
stoking the fires of jealousy up to a
boiling point. The evening is then capped
by Mondaini's strange new party game,
"The Room of Truth," where said
room is cleared of all material
possessions, leaving a starkly white and
blank slate, to clear the minds of the
participants. Said participants then draw
lots to see who they're paired up with,
and then they're shut in the room, alone,
where anything can happen with no
repercussions. It all boils down to a
surreal game of truth or dare, or in some
cases a one-sided game of grab fanny, but
when Marco and Gabrielle take their
[rigged] turn together, Mondaini kills the
lights, prompting an unnecessary but
strategic scream from Gabrielle. Party's
over, and it's during the clean up that an
agitated Anna finds an anonymous note,
clueing her in on Marco's numerous hotel
rendezvous. It's a weird, weird scene that
epitomizes the director's modus operandi
to a tee: the white palette of the room,
the bold colors of the costumes, crowding
characters into corners, the lingering,
lingering, lingering shot, then the
*crash* *bang* edit, extreme close-up,
slow pan, linger, linger, *crash* linger
*bang* fast zoom, fall back, linger,
*crash* etc. etc. etc.
Though
Questi liked to heap on that kind of
chaotic distortion to screw with the
narrative, there is a certain -- I
don't know, lack of subtlety to it
that I think derails any calls of
pretentiousness on the filmmakers motives.
I'm not really big on the whole art for
art's sake, especially in experimental
filmmaking, because nine times out of ten
it's done so heavy handedly it quickly
becomes laughable, or worse yet, extremely
annoying, so I think it's a true testament
to Questi and Co.'s skills for winning me
over so completely.
In
the end, Death
Laid an Egg
is another one of those movies whose
reputation has probably been enhanced by
it's lack of availability as only those
who really want to see it will effort to
track it down. It's also one of those
movies that the written word can't do
justice to. Brazen and bold, and
completely off the wall, it needs to be
endured for oneself. And there's the real
rub. Awhile back, I know the fine folks at
Blue Underground had to renege on a
promised DVD release when the copyright
holders upped their asking price at the
last minute. I'd been trying to see it for
years, and the copy I finally got my most
grateful hands on was a rocky, third or
fourth generation pan and scan VHS dub
with Spanish subtitles -- but Questi's
style still showed through with flying
colors, and I still hold out hope for
seeing a legitimate and pristine release
one day to enjoy it all over again.
And
finally, a big thank you and a shout out
to Josh Shepherd, a/k/a Bergerjaques, over
at The
BMMB for loaning me this hard to
find Italian nugget of sheer nuttiness.
See you in Chicago, my friend.
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