La Morte ha Fatto l'Uovo

Death Laid an Egg
La Mort a Pondu un Oeuf / A Curious Way to Love / Plucked

Italy/France 1968
produced by
Franco Marras for Cine Azimut, Les Films Corona, Summa Cinematografica
directed by Giulio Questi
starring Gina Lollobrigida, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ewa Aulin, Jean Sobieski, Renato Romano, Vittorio André, Giulio Donnini, Biagio Pelligra, Cleofe Del Cile, Monica Millesi, Ugo Adinolfi, Conrad Anderson, Aldo Bonamano, Rina De Filippo, Livio Ferraro, Mario Guizzardi, Margherita Horowitz, Barbara Pignaton, Giuliano Raffaelli, Jean Rougeul, Giancarlo Sisti, Ludmil Trifonof
written by Franco Arcalli, Giulio Questi, music by Bruno Maderna

review by
Mike Haberfelner

Marco (Jean-Louis Trintignan) runs a totally mechanized chicken farm that actually belongs to his wealthy wife Anna (Gina Lollobrigida), which means he's not totally into his job ... but he's not totally into his wife either so he acts out his violent fantasies by regularly killing prostitutes at the local brothel - but the killing is only make-believe, actually. Plus, Marco has an affair with young Gabrielle (Ewa Aulin), a poor relation of his wife who lives with them, and he seems to plot to kill his wife, wanting to use the feeding machine of his farm to get rid of her.

However, Gabrielle has an affair with Mondarini (Jean Sobieski), and the two use an elaborte plot to lure Anna to Marco's private room at the brothel, where Mondarini kills her shortly before Marco is expected. Then he phones the police to catch Marco red-handed. Marco however has by now such a routine as killer that he calmly removes his wife's body from the room and all the traces of the crime before the police arrives. He then takes dead Anna back home to feed her to a grinding machine in his chicken farm, but instead falls in himself (and dies, obviously), leaving Gabrielle and Mondarini, who wanted to get rid of Anna and Marco in one go, alone with the body of Anna and thus the prime suspects in the murder ...

First of all, one can't help but noticing how well-made this film is. Direction, camerawork and especially editing are all excellent, giving the basic narrative fascinating associative and allegoric overtones. However, the film as a hole is unfortunately less than a masterpiece, mainly thanks to the directionless script that can't decide between being social satire, giallo (= Italian murder mystery) and even science fiction (the scene in which a scientist breeds headless and wingless chickens), and it's not made any better that the basic crime-drama plot of the film is just amazingly far-fetched and thus utterly unbelievable.

Of course the film looks well enough that it's not a total loss, it just could have been great (which it isn't).

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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