Le Parfum de la dame en noir

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (Francesco Barilli 1974) is a beautiful and fascinating film. Like a previous reviewer, it took me 2 projections before I could fully grasp what Barilli had wanted to do and mostly accomplished with this film.

The problem comes from the fact that this if often advertised as a Dario Argento-like Giallo, and it's anything but that. While it's easy to see the visual and atmospheric influence this film had on Argento, The Perfume is much closer to an Antonioni film than it is to other Italian scare flicks. Watch it with this approach in mind and you will be literally hypnotized.

Kudos to the main actress who delivers a great performance in a role that had no precise definition on paper!

Like Barbara Bach, Mimsy Farmer went to Italy and fell in love. She did, however, have a long career in the US, starting with Gidget Goes Hawaiian to a few biker movies. She remained in Italy making films until her divorce, and then moved to France where she continued acting.

This is more a psychological horror film that a true giallo. It was a tale of a woman going mad over unresolved traumas from her childhood. Or, maybe it was a tale of a woman being driven mad for nefarious purposes. It was not totally clear, but there were little clues throughout.

Whatever the case, the ending was a total surprise and nothing led you to expect it.

I'll be the last person on this earth to deny that "The Perfume of the Lady in Black" isn't a breathtakingly beautiful and stylish viewing experience. Quite the contrary, I agree that Francesco Barilli's film is a masterwork of subtly built up suspense and it's also one of the best films ever forcing you to empathize with the leading character. This film contains numerous astonishing camera shots, genuinely creepy musical tunes and hugely impressive decors, but this material greatness makes it all the more difficult to forgive that there's not a lot of coherence or plausibility in the story and that Barelli leaves far too many questions unanswered at the end of the movie. "Perfume etc.." is similar to and clearly inspired by the earliest work of Roman Polanski; most notably "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby". Exactly like in those two cinematic milestones, the plot introduces a seemingly weak and vulnerable female protagonist that suffers from nightmarish hallucinations and haunting memories of her childhood. She, Silvia Hachermann – played by Mimsy Farmer, soon isolates herself from the outside world and notices how her social surrounding, including her boyfriend and friendly neighbors, turn against her. Does these events relate to the voodoo-talk she had with some friends? Or the mysterious circumstances regarding her mother's premature death? Or maybe it's all happening in Silvia's mind alone. Perhaps I was expecting too much of an old-fashioned Italian giallo whereas this film is clearly an occult/psychological thriller, but the slow development of the plot and the absence of a perceptible kind of malice honestly bothered me just a tad bit. After a full hour into the movie, still nothing grueling has occurred and Silvia's inevitably disastrous fate can't be guessed until the very last seconds. The climax comes as a total shock, for sure, but not exactly a satisfying one since absolutely nothing in the development of the plot hinted at such a macabre switch in tones. Nonetheless, "The Perfume of the Lady in Black" is a curious gem of Italian horror cinema, with an overload of talent in front as well as behind the cameras' lenses. It's a demanding film that requires the full attention of all your senses and even then it's likely to confuse you several times. Recommended to well-trained fans of Italian cinema.

Sylvia (Mimsy Farmer), an industrial scientist, is troubled by strange hallucinations related to the tragic suicide of her mother.

After the success of "Rosemary's Baby" (1968), the Italian horror world began to embrace Satanic and occult stories. This is one of them. Director Francesco Barilli took a cue from early Argento and made a giallo with some dark undertones. He previously wrote a script for Umberto Lenzi, but had not directed a feature himself.

The cast may not be well-known outside of Italy, but have appeared in Lenzi, Argento and D'Amato films. One even appeared in the notorious "Salo", and a few starred alongside Daria Nicolodi in a picture. So there is plenty of connection here.

This film is beautifully shot with excellent color and better than average acting. It deserves more recognition than it gets. Wikipedia and IMDb are relatively silent on the film's creation, and even Italian horror historian Luca Palmerini has little more than a sentence to say about it in his book...

It's hard to review gialli that deviate from the normal formula, because if you compare that film to a similar film, you're revealing some of the surprises of the plot. It's okay to compare, say, Strip Nude For Your Killer with Blood and Black Lace, because most people go into these film expecting a gloved or masked mysterious killer and plenty of suspects, but when that's all thrown out of the window, things become difficult. I avoided reading anything about The House With The Laughing Windows for years, and was glad I did so when I finally watched it. I'd recommend doing the same with this film.

The Perfume of the Lady In Black is a strong contender for best looking Giallo ever, as the characters inhabit a world not only of strong primary colours (blue being a prominent colour in everyone's apartments), but also a world where various hues and shades of purple and pink are in abundance. There's also a strong floral theme to both the decoration of apartments and people clothes, with at least one of the characters also having a floral name. Stuffed animals and taxidermy also feature everywhere, and a lot of the time the shots are invaded by outside light sources, like lightening, or a flashing sign. It very much looks like a Peter Greenaway film, only without the OCD.

Silvia, seemingly, has had a pretty rough childhood, with her Naval father often away for months at a time, and her mother having an affair with a nasty looking man who also tries to it on with her. We learn this not so much as flashbacks, but as real physical things happening right in front of Silvia's eyes. Something strange is happening to Silvia, but what could it be?

What doesn't help is when her neighbours talk her into having her palm read by a blind medium in a scene that uses mirrors to great effect. Silvia's troubled childhood comes to light and things start to spiral out of control when she's apparently visited by herself as a child! Things get stranger and stranger, and reality becomes questionable, and I'm only skirting around a lot of the stuff that goes on here to avoid ruining it for the three or so people who'll read this on the IMDB over the next sixty years.

One thing I will say is that not every question is answered by the end of the film, but I think that might have been deliberate. The end of this one makes you question everything that's gone before it, and even question reality in itself. That's not to say it's not without scares either. Or gore. So stick around for that too.