Madeleine, Study of a Nightmare (1974)

Title		Madeleine, anatomia di un incubo
Origin		Italy, 1974
Genre		Drama: Psychodrama
Director		Roberto Mauri
Starring		Camille Keaton, Riccardo Salvino, Paola Senatore
Music		Maurizio Vandelli
Blurb		-

My favourite horror babe Camille Keaton stars in this psychological drama from Italy. Not a lot is known about this title, but the fact that Camille is in it and it has something to do with witches was more than enough to pique my interest.

Entrusted with the lead role of Madeleine, Camille is going to have to change her trademark sleepwalking style and actually do some acting to sustain this one. It simply won't do to just stand there while everyone around her wonders whether she's fallen unconscious or not.

We find Madeleine alone in the countryside sitting by a quiet pond. Is she awake? It would appear so as she seems to be doing some sewing but the picture is so poor it's hard to tell. As it is soon revealed that Madeleine is pregnant it's a safe bet that she's sewing (or knitting) baby clothes.

A promising beginning? Certainly it's a tranquil one, but how is the story to develop? Will Madeleine fall in that murky pond full of weeds and get a drenching? That would be horrendous - think of the laundry bills! But that's hardly going to be enough to sustain an hour and a half of drama. Though there could be a sub-plot where Madeleine removes her damp dress and underwear to dry, only to have them stolen by a clothes thief. Madeleine gives chase - completely in the nude!

But such sleazy speculation has no place here, for with director Roberto Mauri we are in the hands of a sophisticate. No cheap exploitation for him, this is psychodrama. Featuring the wealthiest Italian jet-setters, wearing the latest fashions in clothes, drinking the finest wines, and smoking the most expensive brands of fags. But don't worry if slumped there in your boxers with a bottle of White Lightning and packet of Rizlas you're feeling out of place. This is cinema, and everyone is welcome.

It turns out Mauri didn't use my suggestion about Madeleine's soaking wet clothes after all. He thought of something better! What's that cackling she can hear in the reeds? Madeleine is in the bad-books of a menacing pack of witches! Soon she's running for her life through the dark and misty woods. This sequence is rather silly but atmospheric and quite well done overall. They're an odd bunch of witches, with dayglo perms and costumes that appear to have been sewn together out of binliners. Certain clues lead us to suspect that this is only a dream (slow-motion, "nightmare" in the title, there's no such thing as witches etc.). If we accept the strict Freudian interpretation that dream imagery, no matter how terrifying and unwelcome, always represents the actual repressed desires of the dreamer, then it must be that Madeleine wants to hit people with sticks and set them on fire. Can't wait!

Madeleine wakes up screaming. Shall we call the ambulance for the mental hospital right now? Better play it safe and give it five minutes because at this point to my frustration the screenwriter decided to forget everything that just happened and have the story be about something else entirely. Or at least that's how it seems. At first nothing in the dream relates to Madeleine's real life. She's not pregnant for a start, and has no children. She is lying on a sun-lounger by the swimming pool of a hyper-modern (and hyper-expensive I'll bet) villa. There is a man of about forty years of age lying beside her. He raises his head a few degrees and expresses mild interest in the fact that Madeleine has just screamed the place down.

Who is this man? I can tell you he is played by Silvano Tranquilli and his character's name is Franz Schuman. He likes to read weighty tracts obviously of a psychological nature (cf. Sexual Aberrations in the Criminal Female in Hitchcock's Marnie). His body language conveys authority and proprietorship. Displease him and he looks absolute daggers at you (as if he was about to draw a stiletto - I was quite intimidated). Franz likes to observe, but is taciturn and distant. So distant that at one point he even blinks instantaneously out of existence, leading us to ask questions such as "what the bloody hell was that all about then??"

But what of his relationship to Madeleine? Is he husband, lover, father or boss? I've got to admit here that I do not speak Italian and a lack of subtitles meant I did not quite understand what was going on. Though this is often a serious drawback, in the right circumstances a lack of comprehensibility can make a story and its characters all the more fascinating.

