La donna scarlatta

French-Italian co-production (in French with subtitles) stars Monica Vitti as a perfume factory owner in Paris who loses everything to her scheming lover and commercial manager. She contemplates suicide before deciding killing him might be more satisfying. A featherbrained piece of fluff from director Jean Valère, sexy at times and great eye-candy, but nothing more. Vitti--who, from some angles, resembles Barbra Streisand in a blonde wig--is charming picking up a strange man on the street and telling him her plans over lunch at the Eiffel Tower; however, her sojourns with members of a rock group (dancing and getting high) are silly and just take up time on the clock. ** from ****

I stand to be corrected but I think it probably true to say that neither Monica Vitti nor Michelangelo Antonioni were ever quite as effective separately as they were together.

Here she is directed by someone named Jean Valere in what is essentially a vehicle for this mercurial, enigmatic and utterly enchanting artiste. Unfortunately the film itself is absurd, trivial, shallow and a complete waste of her talents. The same comment might easily apply to her co-star Maurice Ronet. He prophesied that he would never again be given a role to match that of Alain Leroy in Louis Malle's underrated masterpiece 'Le Feu Follet' of 1963 and he was, alas, absolutely right! As a rat Robert Hossein plays the kind of role he can do in his sleep. Signorina Vitti proved to be as equally adept at Comedy as she was at Tragedy but she is fighting a losing battle here. Thanks to Valere's insipid direction, the long-awaited scene where she exacts revenge on the man who has wronged her is, like the film itself, a damp squib.

After a gap of sixteen years she and Antonioni made 'The Mystery of Oberwald' based on Cocteau's 'Eagle has Two heads' and showed that the old magic was still there.

02/02/22. Farewell Monica Vitti. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

i found a copy of this on the old fletcher video label its a lost classic engaging story fantastic acting monica vitti looks stunning as is the photography lovely lighting editing nothing to offend anyone just a film you can sit back and watch and enjoy pity they can't make them like this no more a euro classic.

The film is a delightful comedy giving Monica Vitti the chance to do what she does best. She has a twinkle in her eye as she handles men. She isn't lost for long when things don't work out.

They don't make stars like her anymore. She plays a confident sexy woman on her own in Paris while keeping her chic Dior clothes on. She is not a bimbo or a teenager but a free spirited woman enjoying herself. Look at her dance on the nightclub. She is gorgeous!

The film is typical of European movies of the time. Not much happening but plenty of style and with all the games grown up men and women played. It's a kind of a sophisticated comedy they don't make any longer.

Lightweight but colorful fluff about an attractive Italian young woman (Monica Vitti) who is jilted by her French lover/business partner (Robert Hossein) and goes away to Paris with the intention of committing suicide but then thinks better of it and decides to bump the latter off instead. In the meantime, to curb her boredom, she picks up a marine salvage expert (Maurice Ronet) but immediately dumps him after divulging all her plans to him during a romantic dinner atop the Eiffel Tower. Somehow, while posing as a Swiss journalist, she gets entangled with a New York correspondent (a woefully wasted Claudio Brook), a shady Spaniard and the dope-addled manager of a French beat group; the latter perform a couple of awfully dated pop tunes and Brook's presence in a nightclub immediately brought to mind the similar but infinitely more wicked sequence which brilliantly concludes Luis Bunuel's SIMON OF THE DESERT (1965) in which Brook had the title role.

Frankly, I had never heard of this one before it was pointed out to me at the local DVD rental store (via an Italian-dubbed version on R2 DVD) but the eclectic cast and a promise of a dash of psychedelia enticed me to give it a chance. Well, while it's certainly nothing I'd call remotely essential, it's quite a nice way to kill 90 minutes: Monica Vitti's classical beauty and charm is the film's ace card as she's in virtually every scene in various fetching Christian Dior outfits, but Michel Colombier's bubbly Morriconesque score (including a recurring mournful ballad) also makes quite an impression. While the names in the credits of his regular producer (Andre Genoves) and screenwriter (Paul Gegauff) should perhaps have alerted me to it, director Claude Chabrol's amusing uncredited cameo as a lift attendant on the Eiffel Tower took me completely by surprise.