Col cuore in gola, aka Deadly Sweet (1967) Psychedelic Swinging Sixties Noir

"Wow! Another fantastic 60s missing link between Classic Noir and Neo Noir" (Noirsville)

Also know as With my Heart in the Throat, and I Am What I Am.

Firstly, things will be a lot clearer once you come to the realization that NOIR is a Style and not a Genre. To put it in the most basic terms, it takes three ingredients to make a Film Noir.

Noir is a Phototropic-ally stimulated Pan Generic Dark Story that has enough of the Visual and Dark Story elements to tip a film Noir for you the viewer. There is never going to be a hard demarcation and there will be films that will always sit "on the cusp of Noir."

Col cuore in gola is a great example of a Noir, a International Noir that I'm positive not many casual Noir fans know about or even heard of. If you think of Film Noir as a Genre you'll be lost in the dark from the get go.

And the reasons are three fold. During 1950s Hollywood was loosing their audiences to competition with TV. Previously the pool of Dark themes and subject matter that Noir forged into stylish films, were held in check by a voluntary Motion Picture Production Code (MPPC). Think of Hollywood productions under the Code as having a guardrail of violence on one side and a guardrail of sex and taboo subjects on the other. When the big Hollywood studios began to get serious competition from television, they needed an edge to get butts out of the living rooms and into the theaters so they began to no longer enforce the code and to explore more previous banned subject matter. The independent producers in competition with the Hollywood Studios tried to out do them by being the Avant Guard of exploiting the new freedoms. The legal challenges of, and ever changing benchmarks to the obscenity laws and the old taboo themes weakened the bulwarks of the pool and that arbitrary "dam" holding back all creativity burst out with predictable results.

So, at the end of 1950s those Film Noir that went too far over the line depicting violence started getting classified as Horror, Thriller (even though they were just say, showing the effects of a gunshot wound, or dealing with weird serial killers, maniacs, and psychotics, etc.). Those that went too far depicting sexual, drug, torture, etc., situations were being lumped into or classed as various Exploitation flicks, (even though they are relatively tame comparably to today's films). The the noir-ish films that dealt with everything else, except Crime, concerning the human condition were labeled Dramas and Suspense. There are also a handful of Noir Westerns, Noir Sci-Fi, Bio Noir, Black Comedy Noir, Period Piece Noir, War Noir, even a few Musical Noir. Those that tried new techniques, lenses, etc., were labeled Experimental Noir.

The second reason Col cuore in gola is unknown to Noir Fans in the US is that it was produced in 1967 by an Italian - French (Panda & Les Films Corona) production, and it had female (3/4, lol not "full frontal") female nudity. That fact would in 1967 make it an obscene film under the MPPC and it would have been condemned by the Legion of Decency. It would have been against the law to screen it in the U.S.

It wasn't until mid 1969 that Hollywood adopted the G (general audiences), M (mature audiences, changed later in 1969 to PG, parental guidance suggested), R (restricted, no children under 17 allowed without parents or adult guardians), and X (no one under 17 admitted) rating system for films. Col cuore in gola got unluckily tagged with an "X." Today Col cuore in gola would barely rate a "R." So the film gets unfairly thrown into the Sexploitation Trash bin.

When this happens to this type of film, it gets reviewed by those who are looking for, I guess we could say, "quality whack-off material", lol, rating films based on the explicitness of the sex, and amounts of T&A on display. A highly stylistic film such as Col cuore in gola with quick cuts, barely any nudity, and colored filtered and Vaseline blurred lovemaking gets panned on the "peter meter." Hell, Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street has was more full frontal.

The third reason Col cuore in gola is unknown to Aficio- Noir-dos and Noiristas is because it is also mistakenly labeled a Giallo. Hey, it's Italian and there are murders it must be a Giallo. Wrong. So it gets reviewed again unfairly by Giallo enthusiasts and gets panned again because there is barely any RED blood, no creatively gruesome slasher film violence, and again mild eroticism.

I've found at least a handful of 1960's Italian Mystery-Thriller-Crime films a way more akin to Film Noir than Giallo. For example Mario Bava's La ragazza che sapeva troppo aka (The Girl Who Knew Too Much) (1963) shot in B&W is a very good Italian Noir.

See what I'm getting at. Look at the films IMDb rating, 5.5/10 by 788 viewer's most of which don't know shit from Shinola about the Noir Universe.

