Des Teufels Seligkeit

I saw this film in Italian without the benefit of English dubbing or English subtitles (and even without Italian subtitles). Nevertheless, having seen six other Salvatore Samperi films it wasn't too hard to follow it as it develops many of the same themes as his other works--incestuous longings, sexual perversity, dark tragi-comedy, along with an almost overwhelming cinematic stylization and musical score.

Lou Castel plays a teenager who is seemingly physically handicapped, but is perhaps only mentally ill. After enduring a series of shock treatments in the prologue and (seemingly) confined to a wheelchair, he comes to stay with his aunt and uncle (Lisa Gastoni and Gabriele Ferzetti), and an incestuous attraction soon grows between him and the aunt, much to the consternation of the uncle. Castel was a very promising actor in the late 60's whose career was unfortunately derailed by his leftist political leanings. He does a good job here, managing to appear both genuinely mentally disturbed AND charismatically attractive. Ferzetti seemed to get stereotyped in these "twisted Italian family" type films. (In his most memorable film I've seen, he plays a lonely father who gets seduced by his daughter's best friend AND then his own daughter). Gastoni started out in typical voluptuous 60's eye candy roles, but starting with this film, turned into a very daring actress in middle-age (when I'm sure she still never got kicked out of anyone's bed for eating crackers). She and Samperi would team up again for the equally dark and disturbing film "Scandalo".

Samperi meanwhile is perhaps THE most under-appreciated Italian director. I've yet to see one of his films that was legitimately released with English subtitles (as opposed to completely in Italian, horribly dubbed into English, and/or a substandard bootleg). Still, his work is quite interesting. He does have a strange fascination with quasi-incest, but that seemed to be a general thing in Italian films of that era (besides, the Italian actors of that era sure made incest look very appealing . . .). And Samperi adds a twisted ending to this particular "comedy" that I won't give away here, but was probably even more controversial than the incest in Catholic Italy in the late 60's. This is worth seeing, even in Italian.

Strange like all the films with Lou Castel. He played only annoying, irritating characters like in "Fists in the Pocket" and "A bullet for the general", again in this "Grazie zia". Lisa Gastoni is gorgeous. Gabriele Ferzetti is the same as in almost all his movies. The first film directed by Salvatore Samperi, who would do many more productions with erotic subject. The music by Ennio Morricone is great.

Samperi's directorial debut is also the first film of his I've watched and it seems that his other films - culminating in MALIZIA (1973), which made an international star of Laura Antonelli - are more or less along the same art-house erotica lines with the added benefit of having, at least initially, a decent array of international performers appearing in them. Italian cinema of the 1960s and 1970s yielded several obscure gems and, while this is certainly not one of its shining examples, it is intriguing enough to warrant at least one viewing.

Leading man Lou Castel, repeating his brooding, handicapped hero act from Marco Bellocchio's FIST IN HIS POCKET (1965), is an ungrateful, mischievous, wheelchair-bound teenager who is hopelessly infatuated with his sensual aunt Lisa Gastoni, much to the chagrin of her journalist fiancée Gabriele Ferzetti. The three actors acquit themselves well enough under the circumstances given that the material is rather too thin (and, in hindsight, rather pretentious and not terribly compelling either) to sustain even a moderately long film such as this one. Still, the film's depiction of the tragic downward spiral their lives take once the two relatives give in to their baser instincts makes for some powerful if mildly titillating footage. The ubiquitous Ennio Morricone contributes yet another typically quirky and effective score which, given the film's adult theme, ironically relies much on children's vocals.