Les maîtres

I saw this under the title The Masters on video in the UK. I've seen a lot of Italian movies from this time and if you allow for the limitations of dubbing and budget this film is actually pretty special. The idea of one man manipulating a whole population of a small town is brilliantly handled, and acted by James Mason. Franco Nero and Jennifer O Neal both give decent performances as pawns in a much larger conspiracy. It also has some great inexplicable moments, the frozen bodies on the motorbike, the revelation of what James Mason keeps in his backgarden, the superstitions of the townspeople. This all adds to the intrigue of this fascinating film. Somewhere between exploitation and art this film represents just what I personally look for in Italian movies from the 70's. Recommended, but not for everyone.

A strange little film set entirely in an isolated Italian township. A young female teacher turns up and is played by SCANNERS starlet Jennifer O'Neill. A creepy guy begins harassing her on the bus and is later found dead, and she's suspected. Meanwhile, the townsfolk seem to be hiding a conspiracy of silence. Very little actually happens in this mood piece, although I suppose it's of one with old westerns like HIGH NOON and SHANE with locals showing collective weakness. James Mason and Franco Nero are typically good value in support.

A young and free minded schoolteacher (Jennifer O'Neill) is relegated in the far south of Sicily, where she quickly discovers the picturesque local habits: corpses begin to add up in front of her, spectacularly staged on the town place, some of them with "a flower in their mouth". While mandolin serenades happen to greet each event, how could she decipher the mystery among people silent and standstill for ages? Unlike the usual giallo scheme, the unknown killer here seems to protect and not to threaten her. But could the honor crimes of these "people of respect" be the pretense of a kind of manipulation around some big real estate project, which she should be the "useful idiot" for? Perhaps her lover (Franco Nero) will give her the clue; unless it would be her landlord (James Mason), a rich but declining patriarch. A dialogue with the local senator (Claudio Gora) in the ruins of an old Greek theater sums up the situation: she wants the truth, but for him it doesn't exist and above all can't never be told. Secrets will have to be dug out, even in the past, until heavy rains could come to cover all hints of evil. For her, she will have the choice "to leave, to live with the strong, or to stay miserable", or perhaps to lead her own way like an Aeschylean heroin, even if she should end "in an empty tomb like a holy scrap", like sadly the writer of this story who shall be later killed by the mafia.

I don't usually write reviews as existing ones have already covered all major points, nevertheless i think this film deserves better.

It's advertised as mystery/Giallo so i was expecting something shallow and entertaining but the film kept lingering in my brain for some time.

I kept discovering layer upon layer of ideas and that's what very good movies do to me. I realised that i had completely misjudged it and at last it hit me.

This isn't a film about some movie hero solving a mystery and bringing the culprit to justice, this is about the making of a hero.

A real, flawed person like we all are, finds herself in the midst of mystery and murder with nobody daring to stand up to the villain behind it; so ultimately a decision has to be taken.

Bow down like the others did or fight against all odds risking your life, and that's the moment that a person has to take a stance.

Few choose to fight, so a hero is born.

Nobody - and I do really mean nobody - could make suspenseful, ultimately strange, and politically relevant thrillers like the Italians during the 1970s! This "Flower in his Mouth", for instance, is a uniquely gripping, convoluted and truly original motion picture, brought to an even higher quality-level by great performances and another staggering soundtrack by the one and only Ennio Morricone.

I could easily fill three pages with just the plot description but will stick to a short summary. Elena Bardi arrives in a secluded town community in Sicily to become the new schoolteacher. The gap between the rich and the poor couldn't be bigger in this town, and even though she's embraced by the rich, Eleni immediately shows care and sympathy for the poor and struggling families that cannot even send their children to school. Also shortly after her arrival, Elena gets publicly harassed by a man who approached her on the bus already. One day later that same man is found murdered and placed on a chair in the middle of the town's square with a flower in his mouth. According to the old Sicilian code, this means he was killed for offending a beautiful flower and thus implies somebody in town guards over Elena. From then, she's feared by the eminent people, and she uses this power to help the poor.

"Flower in his Mouth" features great roles for Jennifer O'Neill and the always reliable Franco Nero, and a downright powerhouse performance by James Mason, as the seemingly kind town's patriarch. Many sequences are complex, and I even found the last 10-15 minutes almost incomprehensible, but the film is eerily compelling and hypnotizing to look at. The many moments during Elena Bardi is gazed at by hundreds of silently judging eyes of townsfolk are hauntingly tense; - especially because they are guided by the mesmerizing tunes of Morricone's score.