La muchacha que sabía demasiado

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)

Well, this is a classic worth watching for film buffs interested in the first giallo movie ever made (if we ignore the Hitchcock precedents). Giallo films are purposely simple and gory and filled with dramatic camera-work. In a sense they play off the style, one after another, becoming increasingly about the genre rather than movies that stand on their own. It's like slasher films these days, or maybe even zombie films, where you watch knowing what you're going to get, and that's exactly what you want.

Even the director, Mario Bava, admitted openly this was a silly film with great cinematography. That sums it up. He couldn't even remember the two leading actors. There is a bizarre, cheesy, low-budget thriller aspect to the whole enterprise that makes it fun in a campy way even if you aren't a giallo fan. But it's not good in a traditional sense.

Even the main premise is old as the hills--a serial killer is stabbing women in the back in alphabetical order by last name. This is oddly confused in the plot, because woman C was killed a decade before and we see the next woman killed before our eyes. But the heroine's last name begins with D, as if she is going to be next, and indeed she finds her picture in a file at the end suggesting she really is next in line. So what letter did the woman killed before our eyes have?

One of the weird aspects to the plot might explain this--the woman accidentally smokes a marijuana cigarette at the beginning of the movie, and we come to realize she might have dreamed the whole episode. Never mind there are other deaths and mishaps that seem rather real. And a handsome Italian doctor in love with her.

It's also weird in a funny way that the lead woman is an Italian actress playing an American visitor in Rome. Naturally her Italian is excellent. And the whole movie is centered around the Spanish Steps, which are often completely (completely) empty, not a person around. Adds to the surrealism. There are creaky horror film conventions like the shadowy man seen through the window, or the overdecorated house with creepy lights where the woman is staying, alone of course.

What's to recommend this? The photography. The noir influence (and the Roger Corman one, I suppose) is clear. And beautiful. Now if the story and acting made some modicum of sense we'd be set for a classic over-the-top scary movie. Yes, it's important as a giallo example, but don't overblow the result.

THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (Mario Bava - Italy 1962).

I finally got to watch this in the way of the relatively cheap French DVD-release LA FILLE QUI EN SAVANT TROP, which includes Bava's original Italian cut as well as the American cut (titled THE EVIL EYE), which has a completely different ending and excludes some references to marijuana, as well as a stronger emphasis on the romantic plot line between the two leads John Saxon and Letícia Román, reputedly to make the film more marketable for children(!), which I find impossible to comprehend, but apparently this was what U.S. distributors had in mind. Furthermore, a bombastic Les Baxter score was added, a common treatment for most U.S releases of Italian films in that period, instead of the charming jazzy score in the Italian version (and a very catchy theme song).

Letícia Román stars as a young American woman who loves reading mystery novels. In fact, she's seen reading a detective novel called "The Knife" when we meet her on the plane. She plans to stay with her aged aunt, but one evening, the old lady dies before her eyes. When she stumbles upon the streets, she witnesses a woman stabbed to death in front of the Spanish Steps and suspects it's the work of a serial killer. Going unconscious, she awakens in the hospital and tries to convince everyone she witnessed a murder, but since no body was found, nobody believes her. She does convince a young doctor (John Saxon) to help her investigate the murders, and they soon find out a series of murders was committed ten years ago, the "Alphabet Murders." She realizes that previous victims had surnames beginning A, B and C and, because her name starts with a D, she could be the next victim.

This is often cited as the first Giallo, that specific Italian breed of thriller, named after the line of books with yellow covers, hence Giallo, Italian for yellow. THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH basically contains most core elements attributed to this particular cinematic sub-genre, with the prime motive of the helpless heroine subjected to all kinds of dangers and physical as well as mental abuse. Nora Davis is seen reading a Giallo novel on the airplane; the foreigner as vulnerable outsider in Italy; an obsession with travel and tourism, the first murder takes place before the Spanish Steps, but the film shows countless tourist hotspots throughout Rome, and the fascination with fashion and style or the jet-set in general. Although it would take Bava's own BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964), lavishly shot in colour, to introduce the more elaborate, lengthy and - above all - much more violent and bloody killing sequences which would typify many later Giallos, carried out by the archetype Giallo killer with gloves and black raincoat. Wide-eyed Letícia Román is the kind of innocent looking girl with just the right combination of sexiness and innocence to pass as a very likable heroine, perhaps a touch too innocent and certainly worlds away from the sexually liberated female in later Giallos.

Early sixties' fashions and habits abound, such as Nora Davis' exuberant snake leather jacket. There's also a lot of smoking on the plane and later on Nora condones Marcello's smoking habits claiming it's bad for his health, which is presented as the audience is supposed to laugh at her "preposterous" observation, instead of Marcello's smoking habit. Typical role reversal. There's also the running gag with marijuana. In the first scene, the man next to Nora on the plane turns out to be a marijuana smuggler, but on arrival in Rome, the always alert Italian police is quick to take this character into custody. Perhaps Bava's way of saying the Italian police is always on top of these issues and malicious elements from abroad are dealt with in proper fashion.

Masterfully shot in black-and-white, the film doesn't contain the outrageous imagery of THE BODY AND THE WHIP (1963) and BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, both sumptuously shot in colour, and certainly is much lighter in tone with the sadistic bloodletting so typical of that other pivotal entry in the development of the Giallo, BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, largely lacking. Originally, it was conceived as a romantic comedy and - hence the title - as a light parody on Hitchcock's work, but Bava decided to put a larger emphasis on the more horrific elements of the story, but doesn't lose sight of the plot development, which I always found a major demerit of BLOOD AND BLACK LACE. A bit old-fashioned perhaps by American or British standards, but combining these elements with a more typical Italian tone, Bava does create something new here. Nevertheless, the tone remains conspicuously breezy and that's probably why this film turns out to be such an endearing mixture of clever Hitchcockian suspense and the occasional comedy relief. Perhaps a bit too cutesy and innocent for many Bava-fans, but I found his a thoroughly enjoyable film.