Directed by Tinto Brass () Avant garde film director know for Tempo Libero and Tempo Lavorativo (1964) and Sexploitation films Salon Kitty (1976), and under protest, the infamous Penthouse produced Caligula (1979)). Brass demanded to have his name taken off the credits so he is only credited for "Principal Photography." Another interesting tidbit is that Warner Brothers originally asked Brass to direct A Clockwork Orange.

Col cuore in gola was written by Tinto Brass, Francesco Longo and Pierre Lévy-Corti, and based loosely on Il sepolcro di carta (lit. The Paper Tomb) a novel by Sergio Donati. Donati BTW contributed or wrote the screenplays for some of the all time great Spaghetti Westerns For A Few Dollars More, The Big Gundown, Duck You Sucker, and Once Upon A Time In The West. The Cinematography was by Silvano Ippoliti and the Music was by Armando Trovajoli (Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)).

Jean-Louis Trintignant as Bernardo

Ewa Aulin as Jane

The film stars Jean-Louis Trintignant (Il Sorpasso (1962), The Sleeping Car Murder (1965), The Great Silence (1968), So Sweet... So Perverse (1968), Z (1969), The Conformist (1970), Flic Story (1975). as Bernardo, Ewa Aulin (Candy (1968)) as Jane, Vira Silenti as Martha Jane's Stepmother, Roberto Bisacco (La Cage aux Folles II) as David Mother's new boy toy, Charles Kohler as Jerome Jane's fraternal brother, David Prowse (A Clockwork Orange (1971), Star Wars (1977) as a gangster (uncredited).

"England swings like a pendulum do" (Rodger Miller)

The Story

London. The Swinging Sixties. A morgue. White walled. Cold storage. The Burroughs family. Mother, Martha. Son, Jerome. Daughter, Jane. Mother's new boyfriend David. A London bobby. A morgue attendant. They are there to view and identify the body of her husband of their father. He was killed in an automobile accident. They slide out a tray out of a wall of trays and make the positive ID.

Charles Kohler as Jerome

Vira Silenti as Martha Jane's Stepmother

That done. the grieving family heads to the nearest discothèque to dance their sorrows away, get drunk, unwind and party.

Bernardo, a French actor a little long between gigs is in the same club. He spots the luminous blonde Jane dancing and almost hypnotically quickly comes under her spell.

She see's Bernardo watching her. He can't take his eyes off her. They like what each other see's. A friend of Bernardo see's him watching Jane and tells him that he's surprised that she is here since her father was just found dead after a car accident. Curious.

When he goes to put another drink on his tab, the bartender tells him that the club's owner has cut him off. Shit. He turns to look for Jane. Jane disappeared. He turns back to asks the barkeep where is the owners office. He wants to speak with him, wants to pay his tab.

Bernardo goes out the back exit of the club and up some metal fire stairs in the alley.

When gets to the owners private office he finds him with a surprised look on his face, a gash in his forehead and cooling to room temperature. He eventually spots Jane, the girl on the dance floor that he was enthralled with and who his buddy told him about, standing like a deer in the headlights, behind a glass partition and in a corner.

Jane in hiding

Bernardo asks her what happened and she tells him that she found him like that. He asks what was she doing there. Jane explains that she was going to ask him for a compromising picture he has of her stepmother mother. The owner is blackmailing her. (Here you might think that Bernardo, knowing what he knows, would ask Jane well if your father is dead why would your mother care? The Noir subtext answer to that is that it may be something really perverted, lol, just let your imagination run wild).

But, of course, this is Noir, and Bernardo is under Jane's waifish spell he wants to help, he wants to protect, and of course being a man, he wants to ball her. So Bernardo becomes the tales de facto "detective" and offers to help the poor girl out.

The Automatic

They search the desk, nothing, they find the safe is open. Bernardo looks through the contents no picture. He does grabs some money, a diary and a automatic, hell he's the PI now, lol, there could be clues in there. Leads to who might have taken the picture. He slips both in his pockets.

The Diary

Somebody's coming

When they hear voices and footsteps coming their way from the club hallway they flee out the back way and down the metal stairway together. They hop into Bernardo's 1965 Fiat 850 Spider and speed away.

Driving down the road, Bernardo asks the girl her name. He finds out Jane. He asks Jane again what happened.

