Anthony Perkins (his other great role), Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, Orson Welles, Akim Tamiroff, Michael Lonsdale.
An extraordinary film that oddly seems like a product of the Polish New Wave, though in style it easily surpasses Wajda and later experimentalists like Lynch. Incredible that it's Edmond Richard's debut, with no previous experience behind a camera. Weird sets and locations look phenomenal on Blu-Ray.
According to the extras, the editing was (luckily for us) undertaken by Welles himself on three Moviolas running at 48 fps, though at this double speed he remained very accurate. (The editing is actually credited to Yvonne Martin and Fritz H. Muller.)
Locations include Zagreb (thus, perhaps, the Polish New Wave feel), including a fine long take with a trunk at Magic Hour (which Richard charmingly refers to as 'Mystery Hour' in an interview on the Blu-Ray) with brilliantly handled street lights. Welles was clearly all over the lighting: in the opening long incredible single take there was a huge amount of then trendy diffused light. He only wanted one key light, so if the light source needed to change during the shot, he would allow a 'black hole' to appear between the lights so there would be no shadow problems, and demanded 'artificial suns' everywhere.
Richard also revealed that Welles didn't like being filmed as he was always forgetting his lines, so he would improvise, and developed that sideways look of his. Also that he and Romy fooled around and laughed a lot under the eiderdown (Richard tells this with a straight face), and that she became good at reattaching his false nose!
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| Thanks DVD Beaver |
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