Tre passi nel delirio

Three Edgar Alan Poe stories, three directors, a genius director, a great director and a director. The top international stars of their day: Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, Terence Stamp, Alain Delon and Brigitte Bardot. The Roger Vadim episode with the two Fondas is quite terrible, Jane with her left over costumes from Barbarella, is always watchable but what a mess. Delon and Bardot are fun to watch but the piece looks more a rehash of one of the weakest Hammer horror flicks than a film signed by the great Louis Malle. However, I wouldn't mind sitting through those turkeys once again for the sheer pleasure of the third segment: Fellini's "Toby Dammit" with a superlative Terence Stamp. Unique, unnerving, jaw dropping, funny, delightful gem of a film.

it is strange to see a film ignoring its artistic virtues. because it is only a puzzle of directors and texts and actors and memories. a sort of experiment. seductive. and full of nostalgia. eccentric. and bizarre. stars, Romanticism, the shadow of Edgar Allen Poe and the mark of directors. it is strange to say what part is most remarkable. because, after the final credits , remains only the drawings in dust. and pieces of old velvet. a good kick to read Poe. again. because, maybe at the first sigh only, the film seems use his work only as pretext. but, like each part of film, it could be an impression.

Three separate stories:

• Skip the first one. Just do it. If you really must ogle the young Jane Fonda, get Barbarella.

• Your call on the second one. Okay, but not memorable.

The third story makes the film. It's "Fellini-esque"! Fellini's wild imagery makes narrative sense (well, sort of), when applied to the story of an addled English actor stumbling around Rome at breakneck speed. The segment also features a startlingly original image of evil (an "Anglican devil," I think that's the Terence Stamp character's phrase). Maybe it's just me, but the segment's conception of the devil is among the spookiest things I've ever seen on film; and when you get right down to it, it makes a lot more theological sense then ugly, scaly guys with tails.

"Spirits of the Dead"(1968) - adaptations of three Edgar Allen Poe stories by three European directors, Roger Vadim's "Metzengerstein" with Jane and Peter Fonda, Louis Malle's "William Wilson" (with Alain Delon and Briget Bardout), and Federico Fellini's "Toby Dammit". The universal opinion is that only Fellini's entry is worth watching and it is indeed, spectacular with Terence Stamp fitting so well in the Fellini's freak show that it is impossible to take your eyes off him. The reason I wanted to see the movie so much was the CD that I bought some time ago - a compilation of some of the most beautiful themes composed by Nino Rota for the films of Federico Fellini. "The Ultimate Best of Federico Fellini & Nino Rota" includes the tunes arranged in the medleys for 16 films directed by Fellini. These are the full orchestrations (as heard in the movies they come from) and just listening to the familiar melodies brings back the memories and the images. There was one track I kept listening to over and over. It was written for the Fellini's episode in the "Tre passi nel delirio" aka "Spirits of the Dead" (1968), "Toby Dammit". The soundtrack for "Toby Dammit" simply stands out among the romantic and poetic gems. It is rich, obsessive and creates uneasy and creepy atmosphere which is quite appropriate for an episode that features a desperate actor (Terence Stamp) in a pact with the devil. Besides the score "Toby Dammit" has plenty of great typically Felliniesque images , an unforgettable ending, and not the least, Terence Stamp who might've played one of his best roles as the famous English actor, drugged and drunk out of his mind who arrived in Rome for the Italian Film Academy Awards ceremony. Toby was also offered the role of Jesus in the Catholic Western but all he remembered that he had been promised a Ferrari for participating in the ceremony and Ferrari he will get...with the ride to hell that looks exactly like Rome at night where every turn takes you to the dead end and the Devil only knows the way out but you will pay him a price...

