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| Courtesy of Shameless Films |
Luigi Bazzoni first appeared on the
Italian cinema scene in 1965 with his overlooked quasi-giallo haunted mystery film
The Possessed before switching between the spaghetti western genre with Man,
Pride and Vengeance and back to giallo again with The Firth Cord. The older brother of fellow filmmaker Camillo
Bazzoni and distant cousin of Oscar winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse
Now; The Last Emperor), Bazzoni’s film directing came to an end in
1975 with today’s entry of 31 Days of Hell: Le Orme Footprints on the
Moon.
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| Courtesy of Shameless Films |
Sidestepping the usual conventions of
the prototypical giallo thriller replete with masked and gloved killers who
might be one of the film’s main characters incognito, Footprints on the Moon
instead returns the director to his more nebulous genre blending fare glimpsed
in The Possessed with loose hints of giallo and heavy overtones of the
somber psychological thriller. Moreover,
how many Italian space giallo thrillers can you name, a rare diversion within
the giallo subgenre which invariably forecasted some of the surreal lunar
imagery in William Peter Blatty’s The Ninth Configuration.
Alice Cespi (Florinda Bolkan from Don’t Torture a Duckling) is plagued with recurring nightmares of an astronaut abandoned
by his comrades (headed by Klaus Kinski) on the moon left to die, seemingly
inspired from a film she watched as a child called Footprints on the Moon which
she was too scared to finish. But before
she can make sense of her bad dreams, she loses track of time for the past
three days with a torn photograph as her only clue to her whereabouts. From here the film becomes a slow, deeply
haunting and oddly desperate burn towards psychological breakdown and possibly
murder involving a little girl at a hotel who claims she’s been there before
using the name Nicole.
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| Courtesy of Shameless Films |
Visually lush and phantasmagorical
thanks to distant relative turned legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro
and aided by a positively arresting and haunted score by Nicolas Piovani (Life
is Beautiful), from start to finish Footprints on the Moon works to
put you in the anxious and increasingly confused headspace of Alice with a
superb performance from Florinda Bolkan.
Bolkan was so immersed in the psychology of the character she reportedly
lost weight during the shoot. Far more
interested in nuance, mood and mystery than serving up conventional genre
thrills, Footprints on the Moon in the mold of the giallo thriller
creates a mood and vibe that is unshakable even if you’re not entirely sure why
you feel the way Alice does.
Co-written by Kiss of the SpiderWoman novelist Manuel Puig and based on the novel Las Huellas by
Mario Fenelli, Footprints on the Moon was shot in Rome and Turkey and sports
off the scenic location photography beautifully. Though not really a space thriller per se or
even really a standard giallo film in the conventional sense, Footprints on
the Moon nevertheless becomes an increasingly spooky ride whose protagonist
and the film’s shape seems to change over the course of the movie.
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| Courtesy of Shameless Films |
Rather than serving up standard slasher
thrills and chills, Footprints on the Moon is an unusually elegant and
picturesque journey inward with elements of the macabre permeating the whole thing. You’d be hard pressed to find another giallo
inspired psychological thriller this exceptionally beautiful looking.
--Andrew Kotwicki
