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| Images courtesy of Radiance Films |
Italian film writer-director Romolo Guerrieri started out in
the spaghetti western subgenre with his first two features both made in 1966
before segueing into the giallo picture two years later with The Sweet Body
of Deborah. After delving into the
poliziotteschi crime film with Detective Belli before taking a genre
hiatus with the comedy The Divorce before his marked return to the
giallo film in 1971 with one of the great underrated Italian surrealist thrillers
The Double.
Making its worldwide Blu-ray disc premiere through Radiance
Films in a new 4K restoration from the original camera negative, The Double is
a stunner of elliptical nonlinear surrealist filmmaking spoken of the same
breath as 1971’s Johnny Got His Gun.
Based on the novel La Controfigura by Libero Bigiaretti, its a life-flashing-before-one’s-eyes
movie ala Jacob’s Ladder with one gunshot throwing everything into a
tailspin that gradually Memento reels back to the beginning revealing
the chain of events that led to our protagonist’s slow death. The burning question on everyone’s minds is:
who would want to kill him and why?
A young architect named Giovanni (Jean Sorel) is gunned down
in an underground parking garage by a mysterious bearded figure as he is
walking to his car. As he collapses to
the ground, thus begins a hallucinatory odyssey into Giovanni’s withering
headspace as the entirety of his existence plays out of order in a succession of
images, sounds and scenes. At first he
thinks of his wife Lucia (Swedish Candy actress Ewa Aulin) though the
film makes the intentional choice of Giovanni being perhaps an unreliable
narrator whose memories should be taken with a grain of salt.
Over time, we learn he not only was he in over his head
financially living off of a trust fund with his father’s company on the brink
of bankruptcy and that he harbored jealousies over his wife Lucia’s casual beachside
nudity and flirtations with an American man named Eddie (Sergio Doria) during
their supposed honeymoon. Further still,
an increasingly perverse, borderline Oedipal triangular romantic conflict
involving Lucia’s mother Nora (Lucia Bose) begins to emerge which may or may
not have been a key factor in Giovanni’s demise.
Cross-cutting between Giovanni laying dying in slow motion
photography by Carlo Carlini with the sounds of heartbeats and terrifying
Penderecki-esque score by Armando Trovajoli and razor-sharp elliptical editing
by Carlo Reali, The Double is a confounding yet engrossing puzzle whose
chess pieces gradually fall into harmonious place. Between the luminous picturesque scenery of the
Moroccan beachside and deserted landscapes to the dark corridors of Roman parking
garages, it is visually beautiful and glamourous while also being acerbic and
darkly violent including but not limited to sexual assault. Despite the abrasiveness of the saga being
purported, in its brisk running time Guerrieri establishes a compelling mystery
that’s at once frightening and strangely attractive with our sense of what is
real or imaginary blurring together into one indecipherable cocktail.
Co-authored for the screen by Valentino Bompiani, Sandro
Continenza and Sauro Scavolini, this eighty-eight minute feature is taut and
somehow expansive beyond the confines of its brisk running time. Much of the film’s power comes from the
editing department though it goes without saying the three central leads Jean Sorel,
Ewa Aulin and Lucia Bose all are giving top notch fearless physically demanding
performances which hold this strange, erratic house of giallo cards together.
Released in Italy in 1971, the film came and went without
much international dialogue or interest but in Italy further cemented Romolo
Guerrieri as a genre master who would follow up The Double with a fusion
between the giallo and the poliziotteschi with 1973’s The Police Serve the
Citizens? Largely considered a clandestine
gem in surrealist world cinema of the mind, The Double for the first
time comes to England and the United States in a beautiful new 4K restored
Blu-ray package from Radiance Films featuring plentiful extras.
Including an interview with director Romolo Guerrieri and
actress Ewa Aulin, running commentary by critic Tim Lucas, interview with author
Stephen Thrower and a collectible booklet featuring new essay writing by Nathaniel
Thompson and the time-honor reversible sleeve art replete with the OBI spine
cover. Radiance Films continues to excel
in everything they do from their title selection to the quality of their disc
releases and putting a spotlight on some of the world’s best overlooked screen
gems!
--Andrew Kotwicki
