Sequestro di persona

Kidnapping in Sardinia: Atmospheric kidnapping shocker with Franco Nero and Charlotte Rampling

The young foreign student Christina Fisher (Charlotte Rampling) is with her boyfriend Francesco Marras (Pierluigi Apra) for the first time on his home island of Sardinia. They want to go on vacation and visit Francesco's parents (Margarita Lozano and Ennio Balbo). Suddenly Francesco is kidnapped by bandits in front of Christina. She wants to inform the police immediately, but is dissuaded from doing so by Francesco's parents and his childhood friend Gavino (Franco Nero). The kidnappers want such a large ransom that Signore Marras is forced to sell a sought-after seaside property to real estate shark Osilio (Frank Wolff). In the end, maybe that's all it's about? When Christina finally informs the police, things come to a dramatic head. But Gavino also has a score to settle with the island's powerful...

Shot in the blazing Sardinian sun, this film by Gianfranco Mingozzi still makes you shiver. It was released in Italian cinemas in 1968 and is therefore a forerunner of the great wave of mafia films from 1972 onwards. It was not shown in West German cinemas until 1973. Atmospherically dense, the word mafia isn't mentioned once! The islanders seem to know exactly what to do in a disaster like this. They don't seem to know any different. Scary and fascinating!

In a supporting role is Steffen Zacharias (1927-1989), who was born in Hamburg to Greek parents and who would appear in a number of Cinecitta productions in the following years. For the two-time EUROPEAN FILM AWARD winner (Swimming Pool, 2003 / 45 Years, 2015) Charlotte Rampling (*1946) this film was one of her first leading roles.

Recommended!

The only other Mingozzi movie I had watched was the notorious if atypical Nunsploitationer FLAVIA, THE HERETIC (1974); this is a similarly serious effort to treat the kidnapping racket that was apparently rife in Sardinia at the time – in this respect, it is only borderline "Euro-Cult", still, the opportunity to be controversial was not shunned (as can be seen from the very first scene in which a car gratuitously smashes into a herd of sheep, mowing down one and crippling another!). The film starts with the abduction of the son of an eminent member of society while he is taking a country-side trip in his car (accompanied by a foreign student, played by Charlotte Rampling); the odd way it all happens, with almost a business-like symbiosis between criminals (hidden away in the mountains) and victim, perplexes the girl (who is left behind). Of course, she tries to dig into the matter but finds nothing but opposition – from authorities, locals and even the man's own family and best friend Franco Nero! Eventually, it transpires that the whole was an elaborate land-grabbing scheme – with the strings being pulled by one of their own (i.e. the landowners); even so, when he gets too big for his boots – since the man starts eying not just land ripe for grazing (which he used to sell for peanuts to the bandits) but seaside property for the raising of hotels and such, his own collaborators turn on him!; the latter had actually been alerted to this fact by Nero, who arranges for himself to be kidnapped in order to rout the guilty party – though, when embarking on this mission, he was unaware that his pal had innocently fallen in a skirmish between kidnappers and Police. The finale, then, sees the villain literally being 'taken for a ride' by Nero and the dead boy's family…with Rampling once again stranded unable to comprehend a way of life still so primitive and obviously different to her own (which is the true raison d'etre of the film – apart from the human/political drama being depicted, with its expected cinematic interpolations of suspense, action and even a little romance).

Maybe there are minutiae of Italian culture and history in the 1960s that I'm not privy to that would help to elucidate certain aspects of the picture, but even if that's true it would only go so far in smoothing over the rough spots I recognize in short order. The kidnapping scheme we're greeted with in the opening scene seems specious, and it's accompanied by animal cruelty that in this case strikes me as something that would be hard to fake. The scene writing seems fundamentally disordered and sometimes purely flailing, a sense worsened by sequencing, direction, and cinematography that's often dubious, unimpressive, or downright unconvincing. As a prime example, consider how quasi-protagonist Christina switches on a dime in early scenes between hard-nosed frustration and determination, and care-free frivolity; even if we assume she's just putting on a brave face, the disparity is curious. The plot development frankly feels altogether scattered, to the point that the narrative itself comes across as weak and thin even as a complete tale is told. So it is, too, with the characters and dialogue - there is substance here, yet it doesn't feel like it. Gavino in particular is written with no rhyme or reason I can discern, and there's one or two characters who as far as I can tell are never particularly identified with a place in the story.

Though I'm not entirely sure why, I had high expectations before I sat to watch 'Sequestro di persona.' Those expectations have not been met. There are times when I think the acting is admirable, not least from Charlotte Rampling and perhaps Franco Nero. Too often, however, particularly where supporting parts are concerned, performances seem plainly overdone; I trust this, too, is attributable to the guiding hand of director Gianfranco Mingozzi. There's no consistency in the performances, and even if there were, the material the cast have to work with is so flimsy in both writing and realization that their skills amount to nothing here. As if to illustrate the point, at the one-hour mark we're treated to the infusion of a romantic element, as terribly contrived as one could ever be in that medium where A Man and A Woman sharing the screen must always result in their pairing. More than that, the accompanying sex scene is so laughably, amateurishly shot that on this basis alone it joins the ranks of some of the most pathetically un-sexy love scenes I've ever seen (to wit: 'BloodRayne' in 2005, 'Fatal passion' in 1995, 'Vampyres' in 1974). By this point, too, the narrative writing has become so lackadaisical that I'm not even sure what's going on any more, and I wonder if the cast knew, either; the kidnapping that kicked it off has become a mere footnote.

For as floundering as the feature is, it becomes soporific; I had the foresight to pause, but I actually did fall asleep at one point. I detect the possibility of thrills in how this is written, but as it is no excitement ever manifests, and I've all but totally checked out such that the climax doesn't bear a fraction of the impact that it should have. Why was it, again, that I watched this in the first place? I think it was Rampling's involvement that drew me in; I guess this proves again that even broadly reliable stars sometimes participate in bad movies. I at least like the filming locations. There were good ideas somewhere in here; too bad they don't meaningfully produce results. Clearly there are folks out there who find 'Sequestro di persona' a captivating, satisfying crime thriller. I'm hugely disappointed, and when all is said and done, I for one don't think this is very good at all.

ISLAND OF CRIME is an early Italian crime flick shot on sunny Sardinia, where British tourist Charlotte Rampling is travelling with her boyfriend before his sudden kidnapping. Franco Nero is the kindly stranger who helps her in her quest to rescue him, and it all gets very murky and conspiratorial along the way. This well-shot movie makes good use of the physical presence of the actors, but I found it limited in comparison to gialli of the era, and the real-life animal cruelty is a bit unforgiveable.

A real oddity, this one! A would-be cross between a violent crime thriller (shootouts and kidnappings on the island of Sardinia) and a National Geographic documentary (rugged scenery and peasant customs). To make it even more confusing, 60s style icon Charlotte Rampling looks as if she'd just wandered in from an episode of Absolutely Fabulous. Mind you, she does look gorgeous. Alas, when I saw it, her love scene with Latino hunk Franco Nero was ignominiously snipped by censors at the Romanian Cinematheque. (Where else would you see this movie?) Its director, Gianfranco Mingozzi, ascended to Eurotrash heaven with his 1974 'nympho nun' opus Flavia The Heretic.