"MARCELLO MASTROIANNI, FRANÇOISE FABIAN (…) AND MARTHE KELLER ARE SIMPLY ADMIRABLE."
HUMANITY
In the midst of the rise of fascism, Professor Bonaccorsi works in a psychiatric hospital in Tuscany, cut off from the world. Convinced that madness is a disease that spreads like a virus, he conducts research to try to determine its "germ". A young doctor, nourished by psychoanalytic reading, is transferred there and quickly opposes his theories. She also discovers that the professor has libertine relationships with all the "healthy" women in the hospital...
A raw and electrifying study of an island of lunatics in the heart of Mussolini's Italy, Vertiges draws parallels between the origins of madness and the spread of evil in a closed society. Similar to Marco Bellocchio who filmed the catastrophes of public psychiatry at the same time in Fous à délier , Mauro Bolognini relies on an unstable realism to depict a clinical microcosm as a prison environment. Alongside a stunningly perverse Marcello Mastroianni, the ravishing Françoise Fabian, Marthe Keller and Barbara Bouchet give Vertiges a disturbing eroticism, which makes it one of Mauro Bolognini's most powerful films.
VERTIGO by Mauro Bolognini
(1975 – Colors – 97 min)
int. for under 16s
DVD edition only
SUPPLEMENTS
. PREFACE BY JEAN A. GILI (10 mins)
. MAURO BOLOGNINI, BEYOND STYLE (SECOND PART) (1992 – Colour and B&W – 27 min)
an unpublished film by Richard Frances, Jean A. Gili and Philippe Jamont
The second part of a lengthy interview with Mauro Bolognini, with testimonies from Claudia Cardinale, Adriana Asti, Marthe Keller and the evocation of an exceptional collaboration with the costume designer Piero Tosi.
Released July 7, 2010
