Elio Petri, fierce communist and iconoclastic filmmaker, is best known for his social satires; the wily police thriller Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970), or the bitterly cynical (but no less revolutionary) polemic The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971). Despite this reputation, his career was actually a relatively wide-ranging one—and nowhere is that range more evident than in the avant-garde experimentation of A Quiet Place In the Country (1967), one of Italy's most underrated giallo horrors.
Esteemed artist Leonardo Ferri (Franco Nero) has hit a near total creative block, much to the mild frustration of his girlfriend-cum-art pimp Flavia (Vanessa Redgrave). By day, he dwells near empty canvases, frozen by double exposed imaginings of frenzied creative expression and obsessing over slideshows of the human body. By night, he dreams of more literal restrictions, tied to a chair by Flavia in loose rope bondage as she lists electronic consumer products before violently offing him—surely an ominous sign of things to come. All this excitement has Leonardo in much need of some respite from Milanese life.
Moving to an abandoned villa in the Italian countryside, it's not long before things are going bump in the night (his new housekeeper and her lover, for one), plagued by a poltergeist that holds a mysterious grudge against Flavia. Leonardo is beset on all sides, haunted by whispered entreaties into madness and tragic local tales of the young countess who once lived there, his mania reflected in the wobbly handheld camerawork and crowded long-lens photography. With each new discovery, time dilates further, Leonardo appearing in other people's memories in place of them, as cars and troops from the past materialised over the horizon.
From the discordant free jazz the plays during the credits—a perfect backing to the arrhythmic montage of peeling renaissance art and scratched pen line film reel distortions—it's clear that this is as much composer Ennio Morricone's film as it is Petri's. Indeed, it's in Morricone's score that the film's confounding tone is most evinced, as jerkily raucous as it is prone to silly peculiarities, each sharp pick and out-of-tune pluck adding to the off kilter atmosphere. Is this meant to be horrifying or darkly comic? The answer, you'd presume, is both.
In a similarly confrontational fashion, cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller is constantly drawing attention to his camera and its movements, pushing through each scene with a real purpose; changing direction often, losing focus briefly before regaining it somewhere new, then pivoting to reveal an as yet unseen detail. The colours are similarly brash, a reminder of the art world that Leonardo is forever pushing and pulling against—Franco Nero's eyes, particularly, are a shade of blue that doesn't seem to exist anymore. If such stylistic hostility sets your heart a-flutter, this might well be the Halloween pick for you this year. Others, you've been warned.
Special Features
- New interview on the film by author Stephen Thrower (2024, 49 mins)
- Archival interview with actor Franco Nero (2017, 32 mins)
- Interview with make-up artist Pier Antonio Mecacci (2021, 14 mins)
- Select-scene audio commentary looking at Petri's recurring themes of masculinity by critic and filmmaker Kat Ellinger (2024, 40 mins)
- Trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring artwork based on original posters
- Limited edition booklet featuring new writing on the film by Simon Abrams
- Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings
A Quiet Place In the Country is now available in the UK courtesy of Radiance