Hi, welcome to the commentary on The Case of the Scorpion's Tail.
I am Federico Caddeo
and I'm here with the screenwriter, Ernesto Gastaldi.
Hi-
Gastaldi, how did this film come about?
A lot of giallo thrillers were being made at the time and this was one of them.
So, in 1965, I'd worked on a semi-experimental film
called Libido, in which Giancarlo Giannini made his debut.
He was great, but Mara Maryl, my wife, was the one who wanted him on board.
And it was quite successful, especially abroad.
So Luciano Martino, who was one of the producers,
realized that this kind of film had potential.
So we made a lot of films.
We made three or four before this one, perhaps even five.
A lot of people would go to see thrillers, at that time,
so we kept thinking up new stories with interesting plots,
which increasingly moved towards that genre.
I can see, in the credits,
the name of a Spaniard who wasn't involved.
Exactly.
Eduardo M Brochero appears here as one of the screenwriters, but...
No, he wasn't. But the film was co-produced by Spain.
Since the film was co-produced by Spain,
the rule was that writers from both countries would be credited.
So it was the custom to add random names.
I don't know who that man is. I've never even met him.
Whereas Sauro Scavolini really did work on the screenplay, didn't he?
No, he didn't write the screenplay.
But, if memory serves, the original idea for the film,
which was then passed on to me by Sergio Martino, the director,
came from Scavolini, yes.
But I wrote the screenplay on my own.
We're looking at the opening credits
and listening to the haunting theme music
composed by Bruno Nicolai.
The film's title is The Case of the Scorpion's Tail.
When you wrote the screenplay, did you already know the film's title
- or did it occur to you later? - I didn't come up with the title.
I think Luciano Martino did.
He was in the habit of naming films after they'd been made.
I think, in this instance, there was a working title,
which may have been The Two Tails of the Scorpion.
But I'm not sure. Perhaps the word "scorpion" was there.
But the film producer came up with the actual title.
Regarding the insertion of an animal's name in the title,
in this case, a scorpion...
Was this connected to Dario Argento's film titles in any way,
or was it pure coincidence?
I don't know. There probably was some connection to Argento's success.
I imagine that... Luciano was very good at coming up with film titles.
He had a knack for discerning what audiences were looking for
and followed on from there.
He was good at following on from other people's success.
So he may have used an animal's name
due to The Bird with the Crystal Plumage,
A Lizard in a Woman's Skin and other such successful films.
We're looking at a sequence which will tell us what's going on
without using any words.
We'll see a plane crash and realize that the woman we're seeing here,
Ida Galli, also known as Evelyn Stewart,
is about to become a widow, because her husband will die in the crash.
This film is based on a previous work,
which happens a lot with thrillers, and can be a problem.
When they asked you to write the screenplay,
did they give you carte blanche,
or did they tell you that you had to keep some of the original elements?
No, no, I was given carte blanche.
Because Luciano Martino started off as a screenwriter.
I first met Luciano at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
And we wrote some screenplays together.
We both worked as skivvies for Ugo Guerra,
who was a very successful screenwriter at the time.
So Luciano is experienced and knows exactly how things work.
So he didn't interfere with the writing.
He might make a few comments about the story's outline,
as a fellow screenwriter rather than as a producer.
But I was given carte blanche. He trusted me completely.
He didn't force me to do anything.
But I do remember that airplane scene,
because we were laughing about it.
Zavattini once wrote a screenplay with the words,
"An airplane flies menacingly in the sky."
And we were all wondering how Sergio Martino
might have gone about making a plane look menacing.
This is a great character actor, Tom Felleghy,
who became a fixture of every thriller at that time.
This film came out in Italy on the 16th of August 1971.
And it came out in France on the 4th of October 1973,
two years later.
Do you have any idea why almost two years... more than two years...
went by between the Italian and French premieres?
This film should have been easy to sell on the international market.
It was eminently exportable.
How come it took two years for this type of film to reach...?
- Is it some kind of mystery? - Yes, it's strange.
These films pretty much sold sight unseen.
An Italian thriller from that era, with a certain cast...
They didn't bother to watch it first. There was a fairly set price.
Even if the film wasn't a big hit, it would sell all over the world,
in over 100 countries, at a reasonably good price.
And it sold immediately. In fact, it sold before it was made.
It may be down to the fact it was a Spanish co-production.
That may have slowed down distribution.
It would be interesting to see if the delay also happened elsewhere.
When there were co-productions,
problems could arise with other countries.
That's one possibility, or perhaps dubbing it into French took time.
- Who knows? - In any case,
for the makers of these films,
the screenwriters, the film directors, the producers...
This kind of film brought in a lot of money.
Yes, absolutely.
They were bound to make money.
There was no risk involved for producers.
As long as a producer kept to an average budget, he'd be fine.
He could spend a bit more or a bit less,
but these films sold like hot cakes.
It was the golden age of Italian cinema,
when it almost became an industry here.
Try to be free soon.
Alright, I'll call you back in half an hour.
The spur to the action here is money, not revenge.
Is the theme down to something you read,
some crime novel that left a mark on you,
or was it just a random choice?
Well, I read lots of crime novels growing up, like everyone else,
for fun, without ever thinking I'd write a thriller one day.
And there aren't that many motives for committing a crime. 80...
Money is the motive behind 50% of crime fiction.
Revenge takes up another 30-40%.
Then there are the serial killers and the maniacs.
That doesn't appeal to me much, because logic doesn't come into it.
I prefer logical explanations. I prefer characters who are rational.
Even if they're evil, they must behave intelligently.
I don't want them to do things that don't make sense.
In films where the action is driven by psychopathy,
there's more latitude,
because a madman can do very strange things for no particular reason.
I don't really like Dario Argento's films, for example,
precisely because there often is this major streak of irrationality.
Since I'm the one creating this story,
if I shrug off the constraints of rationality, it becomes too easy.
So you felt a sense of responsibility towards the audience members?
You were trying not to cheat when you wrote a screenplay?
Yes, I was trying not to short-change the audience.
Besides, half the fun for the writer
is to create a plot that makes sense
without cheating, without using tricks
other than the usual ones to create suspense
or to postpone explanations.
But otherwise it's just a matter of grabbing a pen or a camera
and doing whatever you want.
For example, I recently read I Kill,
and by page 110-120, I'd already figured out who the killer was.
Because there's that to consider as well.
One's skill also resides in not letting things on too early.
In that book, messages are broadcast over the radio,
but they're not phoned in. So who's the killer?
The man who's broadcasting the messages, obviously.
That's why I think you must ensure it's not immediately obvious
who the murderer is.
But you mustn't hide who the person is by filming absurd scenes,
simply to throw people off the scent. That's not...
That's no fun. It's no fun for the writer either.
Perhaps the audience doesn't pay much attention to that.
Blasetti used to say, "First of all, don't bore me."
So, perhaps it's sometimes better to cheat a bit for effect.
But I've always tried not to.
I remember reading an article by Oreste Del Buono, if memory serves,
who said that, in his view, those who read or watched crime novels
have a tendency to be distracted, simply because they're waiting
for the detective to arrive, like a deus ex machina.
80, his arrival will unravel the whole mystery for them.
