Deadly Sweet

While Michelangelo Antonioni's genre-bending murder mystery Blowup (1966) was still playing in British cinemas, Antonioni's countryman Tinto Brass shot this like-minded Pop Art "giallo" (the collective name taken from the trademark yellow covers of pulp fiction paperbacks in Italy) on the teeming streets of swinging London. Based on Sergio Donati's 1956 novel Il Sepolcro di carta ("The Tomb of Paper"), Deadly Sweet (Col cuore in gola, 1967 – the Italian title translates as "With heart in mouth") stars French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant as Bernard, an out-of-work and down-on-his-luck French actor who comes to the rescue of pretty Jane Burroughs (a pre-Candy Ewa Aulin), whom he discovers at the scene of a Soho nightclub owner's murder. When Jane tells him that the dead man was blackmailing her late father and that she is desperate to retrieve an incriminating photograph, Bernard's desire for the girl prompts him to involve himself in the mounting mystery. In turn pursuing suspects and himself being pursued all over London (including a fun sprint through the London Underground), Bernard is knocked down, knocked out, strung up and tortured for information he doesn't yet possess while he doggedly follows the available clues towards a revelation that will of course pan out to be more than he bargained for. For Deadly Sweet, Tinto Brass collaborated with graphic artist Guido Crepax, then the rising star of the Italian fumetti, whose erotically charged comics (starting with the sadomasochistic Valentina in 1965) read like EC Comics dosed with a cocktail of LSD and Spanish Fly. Iconic imagery torn from the pages of mythology, from history (particularly the fashion sense and innate cruelty of The Third Reich), from literature, from Kraft-Ebbing, and from popular culture (early in his career, he drew ads for Shell Oil) were the raw materials for Crepax, whose elegantly drawn panels burst with hallucinogenic, pornographic poses and scandalous juxtapositions. True to that irreverent spirit, Brass and cinematographer Silvano Ippoliti (The Great Silence [1968], Salon Kitty [1976]) split and divide their frames, use words isolated from advertising slogans as thought balloons for their characters, and employ off-center, machine gun editing to both preserve the unique postmodern perspective of Crepax' comics and to mirror the divided and distracted minds of their dramatis personae. While some might find this approach invigorating and perhaps ingenious (even given what seems to be an obvious debt to the French New Wave, particularly the early films of Jean-Luc Godard), others may be put off by the story's lack of urgency and Brass' (arguable) artistic pretensions. If he is good for nothing else, Tinto Brass certainly knows how to divide the room. For the true cineaste, Deadly Sweet should prove an enjoyable romp that looks back to classic "pop" iconography (from Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart to Batman and The Wolfman) and ahead to later films that may or may not have found inspiration here. Trintignant's discovery of Aulin cowering at the crime scene occurs when he catches sight of her in a mirror that on first pass appears to be a vintage poster; this "meet cute" anticipates the climactic reveal of Dario Argento's Profondo rosso (Deep Red, 1976), in which David Hemmings stumbles upon a murder scene but misses a glimpse of the killer when he mistakes a looking glass for a painting. Later in Deadly Sweet, Aulin dons a red mackintosh that makes her look remarkably like Donald Sutherland's dead daughter in Don't Look Now (1973); as Trintignant searches for her, he sees a police boat pulling a body from the Thames, which mirrors similar business in the Nic Roeg film. Deadly Sweet's denouement plays like a dry run for both Argento's 4 mosche di velluto grigio (Four Flies on Grey Velvet, 1971) and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Tango (1973) while its pop art value is increased by the fortuitous casting of Dave Prowse (who would in years to come fill the shoes of both the Frankenstein monster and Darth Vader) as a gangster's goon who bleeds onto a copy of Marvel Comics' Monsters to Laugh With. Even though it had an American release through Avco Embassy in September of 1969, Deadly Sweet was largely forgotten even as the gialli became big box office in Italy with the success of Dario Argento's L'ucello dalle piume di cristallo (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, 1969). Not widely available during the video era (exceptions being a standard frame Italian cassette on the Ricordi label and a poor quality but letterboxed bootleg from the Florida-based gray market company Video Search of Miami), Deadly Sweet has been rescued from obscurity by the niche DVD tenders Cult Epics. This anamorphically enhanced letterbox transfer preserves the film's intended 1.85:1 aspect ratio but the results are somewhat middling. The black and white passages (Brass shot in occasional monochrome not as an artistic choice but because available light was not sufficient to film in color) look best, with strong contrasts, but the color sequences bear more than a little grain (although primary colors remain vivid), while the all-region disc's lack of progressive scanning results in blurring when the camera pans quickly. The only soundtrack option for playback is the original Italian mono, with optional English subtitles. Tinto Brass provides an interesting and convivial if occasionally unintelligible audio commentary in English. A theatrical trailer and a brief image gallery are the only extras. For more information about Deadly Sweet, visit Cult Epics. To order Deadly Sweet, go to TCM Shopping. by Richard Harland Smith