Nuit d'or

'Nuit D'or' (aka) Golden Night (1976) is an oblique, classy neo-noir nightmare confection, replete with a svelte, swivel-eyed, deranged Klaus Kinski prowling the shadowy city streets on an enigmatic, ostensible mission of vengeance; Is he dead? Is he innocent? Who knows? (the writer didn't!) This delightful, and highly stylized film is an enigma, wrapped inside of a cinematic conundrum, and all the better for it! Visually the film is profoundly striking, sharing many similarities with the vintage gialli of Mario Bava; or the deep, chiaroscuro palate of early Fritz Lang. (To be fair, there is a definite grim sensibility of his 'M' crawling through this playful and surreal bacchanal)

This thriller was no big hit, nor in terms of a Klaus Kinski movie neither as a successful seventies thriller. This French-German co-production tells the story of a maniac who survives a suicide attempt and tries to kill his relatives one after another to take his revenge.

The story is mean, but the settings, the photography and the colors are great. The backgrounds consist of dark old houses in Paris, streets at night and surreal colored interiors, like a mixture of the German Edgar Wallace movies in the sixties and Dario Argento's Italian giallos. The colors are really "washed out", and I have never seen such a blurred and pale movie.

There are also some really shocking scenes, like a bound, gagged and hanged schoolgirl in a kitchen room or an old Lady with heavy make-up humiliating a dwarf - scenes like from a Bunuel or Fellini movie. Check out this rather unknown surreal thriller with a fanatic and possessed Klaus Kinski!

The impact of this film is probably due more to the presence of Klaus Kinski than to the efforts of director Serge Moati, although I see the latter is still working albeit in TV and documentaries. This seems to have been one of his rare cinematic opportunities and he certainly gave it a good stab. Basically this is a very simple story of murder and revenge dressed up with some surrealism and Mr Kinski. I was not at all sure a lot of the time just how scripted or improvised some of the actor's contribution was, particularly his excellent work with the young girl. Kinksi towers over this film, dominating every scene he is in and that is most of them. The movie is well shot with some interesting visuals and a crazy sub plot that seems to involve some death cult. It doesn't race along but so unusual are some aspects that our interest is maintained and then, of course, there is the mesmerising performance of that man.

A screenplay which ,all in all,is another update of "Le Comte De Monte Cristo" .A man everybody thought was dead comes back and wants to avenge himself."Nuit D'or" is all form and no content.Although it shows Langesque and German Expressionnismus influence -which Klaus Kinski's presence reinforces-,the screenplay,which remains very loose and unsatisfying is close to Fantomas and thus to Feuillade's works in the silent age (the director,Moati told it so:he wanted a popular cinema a la Fantomas").An extremely interesting cast is wasted :Apart from Kinski,veterans Charles Vanel and Bernard Blier -who both seem ill-at-ease in that context-,Maurice Ronet,Marie Dubois and Anny Duperey as some kind of priestess of a maleficent sect .