Meanwhile, it appears that Madeleine is free to do absolutely whatever she wants. She drives into town in her nifty British roadster, and picks up a hitch-hiking hippy along the way. His name is Tomas, he's from Switzerland, and he stares at Madeleine's legs. The pair arrive back at the villa without incident (I'm amazed Camille could get insurance to drive that thing).

Madeleine proves herself the purest of playgirls by inviting Tomas for a swim - all in the nude! Or could this just be a ruse to make sure the hippy took a bath before allowing him indoors? (The swimming pool by the way would surely be the star of the show if Camille wasn't in it. It's massive, and the water the deepest of blues. The villa is splendid too, part traditional-style African grass huts, part Seventies steel and glass modernism.) But what is Franz going to think of all this carrying-on? Hmm.

Now we know a little more about her I'm going to advance the theory that Madeleine is an international jewel thief, and Franz is a retired Mafioso who blackmailed her into a loveless marriage. As good a theory as any, and I'm going to keep with it until definitive evidence turns up against it.

Madeleine gets herself another boyfriend called Luis (Riccardo Salvino). He's a racing driver (a dangerous sport that). He's also a lot of fun. But if he insists on games of badminton so close to the pool he's going to end up playing with a very damp shuttlecock! So how about horse riding along the beach without any shirts on? I wasn't quite ready to watch that game, but it was spectacular! But hang on, Luis seems to be involved with Franz in some way, presumably his son. So according to my theory he is messing around with his own step-mother, who is younger than he is. The jewel thief / marriage hypothesis is beginning to look shaky already.

So basically not an awful lot is happening here, and to be honest it is a bit boring. I filled in the time just wondering what mode of transportation pampered playgirl Madeleine would utilise next, and whether or not she would do it topless (eg. Speedboat: Yes).

On to the only real event of the film, the formal party at the villa. This is very swish, very sophisticated. The absolute epitome of jet-set. (The only slight faux pas in the arrangements is the cheap joke of leaving around saucers of burning cooking fat in the hope that some hippy will brush its flares against them and set them on fire.) But the more exclusive the gathering the greater the opportunity for social disgrace. And, in a certain type of film, social disgrace is the sole reason for staging these parties in the first place. So which of the ladies is up for the drunken striptease? Or will she go one better and urinate standing up where everyone can see?

At the party Madeleine, the playgirl now in the social glare turning to something of a wallflower, meets a beautiful young woman (Paola Senatore). The way these two first encounter each other is classic, exchanging silent glances as the couples weave towards and away from each other on the dancefloor. For me this is the most haunting and memorable scene in the film. Things are beginning to fit together in a subtle and mysterious way. And so we leave the story to slowly make its way to a resolution that is satisfying and suitably surprising. Or at least I get the impression it would be if only you could understand what people are saying.

It's difficult to evaluate a work like Madeleine. It has pretentions to be more than a typical genre drama, and the scenes of gratuitous nudity stop comfortably short of soft porn. I enjoyed the atmosphere of mystery and the way that events unfolded so subtly. Obviously not a lot of money was available to spend on it (and most of it went on entertaining the director's friends at that party scene by the looks of it). The sun-drenched photography often looks lovely even on my degraded copy. The modernistic score by Maurizio Vandelli sounds like it could have been recycled from Ennio Morricone's wastepaper basket. It follows the traditional Italian style of repeating the same couple of themes ad nauseum, but serves its function of establishing and maintaining a consistent dreamlike mood. And as for Camille Keaton's acting in the leading role - well, she doesn't need to act, she just is.

Overall Madeleine is almost a piece of social archaeology, recovering the most uninhibited dreams and aspirations of people from a distant time and place. I was strangely fascinated and very glad I took this trip backwards in time.

Clips

Madeleine the Playgirl
A Camille Keaton collection.

Download clip (Rapidshare)
(2:31 min, 384 x 288, 17.2MB)

 

Paola at the Party
Good-time girls getting it on.

Download clip (Rapidshare)
(3:23 min, 384 x 288, 23.6MB)

 

Ratings

Quality: 5/10   Fun: 7/10

Review copy

Publisher		Unlicensed
Format		DVD Region 0, PAL 4:3 (1.85:1 letterbox, sidecropped from 2.35:1)
Certificate		-
Image		Very poor sub-VHS