She repeats the story. Jane tells him they will have to search the managers house to make sure the picture is not there. Jane tells him that she knows where he hides the key. Bernardo tells her it's too dangerous and offers to go there and search for it himself. She can stay at his apartment with the diary and be safe.

So Bernardo cases the place out and nonchalantly walks up to the gate. Slips through. He gets to the front door finds the key and opens the door. In the process of tossing the place he finds another gun in alongside a seat cushion but still no compromising pictures.

Two men come in the front door, up the stairs, and then find Bernardo hiding behind a curtain.

They cover him with drawn guns. The guy in charge is called Jelly-Roll. They pat Bernardo down and remove the money and gun he took from the office. They want to know where the diary is. Bernardo acts dumb and clams up.

Caught

The bigger of the two starts to get rough with Bernardo. He knocks him off his feet and to his knees right by the chair that has the hidden gun.

Of course, when the big guy bends down to pick up Bernardo to work him over some more, Bernardo pulls out the hidden revolver and cracks him upside his head knocking him out and then gets the drop on Jelly-Roll.

Poor Jelly-Roll's gun is pointing off to the side and downwards while Bernardo has a clean shot if he so much as flinches.

Bernardo Makes Jelly-Roll drop his gun, then hits him with it, cold conking him also. and leaving the place with the notebook and two guns in his pockets.

Jelly-Roll goes down

The sleeping beauties

When he gets back to his place he finds Jane coming out of the shower naked. This being the swinging sixties with US & Soviet Cold War tensions heightened and death by nuclear annihilation immanent you do what any sane man and woman would do if you are figuring that we are all going to die anyway do, you get it on.

So here with a golden orange filter, blurred cinematography and suitable music you get an erotically filmed sequence of simulated coitus, that would be a PG movie nowadays.

When Bernardo awakes in the morning Jane is gone.

Ring Ring

The phone soon rings and it's Jane. She tells him that she had to leave early. They make a date for later at Piccadilly Circus. They hang out in swinging London, seeing the sites, all is groovy. They then go to a park. We see a Dwarf following and spying on the couple.

The Dwarf

Bernardo tells Jane he has to make a call at a call box and for her to wait on her sky blue 1967 Piaggio Vespa 150 TS scooter.

While he is on the phone he watches while a 1951 Dodge Kingsway pulls up in front of Jane. Sees a large black man jump out, grab Jane and bodily throws her into the back seat.

The Dodge speeds off. Bernardo runs out to help but is tripped by the Dwarf. While Bernardo lays on the street the dwarf beats him senseless then runs off. Jane is kidnapped.

Bernardo tracks down Jane's brother Jerome. He finds out that Jerome left the club with a photographer's model that he knows. Bernardo's friend David, a photographer, gives Bernardo her address. Bernardo finds Jerome shacked up with her. While he is there Jerome gets a call from the kidnappers demanding 10,000 pounds to get Jane back.

The Ransom Call

Bernardo and Jerome manage to track down the black man who snatched Jane. They force him to tell where the dwarf is holding her. The black man relates that the dwarf has Jane at his hideout in the blitz bombed, now condemned blocks of tenements that sit alongside the rail yard. They go and rescue her killing the Dwarf.

Bernardo and Jane now think that her mother's new lover may have the photo. They go to call on him at his apartment flat. It all goes Noirsville when the find him in the tub with a bullet hole in his forehead.

Noirsville

This film has a nice unexpected twist and some of the things that before seem to be confusing make sense after you find out how just much Bernardo is being manipulated and by whom.

Jean-Louis Trintignant is perfect in his role. He's thirty seven but looks young like he just turned thirty, while elfin Ewa Aulin was actually only seventeen. How Noir of her. But Ewa's character is not only seventeen but a desirable girl-woman who has been going around the block a lot since puberty, all because her mother died when she was seven.

Silvano Ippoliti's cinematography both in the color and Black & White sequences is excellent. In Col cuore in gola, there are an abundance of intriguing shots and camera angles that Tinto Brass edits into quick flowing cuts that they creatively captured not only the essence of Film Noir, but brings it along and combines it seamlessly with the actual energy and zeitgeist of the 1960s. It wasn't trying to duplicate the old Classic Noir as much as reimagining it in the then present 1967. And it works. The visual style that combines Op Art, Pop Art, Peter Max, comic, and head comix characters is just amazing and the films score just enhances the whole. Col cuore in gola joins the pantheon of great 1960s Noir 9/10.