{"id":3677,"date":"2016-07-23T06:15:33","date_gmt":"2016-07-23T06:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3677"},"modified":"2016-07-12T06:15:47","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T06:15:47","slug":"elio-petri-a-quiet-place-in-the-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/elio-petri-a-quiet-place-in-the-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Elio Petri: A Quiet Place in the Country"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
A Quiet Place in the Country<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aka Un coin tranquille \u00e0 la campagne (Fr), Un tranquillo posto di campagna (It)
\nItaly \/ France
\n1968
\nAn Alberto Grimaldi production for Produzioni Europee Associate (Rome) & Les Productions Artistes Associ\u00e9s (Paris)
\nDirector: Elio Petri
\nStory: Tonino Guerra, Elio Petri
\nScreenplay: Luciano Vincenzoni, E. Petri
\nCinematography: Luigi Kuveiller {Technicolor \u2013 Panoramico}
\nMusic: Ennio Morricone, with songs sung by Edda Dell\u2019Orso
\nEditor: Ruggero Mastroianni
\nArt director: Sergio Canevari
\nCameraman: Ubaldo Terzano
\nRelease dates & running times: Italy (14\/11\/68), France (14\/08\/69, 105 mins), UK (71, 106 mins)
\nFilmed: Cinecitt\u00e0 Studios (Rome)
\nItalian takings: 387.000.000 lire
\nCast: Franco Nero (Leonardo Ferri<\/i>), Vanessa Redgrave (Flavia<\/i>), Georges Geret (Attilio<\/i>), Gabriella Grimaldi (Wanda<\/i>), Madeleine Damien (Wanda\u2019s mother<\/i>), Rita Calderoni (Egle<\/i>), Renato Menegatto (Egle\u2019s friend<\/i>), David Mansell (the medium<\/i>), John Francis Lane (the asylum nurse<\/i>), Valerio Ruggeri, Arnaldo Momo (a villager<\/i>), Constantino De Luca (a villager<\/i>), Marino Biagiola (a villager<\/i>), Piero De Franceschi (a villager<\/i>), Camillo Besenzon (a villager<\/i>), Renato Lupi, Umberto Di Grazia, Giuseppe Bello, Bruno Simionato, Graziella Simionato, Giulia Menin (a villager<\/i>), Snoopy the dog
\nIMDB credits: Mario Simionato (a villager<\/i>), Elena Vicini, Onofrio Fulli, Otello Cazzola (a villager<\/i>), Sara Momo\u00a0 (a villager<\/i>)<\/p>\n

Ostensibly a ghost story, the following year\u2019s A Quiet Place in the Country <\/b>is, in fact, an atmospheric rumination upon the nature of art, pornography, insanity and \u2013 heck \u2013 life itself.\u00a0 Adapted from a 1911 story by Oliver Onions (\u2018The Beckoning Fair One\u2019), Tonino Guerra and Elio Petri\u2019s script was unused for five years before being dusted off and revised by Petri and the talented Luciano Vincenzoni (Death Rides a Horse<\/b> (Da uomo a uomo, 68<\/i>)).<\/p>\n

The story concerns Leonardo Ferri (Franco Nero), a modernist painter whose work is composed of formless colors arranged on huge canvasses. He lives with his agent, Flavia (Vanessa Redgrave), who organizes his life in every way: arranging meetings with clients, paying him a daily allowance, even wiping his beard clean in public.\u00a0 Sick of living in the city – which he finds full of distractions (i.e. women) – he decides to move to the country.<\/p>\n

He soon becomes obsessed with a huge, decrepit villa on the outskirts of Venice and, despite Flavia\u2019s concerns, moves in.\u00a0 Strange things begin to happen: doors open and close of their own accord, an unseen force throws around paint and a pair of scissors mysteriously appears from nowhere.\u00a0 More alarmingly, Leonardo\u2019s already odd dreams become increasingly disturbing, beginning to seep into his waking hours.<\/p>\n

It becomes apparent that a young woman, Wanda (Gabriella Grimaldi), had been killed in the villa during a Second World War air raid.\u00a0 Leonardo is convinced that her ghost is responsible for the disquieting events, and starts digging into her past: extremely beautiful, she had a reputation as a nymphomaniac and had slept with most of the men in the town.\u00a0 As he discovers more about her bizarre past, he becomes convinced that her death was not exactly as it seems.\u00a0 He is repeatedly drawn toward certain objects and forms: the color red, a stack of photographs of the dead girl, some bullet-holes in the wall.<\/p>\n

A Quiet Place in the Country<\/b> is an incredibly uncomfortable film to watch.\u00a0 Petri\u2019s work often has an overwrought edge, but here the hysterical atmosphere is all pervading.\u00a0 There is a purpose for this, as it reflects the increasing dementia of the lead character, but it really doesn\u2019t make the viewing experience any easier.\u00a0 The confrontational nature of the film is apparent within the opening five minutes.\u00a0 After the credits roll – accompanied by atonal jazz music and with \u2018mock\u2019 scratches on the filmstock – we are treated to a sequence in which Leonardo is tied to a chair whilst Flavia harasses him with assorted electrical devices, before stabbing him to death in the shower.\u00a0 Unsettling in itself, this is also demonstrates possibly the most unsafe use of a multiplug adaptor ever committed to celluloid.\u00a0 It may all be a dream, but it certainly manages to kick things off in a sinister fashion.<\/p>\n

\"Vanessa<\/a>
Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero in A Quiet Place in the Country<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The general edginess is accentuated by the discordant Morricone music, occasional outbreaks of violence and some taut direction, which makes much use of jittery editing, whispered voiceovers and disconcerting flashbacks (or flash-forwards).\u00a0 There is a very odd looking supporting cast, and Franco Nero contributes an aggressively manic, brutal performance; it is hard to believe that it is the same guy who was such a minimalist actor in Django<\/b> (66).\u00a0 This was one of a number of bizarre euro-productions to star Nero and Redgrave at around the same time: Dropout<\/b> (71) and La vacanza<\/b> (69) were both directed by Tinto Brass, have fallen into complete obscurity and sound similarly challenging.<\/p>\n

Many of Petri\u2019s recurrent themes are present and correct, both stylistic and narrative.\u00a0 There is Flavia\u2019s obsession with consumer goods (\u2018an underwater television for scuba diving, an erotic electro magnet, a tiny automobile to go round from room to room\u2019), which is contrasted with the artist\u2019s spartan existence in the villa.\u00a0 Surrealism bubbles beneath the surface – Leonardo paints some trees bright red on a whim and suffers from troubling hallucinations \u2013 and, if you look deep, there\u2019s a wicked sense of outre humor at play (\u2018you can\u2019t kill me with that, it\u2019s just a giant paperclip\u2019)<\/p>\n

Something new for the director is the fascination with pornography (this would again surface in his last film, Good News<\/b>).\u00a0 Leonardo is obsessed with girlie magazines \u2013 he reads them in bed with Flavia – and views slides of distorted, naked bodies whilst working.\u00a0 His sight is continually drawn towards female breasts, as he ogles and gropes his way through all the women in his vicinity. In fact, despite seeming to be something that he has command of, porn is used to control him; as is made explicit with the cynical ending, which finds him confined in a mental institution, painting tiny pictures in exchange for copies of playboy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ostensibly a ghost story, A Quiet Place in the Country is, in fact, an atmospheric rumination upon the nature of art, pornography, insanity and \u2013 heck \u2013 life itself. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1212,8],"tags":[68,814,1134,263,851,907],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3677"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3677"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4289,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3677\/revisions\/4289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}