That's why they don't waste too much time working out who's guilty.
Do you agree with this view of those who read crime novels?
No, I rarely agree with Oreste Del Buono, God rest his soul.
No, first of all, what he's describing is a detective novel.
Not all crime novels run along the lines
of the detective who explains everything.
I think the best thrillers are the ones
which don't rely on a detective,
and where the victim, say, was forced to investigate,
or a journalist, or where there was no police investigation at all.
It doesn't have to be an essential plot component.
One still reaches a conclusion,
which, in my view, has to be a reasonable one.
In other words, at the end, people must say, "Oh, that's why"
"he did this and she did that."
If the audience can't reconstruct the whole thing in their head,
it's not as satisfying for them.
After all, thrillers are a kind of puzzle.
They should challenge you.
I show you some scenes and you have to discover what's really going on.
And at the end, when I tell you,
because you probably didn't figure it out,
then it has to be coherent.
Otherwise, if you tell me Giovanni is the killer...
It reminds me of Mark Twain. No, I'm thinking of Wodehouse.
Who said something like, "The killer is Mario Rossi,"
"who was clever enough not to appear in this book at all."
If that's the case, obviously nobody's going to guess who it is.
Generally, this kind of film is called a whodunnit,
from the English phrase "Who done it?"
When you wrote this kind of film,
did you have to respect this rule?
Did you have to keep the killer's identity a secret till the end?
Was that one of the few things you had no choice but to do?
Yes, if it was a classical giallo,
clearly that's what you have to do.
The killer's identity had to be one of the last things people found out,
or one of the penultimate ones.
After all is revealed, there might be a few more scenes
to tie up loose ends and the fate of the other characters.
But there's nothing stopping you from writing a thriller,
as opposed to a whodunnit, which still contains suspense,
where one finds out who the killer is immediately.
Take Columbo, for example.
You know who the killer is, then there's the whole investigation.
It's an entirely different genre, though.
I wouldn't call that a giallo.
We're in a new location here. We're now in Greece,
after the initial scenes set in London.
And we've seen the main character, George Hilton,
whom we'll later find out is the killer.
George Hilton was born in Uruguay in 1934, and was 37 at the time.
What do you remember about him?
I met George Hilton in the Dania Film studios,
which belonged to Luciano and Sergio Martino.
He was a relative of theirs.
Since he'd acted in a few Westerns, in a tongue-in-cheek way...
Spaghetti Westerns were coming out of fashion by then,
so the films tended to be more ironic and jokey,
and no longer attempted a faithful representation of the West.
So, he acted in a few of these films and they were pretty successful.
I may have written a few of them, so that's how we met.
Then they offered him a different type of role,
which he just about managed to pull off.
He was also in The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.
Yes, yes. He was fairly good in that film.
At least, in some parts of it.
Do you remember anything about actress we see here, Ida Galli?
No. No, I saw her on set, but nothing in particular springs to mind.
So, you didn't really spend time with the actors?
No, I rarely went on set. I had too much work to do and didn't have time.
Do you have any regrets about your absence from the actual filming?
Yes, but only in the case of some of the films.
In some cases, yes. When I watch some of the films again,
I realize it was a shame I didn't follow what was going on.
If I'd been on set, some mistakes could have been avoided.
If you hand over your script to the director,
without being present,
it means he might misinterpret some parts. That does happen.
I remember a scene, which later had to be corrected,
in a film directed by him and Luciano Martino.
I'd written that a character drew up alongside a driver,
put a gun to his head, and said, "I'll blow your brains out."
But they shot the scene so that he was pointing the gun at his back,
but they didn't change the words.
That was actually quite comical.
But a lot of times, scenes are not done very well.
Sometimes it's down to the lack of detail in the writing.
Other times, the set itself doesn't match what the writer had imagined.
We didn't have storyboards
and the sets weren't built in advance.
So, that caused problems for the director.
The way a scene was described could be entirely different
from the location the director had to film in,
so the scene had to be readapted.
And sometimes he doesn't understand what's required.
Not all film directors are equally bright.
So, whoever's to blame for the mistakes,
the meaning of the scene changes.
You go see the film later and say, "What the hell did you do?
"That's not what I wanted to say.
"How could you have got it so wrong?" But by then it's too late.
80, things might have gone better if I'd been there for the filming.
They're very well suited to a farce or tragedy.
Don't you think so?
So you're Lara.
Make yourself at home.
I must advise you I only came here out of courtesy,
so please don't waste my time.
That depends on you, dear.
Here, we're being introduced to another two main actors,
Janine Reynaud and Luis Barboo, a Spanish actor.
Going back to your relationship with Sergio Martino.
You worked together for many years.
And between '71 and '73,
you exclusively worked on thrillers and detective stories together.
In 1971, you made The Case of the Scorpion's Tail
and The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.
In 1972, you made Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key
and All the Colors of the Dark. In 1973, you made Torso
and then The Violent Professionals.
What was it like to work with Sergio Martino?
What was he like and what drove him?
Sergio was a very intelligent man,
and intelligent people are very easy to work with.
When we first worked together, he had a different role.
He was the brother of Luciano Martino, the producer,
and was introduced to me as a producer,
or rather as a production manager.
That was the job he originally wanted to do.
Then he decided to do something else and became a screenwriter.
I was the senior partner, being the more experienced of the two,
since I'd already made several films with his brother
and he was just starting out.
But since he was an intelligent man, we immediately got on
and so worked very well together.
Do you remember your first meeting with his brother, Luciano Martino?
Yes, my first meeting with Luciano Martino was rather strange,
because it was long ago, in 1956,
when I was at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
And one of the actresses there was the beautiful Wandisa Guida.
She came to a party at my house with her boyfriend, Luciano Martino.
He was a boy my age, a bit chubby and shy.
He sat down in a corner and didn't say a word all evening.
That was my first meeting with Luciano.
We then met professionally when I was working as a skivvy for Ugo Guerra.
He was doing the same, so we collaborated on some screenplays
for which Ugo took the credit.
So that's how we worked together for the first time.
Then Luciano borrowed 30 million from his father,
which was quite a lot of money at the time,
and took the risk of producing Giants of Rome.
And he entrusted me with the screenplay.
It's not something I would have done, if I'd been him,
because he was staking all his money on it.
Anyway, the film did quite well. Margheriti directed it.
After that I wrote about 40 screenplays for Luciano, I think.
As I said, I'd prefer the cash.
In any case, the relationship between a successful screenwriter like you...
The relationship was based on mutual esteem and friendship, wasn't it?
It went beyond a professional relationship?
Yes, yes. Almost always. I considered Luciano a good friend.
So, it was a warmer relationship than usual.
But I also got on well with Ponti and others.
There was a lot of mutual esteem.
Because if the producer had made a certain kind of film,
I had a lot of respect for him,
because it certainly wasn't an easy job.
And the producers were well aware that the screenplay
was the very foundation of the film.
So they had a better relationship with screenwriters than anyone else,
including the director, because the writer came first
and gave him the raw materials
with which they could approach co-producers,
sell the film before it was made...
So our role was absolutely essential.
So we had a great relationship.
Besides, since we were among the first to be paid,
it rarely happened, as sometimes happened to the editor, who was last,
not to be paid at all.