Camera Obscura --- 8/10

Coming out in 1963, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is not as ground-breaking as other Mario Bava efforts but it's still every bit as stylish and suspenseful. The plot of the film, convoluted and filled with twists and red herrigns galore, anticipates the giallo cycle of the late 60's. Of course one year later the director would practically define the style with Blood and Black Lace, introducing other genre staples like the black-gloved killer, the garish colours and the gore but that doesn't detract from the ifluential status of this proto-giallo.

As the title imples, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is with one foot firmly set in Hitchcock territory, but whereas Hitch films had a tendency of trying to be too many things at once (little bits of comedy, romance etc) something I always considered distracting, Bava allows nothing to come between him and his goal: a suspenseful horror thriller.

The chiaroscuro photography is simply beautiful to look at, light and shadow play off each other in expressive ways, not unlike film-noir. Leticia Roman's face is at times only half-lit to stress her confusion, while in other set-pieces dark figures stand out against fully lit backgrounds. Bava is famous for being one of the best visual directors in the history of the medium for good reason. His black and white work is as good as his colour films.

Minor quibbles I had with the film include that many scares turn out to be false, the first person narration (another film-noir influence) and the implied possibilities in the ending *was it all a dream?* Leticia Roman and John Saxon hit it off with great chemistry, the DP work is fantabulous, the opening 15-20 minutes leading up to the first murder are among the best 20 minutes in 60's horror and this an all around accomplished horror film that deserves every fan's attention.

This Bava film (whose title is clearly a nod to Alfred Hitchcock), credited with being the first giallo, was also one I could have watched earlier – having long considered picking up the now-OOP Image DVD, not to mention via a DivX copy I've owned for some time – but thought it best to wait for this definitive edition (complete with a Tim Lucas Audio Commentary).

Anyway, I don't know whether it's because I preceded it with Riccardo Freda's delirious and luridly-colored THE GHOST (1963) or the fact that the film retains an incongruous light touch (and leisurely pace) throughout – including the heroine's ruse to ensnare her stalker by the unlikely methods adopted in the pulp thrillers she avidly reads – but, while I enjoyed it a good deal, it felt to me like an altogether minor work from the maestro! Similarly, the murder sequences – a stylized highlight of later giallos – are pretty mild here. Still, Bava's consistent virtues – as a director – for creating tremendous suspense and the fantastic lighting and crisp cinematography that come with his intimate knowledge of the camera are well in evidence.

The first half-hour is pretty busy plot-wise, as all sorts of things happen to the charming leading lady (the striking-looking Leticia Roman, daughter of Oscar-winning costume designer Vittorio Nino Novarese): first she gets involved with a drug-dealer, then the old woman she was to live with dies on her, after which she roams outside in a frenzied state to be held up by a small-time crook and witness a knife-murder across Rome's famous Piazza di Spagna! Her disoriented frame-of-mind is effectively rendered by Bava through simple expedients, such as distorting lenses and focus-pulling. Incidentally, the foreigner-investigating-a-series-of-murders-in-Italy plot line prefigures such notable Dario Argento films as THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970) and DEEP RED (1975). Interestingly, since there was no yardstick for the genre as yet, Bava relied on such familiar film noir trappings as first-person narration to push the story forward.

The film also features a young John Saxon in his first of many "Euro-Cult" outings as Roman's boyfriend and Valentina Cortese as her wealthy, eccentric landlady; the script provides plenty of suspects, but the final revelation comes as a surprise (though, in hindsight, it seems pretty obvious) – and this is followed by a lengthy explanation of the motive behind the killings, which became a standard 'curtain' for this type of thriller. There's an amusing final gag involving a packet of cigarettes and a priest, while Adriano Celentano's catchy pop song "Furore" serves as a motif during the course of the film.

Additional footage was prepared for the U.S. version (snippets of which are present in the accompanying trailer), while the title was changed to THE EVIL EYE and Roberto Nicolosi's score replaced with that of Les Baxter (as had already proved to be the case with Bava's BLACK Sunday [1960])! It would have been nice to have had this cut of the film (which is said to stress the comedy even more) included for the sake of comparison – and it had actually been part of the original announcement for "The Mario Bava Collection Vol. 1", along with the similar AIP variants for BLACK Sunday itself and BLACK SABBATH (1963), but these were subsequently retracted! Incidentally, I now regret not renting the alternate version of THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH on DVD-R while I was in Hollywood – but, back then, I wanted first to watch the film as the director intended.

In John Saxon's otherwise entertaining interview on the Anchor Bay DVD (in which he recounts his experience working on this film and other stuff he made during his tenure in Italy), he erroneously mentions that he worked with director Lucio Fulci – whose name he even mispronounces as Luciano! Despite there being a considerable amount of dead air throughout Tim Lucas' Audio Commentary, it does a wonderful job at detailing the film's background – plus offering his own take on events: it does prove enlightening on several aspects of the film I had initially overlooked, such as how the costumes were carefully chosen to define character or the impressive contribution given by Dante di Paolo (George Clooney's uncle!) as the dour journalist investigating the murder spree. Surprisingly, Lucas also mentions that some of Bava's camera moves are more elaborate and graceful as seen in THE EVIL EYE (which makes me want to see it even more!) – but, then, important dialogue stretches heard in the Italian original involving the creepily asexual voice of the killer were bafflingly left out of the American version!!