Here’s an entirely fabulous French / Italian co-production from 1970, directed by Georges Lautner. A kind of perverse (or more perverse) reworking of The Postman Always Rings Twice, it’s the type of film which really reminds me why I love European cinema of the time quite as much as I do. And, as with so many of these kinds of films which bridge the arthouse and the exploitatative, it’s rather fallen through the cracks today, probably better known for it’s ubercool soundtrack (which features on Kill Bill Vol 2) than anything else.
Jonas (Robert Waker Jr), a drifter who’s broke and in need of work, decides to hitch a ride to Salina. Thirsty and tired, he stops off at a gas station, where the loopy owner, Mara (Rita Hayworth), mistakes him for her long lost son, Rocky. Seeing the opportunity for a few quick meals and a bed for the night, he decides to go along with it, even when her best friend, Warren (Ed Begley), explains that Mara has made a habit of mistaking young men for her son, and now that he’s claimed that that’s who he is, he’d better bloody well not bugger off.
Things start getting peculiar – or even more peculiar – when Mara’s daughter, his supposed ‘sister’, Billie (Mimsy Farmer), turns up. Jonas can’t work out whether she knows that he’s an imposter or not; although if she really does think that he’s her brother, some of her flirtatious behaviour seems rather… inappropriate. Needless to say, the two of them are soon shagging each other senseless, which doesn’t seem to come as a complete surprise to either Mara or Warren, both of whom watch their behaviour with increasing and thoroughly understandable disapproval.
Meanwhile, the questions are beginning to mount up: why does everyone seem so keen to accept Jonas’s ruse, even when it’s perfectly clear that he’s not the person he’s pretending to be? And what was it that had caused Rocky to disappear from the face of the planet all those years before?
Based on a novel by respected author Maurice Cury, this is one of those films that revolve around the clash between the old and the new by featuring a traveller (representing ‘the modern’) coming into an isolated household / situation (‘the traditional’) and essentially coming a cropper. Other examples from around the same time include Lucidi’s Stateline Motel, Bardem’s The Corruption of Chris Miller, Eugenio Martin’s A Candle for the Devil and even Britain’s own The Wicker Man. Although nothing entirely unexpected happens – the whole story is told through flashback, so you know pretty much how it’s going to end – the story is unusual and bizarre enough to hold the interest, and it all mounts up to a not particularly surprising but effective climax.
Lautner, though, was something of an underrated master, and does a wonderful job with the material. From the use of highly effective ambient shots – the black beaches, workers in the salt factories – to the marvellously sun-drenched, languid and decadent atmosphere that pervades the whole production, this is the kind of film that you suspect Jesus Franco would have loved to have been able to make. If Jean Pierre Melville was the King of French noir, Lautner was one of the chief pretenders to the throne, and it’s a shame that his work is so little known outside of France.
I hadn’t seen much of Robert Walker Jr before this, but he’s actually rather good. After a promising start, winning a Golden Globe for his performance in The Ceremony (63), his career had already started to go downhill, and this stands as one of his better films. Mimsy Farmer is absolutely gorgeous here, and handles a difficult part with some skill. Rita Hayworth, meanwhile, has a similar maternal role to the one she played in Duccio Tessari’s The Bastard, a film which this reminded me of a lot for some reason. It’s worth the price of admission alone watching her share a spliff with a bunch of groovy travellers and boogaloo along to some prog-rock tunes on the jukebox.
Highly recommended.
