3+1=5

At first, it seems obvious a trio is the core cast of Your vice is a locked room and only I have the key (Sergio Martino, 1972): The writer (L. Pistilli), his wife (A. Strindberg) and their young cousin (E. Fenech).

But it's wrong. In fact there are four key characters, if you include the cat. Because the black cat, called "Satan" - that says it all -, is everywhere in the film.
Regular close-ups on his eyes (and later on his unique eye left) are somehow giving a rhythm to the film, almost like an editing device. These sinister snapshots of feline yellow eyes staring in a flash at the viewer efficiently convey a feeling of anxiety and give the strange impression that indeed, the one character which is the puppet master is nobody else but the cat himself -
it must be stressed this is an interesting cinematographic transposition of the black cat's role in Edgar Allan Poe's short novel the film was inspired by.

Now, what if there were five key characters?
What if the cat was double?
Indeed there is one last character we never talked about: the Mother. The mother whose face is the first we see when the film opens on her painting, the mother whose incestuous love for her son stands between him and his wife, the mother whom the cat belongs to...
The mother, absent yet omnipresent, dead yet incredibly alive throughout the film. The mother, watching through the cat's eyes, like spying through a keyhole. The mother, symbolically blinded by his son's wife when she stabs the cat in the eye. And ultimately taking her revenge on her daughter-in-law, at the very last second through Satan's mewing.

Isn't it enough to consider "Your vice" a highly oedipian giallo?

There's definitely more to "Your vice is a locked room..." than meets the eye. Read from this blog here and there. A short article about Giallo & animals can also be found here.

Decadence

There's a fragrance of the XIXth century decadent literature floating in the atmosphere of ll tuo vizio e una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave (Your vice is a locked room and only I have the key, 1972 - Sergio Martino/Ernesto Gastaldi).

First this title, outrageously long, twisted and complex, which was actually taken from a dialogue between Rassimov & Fenech in Martino's first Giallo: The strange vice of Mrs. Wardh. A reflections of the twisted mind games at work in the film.

Then, the figure of the decadent writer, uninspired and bitter, who despises the others as well as himself, living in the memory of the past, in adoration with the incestuous souvenir of his mother - who from the start is described both as a Lady and a whore -, driving a somptuous 1930s black and deep blue BMW 327 and dedicated to making his wife miserable.

Also, the decaying manor, which precious furniture the writer is forced to sell as he's progressively running out of money, his mother's ancient dress secretly worn by a young black beauty tragically murdered a moment after, the masochistic wife whose life seems to be an endless tunnel of pain, and the beautiful cousin Floriana whose bisexual tendencies serve her materialistic purposes.

Not to forget Bruno Nicolai's great score, chamber music with a typical 70s erotic flavour, which distills a distinguished yet sleazy feeling to it all.

The inner violence and ambiguity of the character's relationships, and the colours, the style, the costumes, the sounds it's wrapped in make the atmosphere of this huis-clos completely suffocating.
Like a world about to collapse.


Despite being underrated, "Your vice is a locked room and only I have the key" is an original take on Giallo by Sergio Martino & Ernesto Gastaldi. Find it here.
And for the soundtrack, it's there.

A women's affair

It is acknowledged that Edgar Poe's short novel "The black cat" was a source of inspiration for Martino/Gastaldi's Your vice is a locked room and only I have the key (1972).
However it must be said that the film was also strongly influenced by Henri-Georges Clouzot's chef-d'oeuvre Les Diaboliques (1955).

Both movies involve a twisted trio: a domestic tyran (Delassalle/Ruvigny), his wife with a weak condition (Christina/Irina) and a cold-blooded lover (Nicole/Floriana).
Both take place in a run-down school/manor which reinforces the feeling of a decadent atmosphere.
Both also build on a similar plot, where the two women team up to get rid of the evil man. But things are not what they seem, and the frontiers between good and evil are ever changing in the tension of a cynical role play.

Sergio Martino & Ernesto Gastaldi even 'cited' Clouzot directly in a few different scenes : the wife humiliated and forced to eat/drink something disgusting in public, a dead person's clothes delivered back by the dry-cleaner.
And above all the famous scene where the terrified wife hears Delassalle/Ruvigny's typewriter working when the man is supposed to be dead.
In the night, as the door frighteningly opens in a creepy sound on an empty room with the typewriter on the desk, the camera slowly enters and reveals what was written on the white pages which cover up the table. Somebody typed the same thing over and over: the name "Michel Delassalle" in 'les Diaboliques', and, as a if Gastaldi & Martino had wanted to pay a witty tribute to Clouzot, the word "Vendetta" (Revenge) in 'Your Vice'.

When you finally get to discover both films' twist endings, this idea of "vendetta" makes complete sense: indeed, in Your vice, one of the characters takes a revenge on what happened in Les Diaboliques.


Read more about Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques" here, and have a look at a few screenshots there. Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-1977) is a great French director who deserves a closer look: read this article from "Senses of Cinema".