Four bow ties on gray velvet

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Movie
German title Four bow ties on gray velvet
Original title Quattro mosque di velluto grigio
Country of production Italy , France
original language Italian
Publishing year 1971
length 103 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Dario Argento
script Dario Argento
Luigi Cozzi
Mario Foglietti
production Salvatore Argento
music Ennio Morricone
camera Franco Di Giacomo
cut Françoise Bonnot
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
The nine-tailed cat

Four Flies on Gray Velvet (Original: Quattro mosche di velluto grigio ) is the Giallo associated Italian-French psychological thriller from 1971. The thriller is the third full-length feature film by Italian director Dario Argento , who together with Luigi Cozzi and Mario Foglietti the Wrote a script based on a story he had previously written.

Argento's film is often viewed as the third part of a loose “animal trilogy” that began in 1969 with The Secret of Black Gloves and continued in 1971 with The Nine-Tailed Cat . Although the films are not related in terms of content, all three of them are based on a special (in the original) eponymous animal that is always the key to uncovering a secret. In Germany, the first two parts were also marketed as Bryan Edgar Wallace films . Due to its affiliation with the “Animal Trilogy”, Four Flies on Gray Velvet is sometimes mentioned as part of this film series for the sake of completeness, although it was never officially marketed as such.

The film was first released in Germany on May 19, 1972.

action

Italy in the 1970s. The young drummer of a rock band, Roberto Tobias, has been shadowed by a stranger for a week. One evening the annoyed musician notices the presence of his supposed observer, whom he follows into an almost deserted theater, where he finally confronts him. This is followed by fights, in the course of which the black-clad stranger pulls out a prepared knife. Roberto accidentally rams the dummy weapon into the body of the man who feels he is being followed, causing the victim to lie motionless after a fall. The victim named Carlo Marosi is apparently dead, but - unnoticed by Roberto - enjoys excellent health. Shortly after his act, committed in affect, the shocked drummer notices a masked eyewitness who photographs the staged manslaughter from a clearly visible position. A few moments later, however, the masked witness has disappeared. The apathetic , guilty Roberto hides this incident and, out of fear, informs neither his wife Nina nor the police.

In the days that followed, ominous and stressful photos of the nocturnal act of violence appeared, paired with anonymous letters and mysterious messages. Roberto's mental and physical condition changes worryingly. At night he has nightmares of bizarre, oriental beheadings. After a terrifying threat, the musician, who is increasingly becoming a victim, realizes that the “photographer” is playing a perverse game with him that is slowly bringing him to the brink of a nervous breakdown . In this situation, the terrorized and tormented Roberto finally confides in his wife. The intimate conversation is secretly overheard by her older housekeeper Amelia, who soon turns to the perpetrator in an extortionate manner and is brutally murdered in the further course of the action.

Meanwhile, Roberto decides to take active action against the stranger whom he suspects to be among his extended circle of friends. On the advice of his friend Gottfried, a run-down, sullen dropout, he hired the eccentric gay private detective Gianni Arrosio and a nerd named "Professor".

At a different time, the masked maniac who started the psychological terror increases his approach. He becomes a murderer. Amelia is the prelude to a whole series of deaths in Roberto's vicinity, including the alleged murder victim from the beginning of the film - Marosi - and private detective Arrosio. After the violent killing of young Dalia, a cousin of Nina's, the pathologist in charge asks the bereaved relatives to authorize them to test a new, almost revolutionary procedure that makes it possible to visualize the last image of the victim seen at the time of death . The result is the not very informative picture of the eponymous four flies on gray velvet .

Roberto organizes a firearm and holed up with it in his house. At night he expects the unknown villain, but to his amazement only his paranoid wife Nina comes. At this moment he notices a strange medallion with a fly trapped inside his companion - the identity of the murderous stranger has been clarified, it is Nina. The psychologically unstable woman gives a decisive childhood experience as a motif. She was abused for years by her tyrannical father, who would rather have a boy than a daughter. Before she could take revenge on her parent for the agony she had suffered, he suddenly died. With the marriage of Roberto, who outwardly resembles her father, she has since tried to find a mental balance by gradually driving her husband insane in order to ultimately redeem him after a certain period of suffering. She injures her astonished husband with Roberto's gun, but gives up a murder after Gottfried enters the scene. She decides to flee by car, crashes into a truck and is beheaded when the tailgate is down .

background

For Argento's third directorial work, his friend Ennio Morricone was responsible for the background music. However, Argento was dissatisfied and angry with his work, so that he fell out with his former companion and then finally broke up with him. From then on he worked with the progressive rock band Goblin .

After more than 20 years, Argento finally succeeded again in the mid-1990s to engage Morricone as composer for his thriller The Stendhal Syndrome (La sindrome di Stendhal) .

Reviews

The lexicon of the international film wrote that the "abundantly constructed psycho-thriller" was of "moderate tension" , although it tried to show "the intrusion of horror into an apparently sound bourgeois life" , but lost itself in "gross improbabilities" .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. sectional reports
  2. Four flies on gray velvet. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used