So it was obviously a profitable job.
Let's have a look.
Here it is. The first flight is this evening at nine o'clock.
Alright. I 'd like one first-class ticket.
Here we're seeing George Hilton and Luis Barboo, a Galician actor,
who died in 2001.
He was 44 when he made this film.
This is an important scene.
It's a misleading scene, in the sense that we'll soon see Ida Galli die,
Evelyn Stewart.
It's an unexpected scene, because over 20 minutes have gone by,
and we've all been led to assume she's the main character.
And in a short while...
Here's a bit of free publicity for Astor cigarettes,
which always comes in handy.
We also saw a nice bottle of J & B, unavoidably. But that's fair enough.
Ask Sergio Martino about that.
No, we asked him, and he admitted it was normal practice.
So, as I was saying, the murder of the main character, here,
almost seems like...
- A change of horse. - Yes.
But it's also almost a reference to Hitchcock's Psycho.
I hadn't thought about that. I read that comment online.
- Really? - But that wasn't why I did it.
It was a surprising twist, and I hoped it would shock people
that someone they considered the main character
could be replaced.
Bear in mind that I won my place at the Centro Sperimentale
with a film where the main characters kept being replaced.
It was about one particular man for the first ten minutes.
Then, as he was walking down the street,
he'd bump into someone and the camera started following the other person
for ten minutes, and so on.
And the final words were, "If Chance could only observe from above,"
"it would see a design and perhaps might call it Fate."
That was the script I wrote to get into the Centro Sperimentale.
So, suddenly replacing the main character
is something that, in my view, rekindles the audience's interest.
They think, "Oh, gosh!"
We're looking at the last moments of poor Ida Galli's life.
She's about to be attacked in her hotel room.
Here's the killer, dressed in black, with his black gloves,
a black outfit and a hat pulled down over his face.
Do you remember who first hit upon this kind of get-up for killers?
Did Dario Argento come up with it or was it already commonplace?
I don't know. Black is associated with anonymity,
so the killer is very often dressed in black.
That way, there are no clues as to his normal way of dressing.
Otherwise, certain styles or colors might be a giveaway.
So, it's quite common to have the killer either as a dark shadow
or dressed in black.
I don't think it's a matter of being inspired by any one particular film.
I think it's a fairly obvious decision.
Perhaps too obvious.
In the sense that you regret not suggesting a different kind of look?
Yes, of course.
I may not have put any indication of how he should be dressed at all.
I probably just wrote "a dark shadow"
and the director decided to dress him in black. I don't remember.
One moment.
On a technical level, we've just seen a rapid zooming in
on the body of poor Ida Galli.
Zooming in has always been a major feature of this kind of film,
along with shooting scenes from the killer's viewpoint.
When writing the screenplay, you couldn't add these technical details,
but were you already imagining the filmed scene, as you wrote,
or did you simply write things out and leave it at that?
No, if zooming in was an expressive element of the scene,
I'd write them in.
I'd make a note of them and then it was up to the director to decide.
But the more essential, significant "zooms" were in the script.
Sometimes I'd mention panning shots.
I didn't usually write them in,
as the screenplay didn't have to be technical.
But if the descriptive element was important,
such as the way the crime scene looked.
Then I'd put "panning shot" in capital letters,
followed by "on the room where the crime was committed."
So there were some technical notes.
That was definitely the case for "zooming in" when it was important,
because I needed to underline that a particular detail had to be filmed.
So even the word "detail" was written in bold,
so the director would know it was important and couldn't be left out.
So the screenwriter had to have some technical knowledge
to be able to do his job properly.
Of course. Obviously, we're not talking about which lens to use.
Though sometimes one did write down "fish eye."
Obviously. But none of that required great technical knowledge.
You didn't need to take a special course for that.
I went to the Centro Sperimentale, so I'd studied all the basics.
So it wasn't a problem for me. Besides, when I first started out,
scripts were a lot more technical.
As time went by, they became closer to storytelling.
It made them easier to read for the producers, the foreign buyers.
But the first screenplays... Take The Vampire and the Ballerina,
the first one I wrote, was full of "panning shots," "close-ups,"
"close medium shots."
It was full of technical details.
So, as an actual story, reading it was very boring.
Did they pay any attention to them?
Sometimes. The main thing was to give the director an idea
of what couldn't be omitted.
If a detail was left out that was essential
to understanding the ending, then the film no longer made sense.
So, it was important to note it down.
To check up on Lisa Baumer.
He's beyond suspicion in their eyes, and in mine, too.
Here we see a low angle. It's quite dramatic.
Sergio decided to do that. I didn't put that in.
So, we've just met two other characters.
One is the Argentinian actor, Alberto de Mendoza,
and the other one is Luigi Pistilli, an Italian,
a very talented actor, who died tragically in 1996.
Did you meet Pistilli?
Yes, I met him while working with Sergio Leone,
since they were friends and Sergio kept giving him roles.
That's how we met.
And what was Luigi Pistilli like?
He was a talented actor, who could have done more things.
But he still acted in a lot of films, often in secondary roles.
I don't remember any films with him as the main character.
But he could easily have been, as he was very controlled,
his gestures were very measured, as you can see here, very apt.
I think he's the best out of these three actors here.
But he usually played character roles.
Pistilli started out acting in Westerns.
He was in For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
He was also in The Great Silence.
In 1971, when this film was made,
he was also in Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood.
And the following year, in '72, he worked for Fernando Di Leo,
and played the part of the chief of police
in the film classic Caliber 9.
This is the Argentinian actor Alberto de Mendoza.
We can see that this film has an international cast.
It has an Argentinian, a Spaniard,
a Swedish actress, Anita Strindberg.
How come? Is it the fact that this film was a Spanish co-production?
Is that why it has actors from Sweden and Argentina?
Were they hired for contractual reasons?
Or were they hired simply because the director wanted these actors?
Neither reason.
Actresses were usually chosen if they were beautiful
and preferably exotic. South American, Swedish...
The trend was not to hire Italian actresses.
And if they were Italian, they'd change their name.
I don't know why exactly.
But they were usually blonde, had blue eyes,
and were hired from abroad.
It was a Spanish co-production, so there were some Spaniards.
Hilton was considered South American, but was actually Italian.
As I said earlier, he was the cousin of the producer and director.
Anyway, it was important for films, in those days,
to have an international cast.
So when there were too many Italian names, they changed them.
As we saw, Ida Galli called herself Evelyn Stewart.
Exactly, exactly.
The actor we're looking at now is Alberto de Mendoza,
from Buenos Aires, who's coming to see Janine Reynaud, a French actress.
What kind of budget did a film like this have?
These films seem a lot more expensive than they were to produce.
Well, many scenes were shot in real locations.
They were on the lookout for nice, but inexpensive locations.
In other words, that cost less than having to build a set.
They sacrificed the director's ability to move the camera around,
while trying to obtain nice locations.
Not just internal location, but external locations too.
In those days, you tended to film a scene in Paris, another in London.
So, you'd send a crew out to those places.
Not always along with the actors, but just their clothes,
who were then worn by people hired on the spot, who resembled them.
They'd film the distance shots, to show the locations,
and then film the close-ups in Italy.
That's what was generally done.
The budget for this type of film was between 120-150 million liras.
So, today that would be around a billion and a half to two billion.
Given these prices, these films would probably no longer be made.
But the price at the time was about two billion liras today.
A million euros, something like that.
In any case, a film like this never made a loss once it hit the screens.
- It was a sure hit. - Yes, yes.
99% of these films made money.
The ticket money in Italy alone paid for the film.
And then, as I said earlier, there were 100 to 110 other markets
who bought the film before even seeing it.
So there was risk involved at all.
Why do you think thrillers are so popular?
I don't know. It's a trend.
Some thrillers went down really well,
the audiences grew fond of the genre,
and so a fashion sprung up, a bit like the Western.
So thrillers became synonymous with entertainment.
People had fun, would go and see them.
The trend lasted for quite a while.
Do you think those who went to watch thrillers also read crime novels?
Or were those who read crime novels
not necessarily those who came to see this type of film?
I don't know. Bear in mind that when Mondadori sold lots of thrillers...
They were called "gialli" because the book covers were yellow...
Mondadori sold 50,000 to 80,000 books.
And we had several million audience members, so perhaps it had an impact.
But I don't know.
Hello?
My key, please.
Yes, right away.
Shall we remind people of how crime novels became so popular?
Mondadori's series of crime novels.
The books with the yellow covers, called "Gialli Mondadori,"
started being published in the '30s, I believe.
That's how the color became associated with the genre.
And from then on, all crime novels and thrillers were called "gialli,"
even if the covers were no longer yellow.
That's how the name "giallo" came about,
which was then extended to films.
Rather like "film noir" for the gorier ones.
So, the "Gialli Mondadori" books,
which re-published all the classics, such as Agatha Christie's books,
were all very plot-driven.
They had intricate story lines and elegant characters.
But the plot was important, as well as discovering who the murderer was.
That's the real, classic thriller, where what matters is the plot,
the characters, suspense,
the audience left wondering who did it, and the final answer,
which must be a logical one. That's how a thriller should be.
You can also make thrillers where there's suspense in every scene,
and where logic can be sidestepped or abandoned altogether,
but they're still entertaining.
Picture Horror Show. What was the name of that famous film again?
You can have thrillers that aren't whodunnits.
You can have detective films.
Almost Human was a detective film, not a whodunnit.
Predominance isn't given to the plot and to what's happening,
but to a sequence of events, which must then be, in some way,
analyzed by a policeman or a journalist,
who must then neutralize the killer, rather than find out who he is.
I consider that a detective film.
But, obviously, there are overlaps between the two genres.
As soon as Stavros gives me my passport, I'll get them to take me off the case.
After all, dealing with dead people isn't my area.
Dealing with living people is.
Here's a love scene between George Hilton and Anita Strindberg.
Anita Strindberg, that same year, acted in a film by Lucio Fulci,
another thriller, Lizard in a Woman's Skin.
Another animal.
Another thriller with an animal's name in it.
I told you there was a lizard around at that time.
You wrote lots of whodunnits. You mostly worked with Sergio Martino.
Didn't other directors, like Fulci, ever ask you to work with them?
I worked with Fulci.
I worked with Luciano Ercoli, Pugliese.
Death Walks at Midnight, Death Walks on High Heels.
I wrote a lot of films like that.
I wrote some for Carnimero, produced by Carlo Ponti.
Yes, I was quite...
When the genre became successful,
as often happens in Italy, everyone rushed in,
in a bid to make money.
It was a fairly safe business proposition.
So...
I wrote the first one, Libido.
It cost 26 million and made a 400% profit.
That's when Luciano Martino began making films,
along with everyone else.
We saw George Hilton pouring himself a J & B,
ensuring the label was fully visible.
- That wasn't in the screenplay. - That wasn't written in.
The film score was composed by Bruno Nicolai.
That very same year, Bruno Nicolai
orchestrated Morricone's music
for another two famous thrillers,
one by Dario Argento, Four Flies on Grey Velvet,
and Short Night of Glass Dolls by Aldo Lado.
In your view, what elements were essential to this type of score?
To create a feeling of suspense, one always uses chords like...
Chords that make your heart stop.
Then there's the music you use for nightmares,
which underline your anguish and desire to ere.
Most scores simply mirror what's been done before,
but there have also been some excellent, very interesting pieces.
But normally the actual soundtrack,
which reflects the emotions being portrayed on the screen,
was recorded with an orchestra present
to time everything to perfection.
So, sound effects, rather than music,
to underline the suspense or the anguish felt during a scene.
But some beautiful pieces of music became famous in their own right.
There aren't many of those.
Usually, this type of soundtrack was fairly straightforward.
The fact that to compose the soundtracks for these films,
which were more commercial and had mass appeal...
I don't mean that in any derogatory way, incidentally.
Great maestros were called in to compose the music for these films,
such as, in this case, Maestro Nicolai...
Did that elevate the tone of the film?
Did it make the film seem more prestigious?
Naturally. I'm sure everybody realizes that music
can make a huge difference to a film.
Some of Dario Argento's scenes would be half as interesting without music.
So producers and directors understood that music was a very important part,
especially for this kind of thing.
Music was absolutely essential.
Bearing in mind that the music companies, at that time,
were usually prepared to pay for the orchestras themselves,
since the music then belonged to them,
and they'd be able to use it for advertisements, and so on...
So, adding music didn't cost the producer anything.
This is why you could have a full orchestra,
and record the music, scene by scene, to very high quality.
You mentioned Argento. This scene is rather similar,
though not that similar, actually, to a scene from
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.
Do you acknowledge that Dario Argento had a huge impact on this genre,
given that he was the first to make this kind of film?
Of course. Dario Argento was a master of this genre.
What I dislike about Argento is that his stories aren't logical.
But that's a matter of taste. Of course he had a huge impact.
But I remember that when Lombardo produced this film,
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage... Daflo's father worked for Lombardo.
So there was a family tradition, though his father was a producer.
Anyway, Goffredo Lombardo called me, and told me, proudly,
"You know, the film my friend's son directed is OK,"
"but I had this brilliant idea for the first scene."
"I'll show it to you."
So, he showed me this scene in which two hands, in black gloves,
typing out the words,
"Five o'clock. Kill Giovanni," or some such name.
So, I started to laugh and he got offended.
I said, "What kind of...?" I hadn't seen the film yet.
"This guy must murder hundreds of people,"
"if he has to type a list out to remind himself."
"At five o'clock..." And that's how Dario's film starts.
It starts with the two gloved hands typing this out.
So, this kind of nonsense is rife throughout all of Argento's films.
He basically doesn't give a damn.
He made some great films, though,
so I'm not criticizing his showmanship.
His films are great.
But when I saw The Bird with the Crystal Plumage...
At the end of it, someone says, "That's what I didn't remember."
"It wasn't that he wanted to kill her, but that she wanted to kill him."
Things like that are just silly.
- Even the paper seller... - Everyone finds that scene funny.
There are solutions...
As we were saying when chatting together before recording this...
There are films about werewolves
where a pure, innocent, 18-year-old girl, on campus,
goes out alone at night and into the woods.
Everybody laughs about that these days.
That was the same thing. "I've forgotten something in the car,"
and he sends the girl into the murderer's den on her own.
I don't think we should do that kind of thing any more.
People have seen it too often. It's become a cliche.
So, I don't think...
Well, it's plain silly.
You said something important about The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.
The fact that the main character can't quite remember something.
That's a recurring theme in whodunnits.
In the sense that many whodunnits are based on faulty memory.
Someone remembers something only at the very end,
and that's how the case gets solved.
Can you think of any other topoi like that?
Not right now, no. But it's a relatively common thing
for the investigator, or the "good guy" in the story,
to say that he feels there's something he can't quite pin down.
But it's one thing to forget some minor detail,
which may well be the keystone to the entire plot,
but it has to be something you'd forget.
Something you wouldn't pay any attention to in normal circumstances.
So your brain may have registered it, but you don't remember it
because it doesn't seem important enough.
But if someone says, "Ah, yes, now I remember he killed her,"
that's simply not credible, as it's not something you'd forget.
You've really got to go?
Some people on the paper are waiting for an excuse to kick me out.
They say it's not a woman's job.
As if seeing people with their guts hanging out was a man's job.
Luckily the editor's on my side. If he wasn't...
- Did they say who the victim was? - Yes, her name's Lara Florakis.
We saw some nudity here.
Was it obligatory to have a nude scene?
Even in the morgue.
It's almost necrophilia.
Was having a nude scene compulsory?
Was a touch of sexiness essential?
These actresses were beautiful, sure, but did they have to undress a bit?
Yes, it was part of the show.
Whether it was a thriller or a comedy, or whatever.
Edwige Fenech's showers have remained legendary,
because it was a way of showing her naked without incurring censorship.
It was part of the show.
These were beautiful women,
so, obviously, we tried to exploit that beauty.
But was Italy in the 708 more sanctimonious?
Were people more easily "scandalized" by such scenes,
or were they an integral part of films in those days?
I'd say the audience was fairly permissive.
But censorship was behind the times by about 30 years.
- The Jester's Supper? - Yes, exactly.
- The breast... - of Clara Calamai.
Censorship was so far behind the times...
And there was some dishonesty around that, too,
because there was corruption there.
For example, when we shot Libido,
the female lead, Mara Maryl,
said, while looking at Goya's paintings,
"What huge asses they painted in those days."
They wanted to X rate that.
So the censors took things way too far,
sometimes as a result of corruption.
Facts later emerged
that explained why they tended to censor everything.
I had huge problems with the censors over The Lonely Violent Beach.
Someone as high up as the Minister of Culture called me
and said, "Gastaldi, send the censors pretty landscapes",
"and once they've passed the film, replace them with whatever you want."
So the censorship was very rigid and very corrupt.
They tended to cutout the most innocent things,
like a lingering kiss.
Things no Italian audience would have had any issues with.
So it was a real drag to go through the censorship process.
But how did it benefit them to be so rigid?
So, let me tell you, the reason we clashed
was that a film I'd made
came out just after a film called Erica,
which was being distributed by the same company as mine.
And that film, Erica, was pretty pornographic for that era.
It was shown in cinemas.
A magistrate had it removed
and made a lot of problems for the censors,
who ended up in court over this.
And they were furious,
because they claimed, and they may well have been right,
that the producer had added scenes after they'd cleared the film.
So they were extremely resentful. So when it was my film's turn,
they wanted to out everything out.
And there was nothing wrong with it.
They wanted to out everything out as a form of revenge.
So I got very angry, and the magistrate told me,
”Tot capita tot sententiae. ”
And I responded with swearwords I'd better not repeat here,
but which you can infer. ”Tot cap/ta. .. ” Right?
So I said I'd call the police, and he said, "Please do."
"That way we can find out what happened with Erica."
Because the Erica's distributor said,
"I came in with 300,000 liras and left without them."
"Do you still want to call the police?" They didn't,
but they completely rejected my film.
That's why I appealed to a higher authority.
And when I spoke to the Minister,
he told me, "Gastaldi, just use landscapes."
"Don't complicate my life."
The fact was, four or five people accepted kickbacks.
Not all of them.
In fact, four or five of them complained
they'd not received any share of those 300,000 liras.
But it wasn't clear whether they were indignant because they'd been left out.
"You got a kickback and we didn't?"
Everything to do with censorship was infuriating.
Audiences were a lot more relaxed about this kind of film.
Sure, there's a flash of breast every now and then,
but that's about it.
Take this scene, for example, compared to today.
- Now we'll see the voyeur. - They might have cut the kiss, once,
since they're really kissing.
In the old days, kisses had to miss the lips.
But times had changed by then.
Audiences didn't mind at all, but the censors kept pretending to mind.
But could the fact that the censors wanted to stop a film, or cut scenes,
be considered a form of publicity?
Or would that have been negative publicity?
When films were really censored...
I'm not just talking about preventive censorship here...
When they were censored after their release,
that was extremely damaging.
All the screenings would fall through,
the copies remained in storage,
all the advertising was wasted,
because, in those days, it was all about posters in the streets.
If one had spent millions to print out those posters
and they pulled the film,
even if they gave it the green light later on,
you'd take a huge financial hit.
Last Tango in Paris was historic, in that sense.
They even ordered that the film be completely destroyed.
This scene always makes me smile,
because the neighbor, one of the tenants of this building,
goes to knock on the window while Hilton and Strindberg are canoodling,
to tell them their car's blocking the way,
so we follow George Hilton and see he's parked his car so badly
that he deserves to be sued.
It has always really amused me.
And here are some more nude scenes.
What time is it?
The best time of my life.
If we may gossip a bit,
when scenes like this were filmed,
did romance ever blossom between actors?
Are there any famous instances where that happened?
No, I don't think so.
These scenes were more likely to embarrass the actors,
even those who weren't particularly shy and retiring.
But I've watched a few being filmed
and it was hard to get the actors to relax, such was their embarrassment.
So some of the crew was asked to leave,
the technicians and electricians, for example.
Only the essential crew was kept in the room.
I don't think they fell in love. Not during these scenes anyway.
If they did, it was through working together for a few months.
It wasn't down to the nude scenes.
In any case, when George Hilton made this film,
he was considered one of the more handsome actors in Italy.
He was a handsome man. He still is.
But at the time, he was a major figure for female audiences.
Yes, yes. He was very likable, as well.
There was a certain irony in his manner,
which made him very likable.
Yes, yes, people liked him.
Was it easy to become a film star in those days,
like George Hilton did by acting in thrillers, Westerns and detective films?
Was it enough to be handsome, without being a great actor?
Because George Hilton, with all due respect, has never been an incredible actor.
And yet he appeared in quite a few films.
Yes, as I said earlier, George Hilton fell into acting
because he was related to a producer
who put him in a Western, which did rather well.
So, he carried on acting.
Obviously, as with everything in life, 50% is pure chance.
So, having the right face and being in the right place at the right time,
could make all the difference between having a career or not.
There were plenty of better-looking men and women at Cinecittà,
and not all of them made it onto our screens.
A lot of it depended on whether the director liked you.
Once, when Pietro Germi was looking for actors,
I went along with a friend of mine,
who was the son of the scenographer of La Scale in Milan.
His name was Romano Benois and he wanted to be an actor.
He was Peter Ustinov's cousin and was equally talented.
So we went to see Germi, and walked into this smoky room,
because he was smoking a bloody cigar.
And as soon as he saw us, he turned to the assistant director and shouted,
"Damn it! I said I wanted people with intelligent faces!"
So I laughed my head off and we left.
Germi ran out after me, saying, "Not you!"
I said, "Sorry, I may have an intelligent face, but I'm not an actor."
So, it was all a matter of chance.
My wife auditioned for Germi and was intercepted by Fellini.
Fellini wanted her to play the role, at the end of La Dolce Vita,
that was then played by... what was her name? That young girl...
at the end of La Dolce Vita. I can't remember the actress' name.
Anyway, the film ends on a scene with a young girl.
And he told her to ignore the audition with Germi.
She said, "No, the audition is in half an hour."
She got really angry and started stamping her feet.
Everything is down to chance, really.
But it wasn't that hard. It was a bit like today's soap operas.
They're not that hard to break into. They don't require any particular talent.
You just need to be photogenic, know how to say a few lines...
And the rest is down to who you know and a dollop of luck.
So, being introduced by someone influential was important?
Yes. A great advantage, compared to today, was that there were only 100 producers.
So it was less claustrophobic.
If a producer turned you down,
whether you were a screenwriter or an actor, there were another 99 producers.
Once you'd been turned down 100 times,
you could wonder whether there was something wrong with you.
Things are much harder now.
There's only one producer, Raiset. A mix between Rai and Mediaset.
If some inept official says no, that's the end of it.
You can throw away your script, your face. That's the problem.
As things stand, being introduced by someone influential is essential.
Absolutely essential. Without it, it's extremely hard to break in.
One last word about "introductions."
It's important to have the backing of a politician these days.
Was that always the case, or was it more important
to have the backing of someone in the film industry?
Let's just say that getting a politician's backing was a lot less common.
People may have whispered, "This girl has Andreotti's backing,"
but having the backing of someone in the film industry was a lot more important.
So, if the producer and the director wanted her, that counted for a lot more.
Besides, when casting for this type of film,
for the most part, we relied on names that sounded as international as possible.
So, we'd choose people who'd already made some films.
You were unlikely to pick a rookie for the leading role.
I did that in Libido, because I had a budget of 26 million,
so I had to rely on unknown actors and tell them they'd be paid nothing.
But that's not what usually happened.
You every time.
What? I was shouting behind that door while someone was trying to murder Cléo.
Calm down.
Anyway, Cléo's not dead and she'll give us her version.
Right.
At least the victim can still speak this time.
Go ahead with your dusting for prints.
- It won't be that useful. - They'll find my prints all over the place
Yes, I know.
In the scene we're seeing now, but especially in the previous one,
where Anita Strindberg was attacked,
we've been able to appreciate the camerawork.
It made use of very interesting lighting,
which creates a special atmosphere.
The film was edited by Eugenio Alabiso,
who edited many of Martino's films.
He also worked for Sergio Leone, Diodato, and Umberto Lenzi.
- Alabiso worked for Sergio Leone? - Yes.
He worked as assistant editor in his first two films with Sergio Leone.
- Ah, an assistant. - Yes, an assistant.
So, since we mentioned Lenzi,
you also wrote for...
You worked with Lenzi as well.
In your opinion, if Lenzi had directed this film,
in what way would it have differed from Martino's treatment?
Well, the genre required a fairly standard type of camerawork.
This kind of film didn't lend itself to any great personal expression.
I think Lenzi would have made it a bit more gory.
He'd have lingered more over the bodies, the blood
and the more horrific scenes.
And perhaps he'd have slipped somewhat more rapidly
into that whole zone where one attempts to delineate
the psychological subtlety of the characters.
Umberto was more interested in action films, explicitly violent ones.
His best films are quite hard-hitting.
Sergio Martino, being more intellectual,
had a more refined approach.
Obviously, he had no choice but to put in some shocking scenes.
But, in fairness, there isn't much latitude.
It was a very specific genre.
It was a genre that had certain rules you absolutely had to adhere to.
Yes, hello?
Cléo! How are you?
The fact that Martino directed several whodunnits in a row...
Didn't he risk becoming associated exclusively with the genre?
Wouldn't people come to expect that of him?
Let's not forget that Martino directed many types of film.
He made detective films, Westerns. He even made very successful comedies.
How do you think Sergio Martino managed to shake off this particular label?
Well, in those days,
only about 10% of those who went to the cinema knew who the director was.
Nobody really paid attention to who had directed the film.
It was the actors that audiences were interested in.
They didn't care about who the director, the screenwriter or the producer was.
So they wouldn't have noticed if the director switched genre.
So the problem didn't really arise.
It may have been less easy for the producers.
If they'd produced ten whodunnits,
they'd be asked to produce the eleventh one.
But since Sergio was the producer's brother, this problem didn't arise.
But when you make commercial films,
which require sharp, elegant camerawork,
with decent lighting,
the ability to wrap filming within six to eight weeks...
all these characteristics of a good commercial film,
if a director can unfailingly provide them,
producers would hire him, regardless of his usual genre.
Here's another prominently displayed bottle of J & B.
- That wasn't in the script either. - The indispensable bottle.
We always see Luigi Pistilli's character working on a jigsaw puzzle.
Was that part of the script or a later invention?
Yes, it was my idea. In fact, shortly after, I wrote a film called Puzzle,
which never came out.
Because I liked the idea that the man in charge of solving the case
was heavily into jigsaw puzzles.
Are there any other elements of this genre that you tried to insert in the film?
Or was the inspector's quirk the only one?
Yes, it's the only one. I can't think of anything else.
This is Mark Salomon from Los Angeles.
The whole city has spilled out onto the great avenues
to watch the nocturnal procession
that will conclude the Thanksgiving celebrations.
Earlier, you said that when you wrote screenplays,
you indicated to the directors
from what side the knife attack should take place.
Can you tell us more about that?
Yes, not just knife attacks.
Everything that's unexpected, so is designed to make people jump...
I realized that it was more effective if it came from the right.
Perhaps that's because when we read a book,
we read it from left to right.
So anything that comes from the right, even the killer's shadow,
is more unexpected.
Obviously, it works even better if your attention has been drawn left first.
So, if the woman's getting undressed to the left of the screen,
the attack from the right will be even more unexpected.
It's a basic trick I've found to be effective for thrillers.
What a nice shade of orange that blood has. Why did they make blood look so orange?
But this scene is pretty violent.
Shoving glass into someone's eye is something that...
Fulci might have put something like that in one of his horror films.
It's quite hard-hitting. Now they're zooming in.
I assume that was mentioned in the screenplay.
Yes, but it's a shame her eyes are so inexpressive.
Surely one would react differently to a scene like that.
Earlier, we had a look at this film's trailer.
It was very amusing. Let me describe it for those who haven't seen it.
It began with a voice-over that said, "In 1920, The Golem came out."
"In 1926, you had Battleship Potemkin. In 1930, you had M."
"In '31, you had Buñuel's L'Age d'Or. Four masterpieces of violence."
"And, today, Sergio Martino brings us the same expressive violence"
"with The Case of the Scorpion's Tail."
That's an absolutely crazy trailer.
Yes. Maybe Villaggio's joke wasn't famous at the time,
but Peppo Sacchi, who invented private television,
had already said it, Battleship Potemkin is a load of rubbish.
So, to make a trailer comparing it to Battleship Potemkin,
may not have been a great idea.
Anyway, it's a trailer that... I'd never seen it before, to be honest.
You showed it to me just now.
It's very amusing.
But it is strange to tell people who are going to see a fairly mainstream film,
a film that's completely different from the examples they gave...
The Golem, M.
Well, it's the kind of trick Berlusconi uses today.
They took advantage of people's ignorance.
It's like saying, "I'll mention films you've never heard of."
"Believe me, they're masterpieces, and so is this one."
Obviously, anyone who'd seen Battleship Potemkin would laugh,
but they'd be one out of a thousand.
So, perhaps that trailer worked really well.
Maybe he knew something.
Kurt Baumer could still be alive and at large here.
Here's a scene at the police station.
Here we see Alberto de Mendoza.
Do you know how Sergio Martino managed with an international cast?
Were several languages spoken on set?
Or did people manage to understand each other anyway?
I don't know if they already did this for this film,
but, at some point, they started filming in English.
So, all the actors had to speak English.
In fact, Alan Collins, in other words, Pigozzi, told me
that since he didn't speak English,
he'd study his lines with someone who'd correct his accent,
but, to know when to come in,
he also had to learn the last word spoken by the other actor.
He had no idea what the other actor was saying,
but he knew that if his sentence ended with the word "shit", that was his cue.
Pigozzi told me about all sorts of amusing mix-ups,
because everyone had to speak English without understanding it.
Then, when we started selling our films in the United States,
the Americans said, "Guys, we have two problems."
"First of all, your actors are speaking English too slowly."
"It would be better if they spoke Italian, because at least they'd speak fast."
"When they speak English, they slow down."
"And secondly, you have one actor speaking with a Texan accent,"
"and another one sounds like he's from Massachusetts, though it's his son."
"It's as if someone had a Sicilian accent and his daughter,"
"for no discernible reason, had a Milanese one."
So we temporarily stopped filming in English.
We went back to using Italian,
and made an English version to help with dubbing.
Then, as time went by, actors got better at speaking English,
so we started filming in English again.
In this instance, Hilton probably spoke English.
Anita Strindberg must have spoken English. Pistilli definitely didn't.
So, I don't know. I think they'd have used Italian, English and Spanish.
Sergio speaks all of them, so there wouldn't have been a problem.
How about for screenwriters? Was speaking English important?
Or was it fine to simply write in Italian?
Apparently, not speaking English didn't matter, since I wrote in Italian.
But when I started working with Ponti, who did a lot of work with Americans,
he kept telling me, "If you'd been born in California, I'd pay you ten times as much."
That started to get on my nerves, so I went to a language school
and said, "A month, two months, five months, 12 hours a day, whatever it takes."
"I must learn English."
I was already 50 years old. 80 they asked me why.
"I must write screenplays!" And he said, "You'll never make it.
"Not even if you lived in America for 20 or 30 years."
"You'll never be able to write English dialogues. Nobody's ever done it."
"Conrad wrote novels. He was Polish and went to America when he was 40."
"But he wrote novels. But film dialogues? Forget it. You'll never manage it."
I was so upset, because I wanted to get paid ten times as much.
And he said, "It'll never work. Take these two women..."
There were two women in the room.
"Would you say 'cazzo' out loud in front of two women?"
I said, "No, I'd try not to."
"Well, in English, it's 'prick'. Would you say 'prick'?"
"Sure. Prick." And the two women looked shocked.
He said, "You see? It doesn't have the same force for you in English."
"The word 'prick' means nothing to you. So you'll never use it convincingly."
But I persevered. I never did write English dialogue,
but I wrote screenplays in English that were good enough to send to friends in Hollywood,
who then tidied my English up.
They didn't speak Italian, but by tidying up my English... Well, it was a step forward.
And how did you choose your characters' names?
For example, George Hilton's name in the film is Peter Lynch.
Did you choose it simply because it sounded English,
or is there some hidden meaning?
Because I remember being told that Caneparo, for example,
the legendary chief of police in The Violent Professionals,
- was a carefully chosen name. - It was Peppo Sacchi, obviously.
Yes, when we chose American names, they were usually chosen at random.
We tended to use actors' names. Grant would be used a lot.
That's why we chose Lynch.
Or just any old, banal English name.
Sometimes we did try to suggest something more, just for the fun of it.
I remember Concorde Afiaire, which was also a whodunnit,
which was also produced by Luciano Martino.
And he kept telling me, "It's not clear, it's not clear, it's not clear."
"What do you mean? The plot couldn't be clearer."
"No, no. You must add an explanatory scene."
So I wrote a scene with a character called Martinez instead of Martino,
in order to be able to say, "Martinez, you never understand a thing do you?"
And the plot was explained to him.
In that case, the name Martinez was chosen on purpose.
Or that “me “m My Name Is Nobody
where Sam Peckinpah's name was on the tombstone.
Oreste Del Buono said it was no coincidence
that Sam Peckinpah's name should appear in Sergio Leone's cemetery.
So, yes, sometimes there was a hidden message, but it wasn't the norm.
In this film there's a character called John Stanley. Is that just a random name?
- Yes. - We're getting close to the end here.
Here, we finally get to work out who the killer is.
And it's the one person you least suspect, George Hilton.
Did George Hilton ever think he'd play the bad guy?
We're about to find out he's a mass murderer,
since he blew up a plane to get his hands on a million dollars.
Did actors worry that playing the bad guy could harm their career?
- Or was it different then? - No, no.
Actors didn't mind so long as it was a main role.
But I would insist the directors withheld the final scenes from the actors.
In other words, give them the script, but not the ending.
Get them to act without knowing how it will end.
They'll be more spontaneous if they don't know they're the killer.
The result will be so much better.
If you tell them, unless they're great actors, like Hopkins,
they'll betray the fact. It's better if they don't know.
So... I don't know whether Sergio obeyed my instructions,
but I was very insistent with all of the directors, with Fulci...
"Don't let them read the end!" When you're as important as Fulci,
you're making a thriller, and you call in four main characters,
they'll trust you, regardless of whether they've seen the ending.
Don't show it to them, that way they won't know.
In my view, it's better for the film.
These days, they often film alternative endings,
which then end up on the DVD.
But in the past, there was only one ending.
Only one ending was filmed and that was that.
Yes. But sometimes, for various reasons, there were two endings.
If it was an erotic film, they'd film a very erotic ending,
which would go down well in the Far East, Sweden, or places like that.
On the rare occasions when the bad guy won the day,
they'd insert an alternative ending
where the bad guy either died in an accident or something else happened.
Evil couldn't triumph. That didn't go down well in some countries.
So, sometimes you'd film an alternative ending to avoid censorship.
But they weren't filmed just for the fun of it, as they are today.
So, were you asked to pen an alternative version
or did you improvise at the last moment?
No, sometimes I was asked to write a different ending.
Other times, it was a quick sketch.
