Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 11/01/23

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Blood for Dracula (Paul Morrissey, 1974)

Udo Kier in Blood for Dracula

Cast: Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro, Arno Jürging, Vittorio De Sica, Maxime McKendry, Milena Vukotic, Dominique Darel, Stefania Casini, Silvia Dionisio. Screenplay: Paul Morrissey. Cinematography: Luigi Kuveiller. Production design: Enrico Job. Film editing: Jed Johnson, Franca Silvi. Music: Claudio Gizzi.

The great Vittorio De Sica had a career that extended from the sublime -- directing Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Umberto D. (1954), acting in Madame De ... (Max Ophus, 1953) -- to the ridiculous -- appearing in Paul Morrissey's Blood for Dracula. De Sica plays the Marchese Di Fiore, an Italian aristocrat in financial straits who lives in a decaying mansion with his wife (Maxime McKendry) and four daughters. He has been forced to dismiss all of his servants except one, the surly Mario Balato (Joe Dallesandro), a Marxist who eagerly anticipates a revolution like the one that has just taken place in Russia. Di Fiore's only hope is to marry off one of his daughters to a wealthy suitor. The oldest, Esmeralda (Milena Vukotic), and the youngest, Perla (Silivia Dionisio), are considered not suitable, but the two middle girls, Saphiria (Dominique Darel) and Rubinia (Stefania Casini) are prime marriage material. So who should arrive in their village but a well-to-do Romanian count named Dracula (Udo Kier). In this version of the Dracula story, the count can drink only the blood of virgins. The villagers back in Romania have gotten wise to this fact, and no women go near his castle. So he figures that the Italians, being devout Roman Catholics, will have seen to it that virginity prevails, so he journeys there with his assistant, Anton (Arno Jürging), in search of a bride. He's delighted to learn of Di Fiore's marriageable daughters, so he makes a play for the girls, only to discover that neither is a virgin -- Mario has seen to that. Sampling his would-be brides makes the count violently ill, giving Kier an opportunity to go over the top in portraying Dracula's reaction. The film is about what you'd expect if you've seen its companion piece, Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein (1973): a good deal of nudity on the part of the actresses and Dallesandro, some bloody deaths, a lot of barely acceptable acting, and a wide variety of accents: Italian, German, French, British, and Brooklyn. De Sica, who wrote his own dialogue, makes his character one of the saving graces of the movie, along with cinematography, settings, and a score that are better than it deserves.