Senso '45

A film by Tinto Brass, the purveyer of 70s-style soft porn, all stockings and suspenders, swaying boobs, bent over as$es. It belongs to another era, before video and DVD, before the freeze frame and the chapter selection. You'd have to sit and watch the titillation unfold, unable to speed things up or cut to the action.

That said, the women are far removed from the hard, anonymous, blonde Croydon-facelifts of hardcore, they have a bit of va-va-vooom! Some of the couplings did put me in mind of the school librarian being chatted up by the hopeful deputy head, it's that sort of world.

This film is set in Venice in the dying months of the Second World War. It has an enjoyable European sensibility that is refreshing and some of the photography of wartime Venice is lovely, especially the dawn shots, which are often used to great effect in war films, the only respite from human cruelty and betrayal, a vivid stripping back to essentials.

The story is about an aristocratic woman (Anna Galiena, very good) falling for a young blond brute of a Nazi, cheating on her husband. It's all very straightforward. Generally you'd think you couldn't go wrong with a classy sex orgy featuring Nazi uniforms, cocaine and blow jobs, but thanks to the composer - Ennio Morricone no less - using oboes and trumpets to fashion a comical, inquisitive little tune better suited to the playout credits of Miss Marple Investigates on Sunday afternoon, they manage to...

I can't officially recommend it - it's kind of rubbish really - but it has something going for it, you can see where Paul Verhoven got his inspiration for Black Books, and it's all a bit Allo Allo without the laughs (which some may prefer, of course).

Franco and Brass, even Argento matter to me. They have intuition that inspires. Yes, they make vulgar and sometimes nonsensical films. But that is just a matter of degree compared to Hollywood fare, right?

What I like about Brass isn't about the women or situations, but how he chooses to frame and light the photographs. This is related to women's fashion magazines, where we know the models are insipid beings, and the clothes bordering on the ridiculous. They simply provide a narrative vocabulary for the artist to explore and exploit.

Brass does well sometimes, but he falls into a crevice when he relies on Nazi images in the context of sex. Here he reaches too far in trying to make something like "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" with the tone of "Europa." The film here clearly reaches to an analogy of Italy as a fading sexual beauty, confused in her passions and easily seduced by fascism. This could pay off, but the filmmaker himself is seduced into making a different film — one he instinctively knows.

There is a war between the film he can make and the film he wants to, but alas this war is not interesting. Nor is the woman or the Italy she represents.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

This is my fifth excursion in Tinto Brass territory but only the third from his (mostly) softcore entries for which he became notorious. Having seen the man in the flesh at the midnight screening of his rare pop-art thriller DEADLY SWEET (1967) during the 61st Venice Film Festival in 2004, he seemed more like a reasonably literate and genuinely larger-than-life character perennially chomping on his cigar than a dirty old man who occasionally realizes his erotic fantasies on film.

Although the majority of his later films were modest exploitation stuff at best, sometimes he did seek to be taken more seriously by breaking into the mainstream and even art-house circles. The Nazisploitation epic SALON KITTY (1975) was the first of such attempts, the misconceived debacle CALIGULA (1979) was the most infamous with THE KEY (1983) being perhaps the most successful of the lot. Unfortunately, Blue Underground's 2-Disc Set of SALON KITTY has been out-of-print for some time but I do have THE KEY on VHS recorded off Italian TV.

BLACK ANGEL, then, is Tinto Brass' latest bid for respectability. Based on the same source novel from which Luchino Visconti made an acclaimed movie in 1954, Brass transposes the action to the last days of WWII and, true to his nature, has the promiscuous characters indulge wholeheartedly (and explicitly, including some hardcore footage) in every sin of the flesh he can point his camera at for two hours. The major set-piece of the film is a marathon 10-minute orgy sequence which includes most of the offending footage but also quaint, risible stuff like a group of revelers marching in tow through the rooms of a château led by a naked woman proudly holding onto a huge, gold-plated phallus!

For what it's worth, the plot deals with a young, blond, womanizing Nazi officer (Gabriel Garko) who sets his sights on a much older Italian aristocrat (Anna Galiena) who is only to keen to satisfy his every whim. Naturally, he is reluctant to cut down on his vices (which also include gambling) and far from happy with her overly jealous demeanor; after surprising him in bed with a much younger girl, the Italian woman eventually takes belated revenge by betraying him to his commanding officers regarding his plans for desertion.

While the film as a whole is not too badly done in itself and features an Ennio Morricone score to boot, nothing especially memorable happens in it and one is hard pressed to feel sympathy for these lewd, unlikable and opportunistic characters and, consequently, the viewer's interest in the proceedings rises and sags accordingly.

far to be original, adaptation of a classic Italian novel, Senso "45 is special. not surprising, not good, not touching. only strange. first, for the slices of memories about the universe of Luchino Visconti.or Pasolini. the second - for the great chemistry between the two lead characters. and, not the least, for the music of Ennio Moriccone. the darkness, the high sensuality, the decadence , the meets between the powerful woman and her vulnerable, vulgar lover are motifs for see a film who could be useful trip in the heart of different zones of cinema. the magnetism of irresistible Gabriel Garko, the science of Anna Galiena to do a complex work for explore each nuance of her role. one of films who reflects a state. in smart manner. and, in many scenes, courageous.

Very good movie, well worth watching. Not like the other Timto Brass movies I've seen. Even though Livia was no angel and certainly did wrong, the Lt got what he deserved. I was afraid it wasn't gonna go that way and backfire on Livia. She was very foolish! Whether it was love or lust or both, she was blinded. I thought the guy looked like a snake from the beginning but it all became clear when they went to the orgy. He was a snake!