I found all three films interesting and involving in their own terms. I don't agree with the comments that call Vadim's adaptation a failure - it is certainly not. If anything, it is beautiful to look at and listen to and any film featuring Madam Roger Vadim (Jane Fonda was married to the director at the time) wearing the costumes that were certainly inspired by or even reused from "Barbarella" that was released in the same year, 1968 is worth watching. Vadim changed the short story by transforming a protagonist, 18 years old Baron Frederic Metzengerstein into 22 years old Contessa Frederica but he did not change her character. She is rich, bored, corrupted, and ruthless, a "petty Caligula", until she meets her cousin Wilhelm (played by Jane's brother, Peter Fonda). Making siblings playing cousins in love tells us something (or maybe a lot) about Vadim and his mysterious Slavic soul and reminds about Poe's own dramatic love for his first cousin, Virginia Eliza Clemm, whom he married when she was only 13 and whose death at the age of 25 from tuberculosis could have let to decline of his own mental state and his untimely death less than three years after her.

Poe explores in "William Wilson" very popular in the Art and literature subject of a man and his double that represents his conscience, his dark and hidden side. The short story brings to mind such famous works of literature as Hans Christian Andersen's "The Shadow", Adelbert Von Chamisso's "Peter Schlemiel: The Man Who Sold His Shadow", Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray".

In Louis Malle's short film, Wilson (Alain Delon) confesses his sinful and dreadful life to the priest recalling the outrageous and vicious deeds that have been prevented or disclosed by his exact double whose name is also William Wilson. Two scenes of the short film stand out. The first is a simply chilling Wilson's attempt to perform an autopsy on a living woman and the second – Wilson plays cards, cheating shamelessly, with rich and arrogant Giuseppina (Brigitte Bardot almost unrecognizable in a black wig that does almost impossible – makes her look ugly). While it may be not the best Poe's adaptation and perhaps the weakest of three films in the anthology, two Delons for the price of one is reason enough to see it. I am glad that I finally saw the film that has achieved a cult status with years but is not easily available (I had to wait for several weeks for it from Netflix even after I had bumped it to the top). What started with my interest in the musical score by Rota, ended as a memorable watching experience.

It's interesting that no IMDb commenters seem to have caught Malle's significant homage in "William Wilson."

Malle makes Wilson far more sadistic than Poe's character. In the opening school sequence, Poe's Wilson is, to be sure, a leader of the other students: "the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my disposition, soon rendered me a marked character among my schoolmates, and by slow, but natural gradations, gave me an ascendancy over all not greatly older than myself." Any sadism is, at most, implied: "If there is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a master mind in boyhood over the less energetic spirits of its companions." In Poe, Wilson does not try to strangle his doppelganger, nor is he expelled from the school. He approaches the other's bed at night, apparently sees his own face on the sleeping boy and "passed silently from the chamber, and left at once, the halls of that old academy, never to enter them again."

In Malle's film, Wilson is torturing another student as a snowball fight rages in the background. The doppelganger makes his first appearance by hitting Wilson with a snowball. The snow fight, the torture, the significant hit by a snowball, the expulsion from school are not in Poe's tale.

But all these elements ARE in Jean Cocteau's novel LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES. The snowball fight not only is featured in Jean-Pierre Melville's film of the novel, but Cocteau filmed the scene earlier in his own BLOOD OF A POET. The torture is briefly in Melville's film, but described more fully in the novel: "By the spasmodic flaring of the gas lamp he could be seen to be a small boy with his back against the wall, hemmed in by his captives...One of these...was squatting between his legs and twisting his ears...Weeping, he sought to close his eyes, to avert his head. But every time he struggled, his torturer seized a fistful of gray snow and scrubbed his ears with it." As the snow fight continues, Cocteau's iconic character Dargelos throws a snowball that hits another student and puts in motion the events of the novel/film.

Dargelos is the same sort of malignant leader of his schoolmates as Malle's young Wilson. The headmaster calls his influence on his classmates unhealthy, and after an outrageous act he is expelled from the school. Even more to the point, Dargelos has a doppelganger in the form of the character Agathe. In Melville's film Dargelos and Agathe are played by same person, and their mysterious resemblance is important to the story.

All of these added Cocteau elements are so strong that one assumes that Malle intended viewers to recognize the reference.