Madeleine, anatomia di un incubo

"Madeleine: Anatomy of a Nightmare" features Camille Keaton as an American living abroad in Italy with her older husband. She is traumatized by a miscarriage she's suffered, and is plagued by intense nightmares that seem to be related to the event. As expected, some psychological unraveling (or something like it) follows.

This little-seen psychological horror flick is really more of a chamber drama featuring various hallucinatory images that range from trite to genuinely creepy; these visuals manifest in dream sequences experienced by Keaton's character as she is romancing two different men (aside from her husband, who seems oddly unbothered by her affairs), and sometimes in brief intercuts that occur while her character is awake; in the latter instances, there is little context and the sequences appear to be random more than symbolic. It is this precise disjointedness that characterizes "Madeleine," though it's not a complete failure.

The film does manage to be engrossing even while the narrative feels oblique and arbitrary, and this is largely because the cinematography and visuals are more or less effective, and the film also functions as a time capsule of gaudy '70s European style. Keaton's performance is overwritten by bad dubbing, and, as is the case with most Italian horror fodder of this period, the dialogue feels disingenuous, sometimes absurd, and at times laughable.

Despite its shortcomings, the film does have a clever ending that is borderline-Hitchcockian, and I was caught off guard by it. Even still, "Madeleine: Anatomy of a Nightmare" does not quite work as well as it should. The meandering narrative punctuated by a number of LSD-esque visuals leaves the viewer wanting something a bit more, as none of the themes really coalesce. The conclusion, to some degree, acts as a cop-out to fill in the gaps that precede it. That being said, it is worth watching for fans of Camille Keaton, as well as anyone with a curiosity or interest in 1970s Italian psychological horror--it is certainly strange. 6/10.

This psychological thriller follows the troubles of Madeleine (Camille Keaton, Cosi avete fatto a Solange), a young woman married to the much older Franz (Silvano Tranquilli, La Gatta in calore), a ship broker fond of parapsychology. Madeleine lives through a schizophrenic mood, "an evil thing that appears and disappears", where mixed with reality she has nightmares and visions of harassment by black-caped women with colorful whigs, a doll's funeral and a dreadful car accident during a race.

In their luxurious summer villa in Rome, cared by a whole staff of servants (the butler Giovanni, Nando Sarlo, Carnalita; the gardener Antonio, Gualtiero Rispoli, Amori morbosi di una contessina; the maid, Maria Teresa Piaggio, L'Ossessa), Madeleine multiplies her love affairs under the comprehensive look of her complacent husband: with Thomas (Pier Maria Rossi, Quelli che contano), a young Swiss student in philosophy, with his girlfriend Mary (Paola Senatore, Il Fiore dai petali d'acciaio), and even with her husband's son Louis (Riccardo Salvino, Il Tuo Vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave).

Where is the truth among the chaotic thoughts of her mind? Is her past "a fantasy or a reality"? Could she find the way to free herself and find a more peaceful life with her real self? Does her husband involved in strange experiments really want to help her? Could she be harmful to her entourage or to herself? Through this initiatory and erotic journey, the film will help us to find the key to the truth embedded in Madeleine's mind. (Viewed in English 1h42 version.)

This movie starts with a young woman (Camille Keaton) having a strange nightmare where she's chased through the woods by strange people in psychedelic-colored fright wigs. Back in the "real" world she picks up a hitch-hiking male student and takes him back to her villa for some nude swimming and hot sex, while an older relative or lover(?), played Silvan Tranquino, spies on them. They go for a ride on her speedboat and there's a flashback to (another?) a former lover who was apparently killed in an auto racing accident (cue the usual gratuitous 70's Italian auto racing footage). There's some more hot sex on the boat and a slow-motion, boob-bouncing nude horseback-riding scene before the couple hit a trendy discotheque. Then it's back to the villa for a swinging party where the seemingly dead former lover shows up with another woman (Paola Senatore). The movie only gets exponentially weirder from there, finally culminating in an ending that is kind of like "The Wizard of Oz" on really bad acid.

It's hard to classify this movie. At first, it seems like a Gothic horror, but it lacks a lot of clearly supernatural elements. The excellent visuals and music suggest a giallo, but it really lacks the mystery thriller elements (and the large body count) of that genre. It COULD be considered a sex film--the gorgeous Keaton is often clad scantily or not at all and the incredibly sexy future porn star Senatore does a wild striptease. But the actual sex is pretty tame (especially compared to the same director, Robert Mauri's, unbelievable raunchfest "Le Porno Killers" a few years later), and a potential lesbian scene between Keaton and Senatore is tragically aborted (Oh, the humanity!).

This movie doesn't make a lot of sense frankly and there are long stretches where nothing is happening. The ending doesn't entirely work either. Still it has very good visuals and music and it kept my interest simply because it is so unpredictably bizarre. Far from being a bad actress, Camille Keaton is a mesmerizing presence. She was not only a stunning beauty, but she has an amazing face that is alternately ethereally innocent and seductively sinister (she's best known in America, unfortunately, for the notorious grindhouse "classic" "I Spit on Your Grave", but check her out also in "What Have You Done to Solange?" and "Tragic Ceremony"). Silvano Traquino was a very underrated Italian character actor who appeared excellent gialli like "The Bloodstained Butterfly" and "Smile Before Death". And as for Paola Senatore--well, how can I put this. She could no doubt give a dead man a raging erection.

This is very hard-to-find and currently only available in Italian. But if that doesn't dissuade you too much, definitely check it out.

Roberto Mauri ("Eva, la Venere selvaggia") was not a great director and this "Madeleine, Anatomia Di Un Incubo" is not even his most famous movie. This is a rare and obscure film, it has some nice ideas but the director doesn't follow them very fine and so we get a confusing plot. The end of this ambitious movie is quite original and interesting tough, if we think this is from 1974. I recommend to see it only for the surprising end. There is the usual Camille Keaton ("Day of the Woman", "Cosa avete fatto a Solange?"), beautiful woman but mediocre actress.

My vote is 6 on 10.