11/14/2023 0 Comments Cat o nine tails![]() “You won’t find it by smelling it,” replies Franco Arnò (Karl Malden), “Look for it.” Though himself blind, Franco Arnò (Karl Malden) proves more adept at overhearing crucial evidence, feeling for clues and confronting a killer than many of his fellow investigators, even if the Carlo does most of the legwork. “It doesn’t smell very good down here,” complains journalist Carlo Giordani (James Francicus) as he searches a family crypt for a locket that contains a hidden note. On the contrary, the film’s plot is full of references to the senses. So The Cat o’ Nine Tails is a fairly ordinary murder mystery, and reportedly Argento’s personal least favourite of his films, but that is not to say that it lacks all sensual – and sensational – pleasures. Even the murders come with uncharacteristic restraint, although the final death (of the killer) points the way to Argento’s more baroque impulses. Yet at the same time the director nervously avoids the genre’s outer edges: the irrational narrative exuberance, extreme stylisation, incursions of the pseudo-scientific and of the supernatural which would all characterise his subsequent work are here notable entirely for their absence. ![]() He races with confidence through the more conventional whodunnit tropes of the giallo genre, pitting police and reporters against a serial murderer whose identity is concealed behind POV shots and extreme close-ups of eyes. ![]() And while there are no actual cats in the film, there is plenty of cat burglary, and a climactic catfight across the tiles of a building’s rooftop.Īrgento, too, is still finding his feet in The Cat o’ Nine Tails. The whip metaphor of the title expressly references the nine separate leads that a pair of journalists follows in trying to identify a killer. ![]() The Cat o’ Nine Tails ( Il Gatto a Nove Code) is director Dario Argento’s second feature, and the middle film in his so-called ‘Animal Trilogy’ (coming between 1970’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and 1971’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |