An evening with Aldo Lado

A short man with a grey beard smoking a cigarette, out in the cold at the bottom of Frank Gehry's beautiful architecture for the former American Center turned La Cinémathèque Française : that was Aldo Lado last night in Paris, just before the special evening he was the guest of started.

After an introduction which sounded like a warning about what was about to be shown, the evening started with "L'ultimo treno della notte" (Night trains murders - 1975), a film which remains, 30 years after it was shot, still relevant in many aspects and certainly a distressing experience.

The lights came back on a deep silence of the audience, under the disturbing feeling left by this excellent film I'll come back to very soon.
Before the evening closed with the very original giallo "La corta notte delle bambole di vetro" (Short night of the glass dolls - 1971), a discussion was held with Aldo Lado and a surprise guest : Macha Méril, a French actress who is one of the key characters of "L'ultimo treno" and also played in Argento's "Profondo Rosso".

Aldo Lado talked (in excellent French) about his memories of making popular cinema in the Italian 70s. Back then, Italy was producing nearly three hundred films a year; it was the peak of exploitation cinema, or "cinema B" as it was referred to. Producers were so busy chasing money to pay the crew at the end of the week, they left directors with great freedom.

Undoubedtly, Aldo Lado's talent was to take advantage of genre cinema to make a political point in his films. If "L'ultimo treno della notte" was building on the "violence against violence" filone, it is also a very impactful critic of the European society in the 70s. This is also true for "La corta notte", which original idea was to demonstrate how "Power" crushes contestation. Indeed, both films are very consistent in denonciating the overwhelming power of the establishment.

This freedom of speech was daringly supported by unmatched violence and shocking scenes at the time, and many films had lots of trouble with Censorship, which was very strong in Italy.
"We can't release the film, they said we have to burn it", cried "L'Ultimo treno's" producer to Aldo Lado when the film was brutally rejected by the Italian board of Censorship.
But that wouldn't stop Lado: he went to the board and proposed to cut a few scenes which he had selected himself, and which absence in the final edit would not undermine the film. But they were strong enough to let censors think the worst had been avoided.
And obviously, when asked to cut a scene, Lado was saying yes and then only cut half of it...

Amongst the many obstacles, critics in Italy were also very powerful, if not always very honest: basically, there were the "Maestros" (Bellochio, Fellini, Antonioni...) and the others. When a director had reached this "Maestro" status, critics would never question his films, even if they were bad.
Genre cinema was highly disregarded, even if sometimes foreign critics managed to get their Italian counterparts to change their mind: Lado and Méril were mentioning the amusing example of a film which had been completely despised by critics in Italy, but when reading very positive French and American reviews the next day, the same Italian critics changed their points of view, all of a sudden considering the film a masterpiece...

Snapshots and memories from the weird years of Italian genre cinema, that was a very nice evening with Aldo Lado and his films, and a rare occasion to see them on a big cinema screen - definitely worth the experience.

1978

A poster from the PCI (Italian Communist Party)
about Aldo Moro's kidnapping - Rome, 1978

A red Renault 4 parked via Caetani, Roma. 9th of May, 1978.
Inside the car's trunk, the lifeless body of Aldo Moro, President of Democrazia Cristiana (DC, the biggest Italian political party at the time).
Moro, kidnapped and murdered by the "Brigate Rosse" (The Red Brigades), a left-wing terrorist group which was very active in Italy's 1970s.

During the three months of his detention (from March the 16th to his death on May the 9th), Aldo Moro wrote dozens of letters, to fellow politicians or adversaries, to his friends and family, even the Pope. Writing to keep hope, writing to maintain the dialogue, writing to remain alive. Writing to open doors and break walls, he who was locked in a Roman flat's small room for weeks.

Writing to keep on doing politics in a paralyzed political sphere.

Through his letters, it's an amazing personality which shapes up before our very eyes: as death is getting closer everyday, he never surrenders, trying all possible means to stop the irreversible, demonstrating immense humanity, empathetic for the ones he loves, convincing with the politicians, confident yet scared; all his energy is focussed on getting the different parties involved to start a dialogue, to get to a compromise that would both save his life and demonstrate what the word "politics" really means.

In vain. The Red Brigades' blind ideology and the inflexible position adopted by the democratic parties, refusing to negotiate whatsoever, had already sentenced him to death from the start.
As much as the Red Brigades, it's Italy's complete political and social sclerosis which killed Aldo Moro in 1978.


Learn more about Aldo Moro here. His correspondence while in detention was recently published in France in an excellent book, that you can find there.

Aldo Moro's tragic fate gives even more strength to Aldo Lado's political allegory in his great giallo "Short Night of the Glass Dolls", where a man locked in a lifeless body ends up being buried alive. Read more from this blog here.

Young blood

Terrifying film, Rosemary's baby (Roman Polanski - 1968).

Watching it a few days ago, I was stunned by its strength and its amazing capacity to drag you into the plot in an irresisitible manner. And there's this scene of Rosemary's dream, when she is raped by the Devil during an orgy of old satanic worshippers...

I could not help thinking Aldo Lado found here some inspiration for his own orgy scene with old people in his great giallo Short Night of the Glass Dolls (1971).
Both films seem to be carrying a similar message: old people need young blood to maintain or increase their power.

My God! That's almost a vampiric theme.


Read here an interesting analysis of Polanski's film.
And just for the anecdote, it's interesting noticing "Roman Castevet", the name of the sorcerer's son in the film, bears strange similitudes with "Roman" (Polanski) and "Cassavetes" (John).

Buried alive

"La corta notte delle bambole di vetro" can be considered as the first political giallo.

Most reviews stress the fact that it's a vibrant allegory about repression in communist dictatorships. It is probably true considering the very obvious (almost "in-your-face") symbols Aldo Lado is using:
it is set in Prague (just after the "Prague Spring" in 1968) and tells the story of how Gregory Moore, an American journalist, and his girlfriend called Mira Svoboda - which means "freedom" in Russian -, are becoming preys of a secret society.

But in the Anchor Bay DVD, there's an interview of Lado where he says the idea actually came out of the Italian news: a judge who was getting close to unveil political scandals was suddenly transferred to some remote town in the south of Italy in order not to cause any trouble.

When you become a threat to the power in place, you are literally buried alive.
This idea just reveals the extreme tensions existing in Italian society and politics in the early 70s.

More about "Short night of the glass dolls" from this blog here, and a good article about it from braineater.com there.

Somewhere between life and death

"La corta notte delle bambole di vetro" (Short night of the glass dolls) is a unique giallo. In fact it's nearly not a giallo, according to the definition most people agree on when it comes to talking about this genre : no black-gloves-stabber is to be found here.

It opens on the apparently lifeless body of Gregory Moore, an American journalist, found in a Prague's park. He is actually in catalepsy, but no one seems to notice. As he's transferred to a morgue, he recalls the chain of events which led to his unfortunate situation.

Aldo Lado's great idea is that he applied Moore's condition to every element of the film. It is the whole film which is located somewhere between life and death. And this is what gives it its unique melancholic atmosphere.

One scene that struck me.
In one of the numerous flashbacks, Moore recalls the moments he spent with the beautiful Mira in Prague. They look madly in love with each other, and as they're taking a walk through the city, we follow them into a cimetery where they're playing between the graves, apparently not paying much attention to this sinister place.
Morricone's superb and haunting score, which sounds like being suspended between two worlds, is reinforcing the feeling of despair conveyed by this scene : we know that those two have already stepped on the land of the dead, and that their lives will be sucked away soon.

The score can be found at Movie Grooves, and the film is available from Anchor Bay entertainment.
Also read "Buried alive" on this blog.