Because if it was the version where the bad guy had to die,
that could be done with very few shots.
So, it would end with him driving off in his convertible, with a billion dollars,
but then, in the next shot, a truck would be coming the other way and... boom!
And that's how it would end in certain countries,
but you didn't have to write in that scene.
Same thing for any erotic scenes, if they were only...
But when more detail was required, you'd write out both alternative endings.
This is a really important scene, because we've discovered that Hilton's the killer,
who until now seemed above suspicion, and he's explaining to Anita Strindberg
what he had to do to get his hands on this money.
So, he blew up a plane full of innocent passengers...
- That's evil. - Really, really evil.
And he justifies himself by saying, "A Frenchman once said..."
He's referring to Balzac, by the way, even though he doesn't mention him.
"That behind every great fortune lies a great crime."
He must be referring to Berlusconi.
- Ante litteram. - Ante litteram, yes.
Ante litteram, yes. Undoubtedly.
Except that in Berlusconi's case it isn't one crime, but a long series of crimes.
But the fact that George Hilton refers to Balzac here,
in terms of, "A Frenchman once said..."
- Is that to avoid saying...? - Chances are Gastaldi didn't know
that he was quoting Balzac. He may have remembered the words,
knew they were by a Frenchman,
but no longer remembered they were by Balzac.
That's the simplest explanation.
There was no Internet in those days. Now you could do a search.
It was harder then. If you couldn't remember who'd said something,
it wasn't easy to look it up.
I don't know. I don't remember.
It was interesting, though.
It was as though you didn't want to seem well-read.
"A Frenchman once said..."
And yet you remembered it was a Frenchman.
- I don't know. Maybe I'm just nit-picking. - Yes.
I call that kind of thing a "monumental pipe."
I don't know if I'm being clear.
I deserve that. I deserve that.
This is Cleo Duponz' speaking, from Peter Lynch's boat. Hello?
We're still at Nimis island.
He's the murderer. It's Peter Lynch.
He's going to kill me.
We're reaching the end of the film.
And George Hilton is starting to do a convincing job as an actor here.
Even Sergio Martino, when discussing the film,
told me he was satisfied with George Hilton's performance,
particularly towards the end, because he became credible as the killer.
- And I'd agree that... - Yes, he's dropped the look of irony.
His normal expression is always slightly ironic.
By relinquishing that, he does gain a...
It's not "the usual suspects." It's not a sudden transformation.
But there is a change in him which remains believable.
She's less believable, but never mind.
He's good here, because she's just told him, "You're crazy. You must seek help."
And he responded, like any other madman, "Don't you dare say that to me!"
- Maybe that was the screenwriter's fault. - No, his response was really credible.
No, what's not credible is that someone who's blown up a plane should allow himself
to be shot up by a dimwit.
I mean, I should have thought of something he'd have found harder to anticipate.
That's what I meant. But he did change expression. Sergio is right.
- Did you go see these films at the cinema? - No. I'd only go to the previews.
Yes, previews where sometimes there were members of the public.
Sometimes the audience was made out of relatives and friends.
For All the Colors of the Dark, the preview was in a cinema
and there were people who'd paid for their ticket.
So that was a real preview, with an actual audience.
But, often... Sergio Leone had a screening room under his swimming pool.
And that was a lot bigger than many of today's multiplexes.
So we always watched them there.
How did audiences react to scenes like this final chase?
- Were people engrossed? - I think so, yes.
They liked the film. People weren't laughing.
Because there was always the risk of them finding it ridiculous.
Absolutely. There's always that risk towards the end of a thriller.
Ever since Eli Wallach, in Sergio's film,
said, "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk,"
he complicated the ending for 90% of thrillers.
Because usually the killer starts rambling on and is shot.
We're nearing the end here. There's a bit of suspense.
- Here, we see Anita Strindberg... - Showing off her tits.
Exactly, not wearing a bra.
80... It's always a beautiful sight.
Sergio did a nicely angled shot here.
- This was filmed in London and in Greece. - Yes.
Was having such distant locations expensive?
No, no. It was actually cheaper that way.
It didn't raise the costs. As I said earlier,
when I made Cin cin... cianuro, I spent a week in Paris.
We brought a tiny crew along,
which was often just a cameraman with a hand-held camera,
and maybe a tripod.
We brought the actors' costumes along and hired some extras on the spot.
We'd choose people whose physique vaguely resembled the actors'
and film the distance scenes.
The whole thing took two to three days, maybe four,
and there were only five or six of us.
And then, after looking at the results, we'd edit them
and film the close-ups here.
So you could have great settings, Paris, London...
I filmed at Notre Dame and in Montmartre, for example,
and all it cost was a four-day trip to Paris.
The most expensive thing was dining on oysters in the Champs Elysées.
So, no, it wasn't very expensive.
Besides, if you went to Greece or to Spain, everything was a lot cheaper in those days.
So you'd save a lot of money.
Italy was a lot more expensive.
And how did passers-by react when you filmed on location?
Because in Italian detective films you often see onlookers during the chase scenes,
who couldn't be shooed away, because they were curious.
What happened when your crew went abroad?
- Were they met with curiosity? - I had two problems.
When I was filming on the steps of Montmartre,
there were French street urchins, or perhaps foreign street urchins,
who wanted to touch women.
So it was very hard to keep them away from the actress.
Whereas, while I was filming at Notre Dame,
some gypsies emerged from under the bridge along the Seine,
who claimed I'd have to pay them if I wanted to film there,
otherwise they'd place themselves in front of the cameras,
since they had every right to be there.
That's the kind of problem I encountered.
We have the same kind of issues when we film in the south of Italy,
except we're having to deal with the Mafia.
After all, I gave the gypsies a few francs,
whereas the Mafia would have expected a much heftier payment.
But, no... Usually... Well... I didn't...
Besides, it's not as if we organized huge car chases through the streets of Paris.
It would have been like committing economic suicide.
We couldn't have done that, frankly.
We'd shoot nice panoramic scenes,
with the body doubles in the distance, with their backs to us,
so we could take our time over the rushes once we got back home.
But you needed a lot of equipment to shoot big action scenes abroad,
so that would have been expensive. In Italy, at least,
people you knew would do you favors.
And when I found the original cuff' links in Baumer's house, I was sure of it.
It all became clear.
This is the final bit of dialogue, with the inevitable explanations,
so that all the pieces fall into place.
It's an apt metaphor, since Luigi Pistilli, who loves jigsaw puzzles, is on screen.
And now we'll see the beginning of a friendship
between Anita Strindberg and de Mendoza.
Why did you decide to end the film on this exchange of glances we're about to see?
There are indications that romance is blossoming here.
Well, maybe I just wanted to introduce a nice note after all that had happened.
To let the audience know that they could start to relax before leaving the cinema.
There's still room for affection and romance.
Just because that man blew up a plane, the world isn't a bad place.
So, as you can see, everything goes back to normal.
We can leave our seats and go home.
- So, it was to reassure people? - Yes, to dial down the anxiety
they may have experienced.
At least, for some people more than others.
We always try to...
Great. We've reached the end of the film.
Thank you, Ernesto Gastaldi, for this enjoyable commentary.
It went very well. Thank you, too.