La donna del lago aka The Possessed (1965) Noir Italian Style

Directed by Luigi Bazzoni (The Fifth Cord) and Franco Rossellini. 

Written by Giulio Questi, Luigi Bazzoni, Franco Rosselini, Ernesto Gastaldi, and based on the 1962 novel by Giovanni Comisso, La donna del lago (The Lady In the Lake).

The excellent Cinematography was by Leonida Barboni (Divorce Italian Style, After The Fox), and Music was by Renzo Rossellini.

The film stars Classic Noir vet Peter Baldwin (The Turning Point, Stalag 17, Short Cut to Hell, The Trap) as Bernard a novelist, Salvo Randone (Night Train to Milan, Satyricon, Spirits of the Dead) as Mr. Enrico, Classic Noir vet Valentina Cortese (Thieves' Highway, The House On Telegraph Hill, La ragazza che sapeva troppo) as Irma and Virna Lisi (How to Murder Your Wife, Eva) as Tilde. 

                                                     Peter Baldwin as Bernard

Verna Lisi as Tilde

Valentina Cortese as Irma

Salvo Randone as Mr. Enrico

With Pia Lindström as Adriana, Philippe Leroy as Mario, Ennio Balbo as Coroner, Pier Giovanni Anchisi as Francesco, Anna Maria Gherardi as Servant, Mauro Laurentino as Doctor, and Vittorio Duse as Police Officer. 

Story

We see Bernard through the reflective glare on the window of a phone booth. He's speaking with a woman Claudia. 

She's asking if she'll see him tonight. He tells her he's going away. He's explaining this obsession he has over a woman he met while on vacation last year. So it sounds as if his relationship has reached a serious milestone, and he's having second thoughts of committing further because of a burning desire. He saying to Claudia that he just doesn't feel anything right now, or more accurately won't be able to honestly feel anything until he has a face to face again with that woman and see what happens. Is this whole thing all in his head. This fades to black and we start the title sequence.

We cut to an unnamed town in the Tyrolean Alps (actually a mash up of Brunico, Bolzano in the Alps, and Bolsena, Viterbo, Lazio for the lakeside views). 

Bernard in voice over is telling us how strange the town looks without leaves, and that he is heading the the hotel run by the english couple and that he has to see Tilde once again.

Brunico

Bernard in voice over is telling us how strange the town looks without leaves, and that he is heading the the hotel run by the english couple and that he has to see Tilde once again.

At the hotel he is greeted by Mr. Enrico the owner who registers him in. Mr Enrico explains to Bernard that since it's the off season he can have any room he wishes.  

Bernard asks Mr. Enrico for the same room he had during his last stay. Mr Enrico obliges Bernard grabbing the room key and bringing him to the room. 

Mr Enrico tells him if he needs anything just ring for the maid pointing out the buzzer. 

As soon as Mr. Enrico departs, Bernard opens a suitcase and pulls out an envelope with pictures of Tilde. 

He then buzzes for  Tilde, but a total stranger appears in her place. He's caught off guard but recovers and asks for mineral water. 

The new maid

The nest day when Bernard is on his way out of the hotel to go out for a walk the next day, he passes a closet type nook and spots Tilde's houndstooth coat and becomes reassured. 

Walking around the town, Bernard runs into old acquaintances. Francisco the hunchback, who is the towns photographer, and another journalist acquaintance who congratulates Bernard on the award he won for his latest novel

Lake Bolsena

Bolsena

Bernard and Mario at Mario's Photography shop

Congratulations on your award 

At one point he thinks he spots Tilde in her houndstooth jacket, walking into a side street, but when he does catch up it turns out not to be Tilde but the new maid he met in his room.  

However, its when he gets back to the hotel for dinner that Bernard's world starts spinning off towards Noirsville when, after he inquires of Tilde's whereabouts, Mr Enrico regrets to inform him, that Tilde committed suicide.

Tilde committed suicide

Later up in his room Bernard is decides to become a de facto detective, determined to find out what caused Tilde to commit suicide. He looks out the window. We see large trees dominating a bleak lakeside park with the setting sun casting long shadows through the dead winter grass.

Here we get what eventually becomes a flashback wrapped in a dream sequence where Bernard is standing in the towns secluded snow coated cemetery, surrounded by trees. 

Dream / Flashback Sequence

He spots Tilde's houndstooth coat a woman with a scarf covering her hair, is walking out of the cemetery. Movement blurs the trees with Bernard a silhouette in pursuit. Is it Tilde's ghost, or is it again the brunette maid?  He again follows her. 

In town he follows her into a building and also into the flashback. It that flashback of him, during the last tourist season in the hotel.

He's back in the hotel. He got up from bed and was going to the kitchen to get something to drink.

Near the kitchen he sees a crack of light emanating from the storage room where the hotel set aside some space for Tilde's room.  

At this point a shaft of light beckons. We zoom in close and cut to a reverse shot of part of a human face but with curiously a cats eye.

Between the two swinging doors there is a point where both doors have by been worn / gouged wider apart where food carts have bumped them open over the years. It's a peephole of sorts.

When we reverse again we watch as Tilde rises, sitting up naked back exposed, but holding a sheet to her breasts. She has been making love to someone but he never comes into sight.

Just when Tilde drops her head suggestively, Bernard is woken up by a drunk yelling outside his window. When Bernard goes to see what is going on we see that he's yelling at the hotel. and it's about how his daughter found out what kind of people you are. 

The next day a slightly pissed off Bernard confronts Francisco about why he didn't tell him Tilde was dead. Francisco replies it was in all the papers and he thought Bernard already knew. 

Anyway it really goes Noirsville when Francisco tells Bernard that he doesn't want to start rumors, but that it wasn't a suicide as the official police report claims. He explains to Bernard that he was by the lake when they recovered her body and Tilde's throat was cut from ear to ear. 

He also shows Bernard a negative that shows Tilde to be obviously pregnant. Which of course would be a motive. 

Francisco also relays that the official police report also stated that Tilde was a virgin. He adds a remark that money can buy anything in this town. 

Bernard replies that he knows Tilde was no virgin and he relates to Francisco what he saw but not the identity of who she was with. Rumors around town have Mr Enrico plowing her but Bernard says from the little he saw it looked like a younger man. 

You'd be surprised who Tilde found attractive

Bernard also remarks that he can't believe Tilde would make love to Mr Enrico, and Francisco replies that he'd be surprised who Tilde found attractive.

Noirsville

Here's another good example of an Italian Film Noir on the cusp between Noir and Giallo. The other I've run into is  La ragazza che sapeva troppo aka The Evil Eye (1963). Both are Visually Stylish and in B&W and are no different from Film Noir, it's not really until color film and the highlighting of the color RED that the Giallo really separates itself from Film Noir into sui generis.

Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini seamlessly make use the towns of Brunico and Bolsena to create the off-season "Noirsville" Tyrolean tourist trap. Flashbacks and various montage sequences, depicting visually, Bernard and Tilde's interrupted relationship, and other sequences divulging what other info about Tilde that Bernard discovers, gives us the impression that Tilde was a bit of a town  nymphomaniac.  

Peter Baldwin as Bernard is convincing, Verna Lisi is gorgeous, and it's nice to see Valentina Cortese in another Noir. Salvo Randone as Mr. Enrico, Pia Lindström as Adriana, Philippe Leroy as Mario, and , Pier Giovanni Anchisi as Francesco are all good. 7/10