Director Tinto Brass should be in the pantheon of Italian cinema, but he lives in infamy: He disowned his best-known work — the star-studded hardcore epic Caligula (1979), crudely recut by producer Bob “Penthouse” Guccione; his subsequent softcore stories are considered cult items among connoisseurs of Euro-erotica. Some of these notoriously bottom-heavy sex films have a decadent Luchino Visconti vibe, but they hardly prepare one for the wild surprises of early Brass. The seldom-screened and exceedingly trippy trifecta of movies in Cinefamily’s “The Psychedelic ’60s of Tinto Brass” suggests Brass’ unexpected kinship with celebrated art-house auteurs, copious trademark nudity notwithstanding — a shamelessly entertaining riposte to the zeitgeist essays of Jean-Luc Godard, indulging in a heady delirium close to Dusan Makavejev’s Wilhelm Reich agitprop.
The Italo Western Yankee (1966) established Brass as a preeminent visual stylist — it’s a great example of comic book aesthetics applied to narrative film; consequently, he teamed up with cult cartoonist Guido Crepax for 1967’s tantalizing thriller implosion Deadly Sweet (screening April 17). Do not waste time on following the pieces of plot (Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ewa Aulin, murders, dwarf) floating through densely edited, brightly colored flashes of billboard-strewn pop art panels. Crime-movie mechanics playfully auto-destruct: The strained seriousness of Michelangelo Antonioni’s similar Blow-Up is parodied by restaging a key scene, a coup then capped by quoting Antonioni in ponderous voice-over. More fragmentation arrives with Nerosubianco (1969), a mostly improvised ultra-rarity (showing on April 3), in which a married woman’s sudden infatuation with an African-American leads to a surreal tour of hippie sights while a Procol Harum spinoff band drones on.
Even farther out is 1970’s L’Urlo (screening April 10), which — inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s Beatnik chant “Howl” — has an unlikely couple staggering through demented psychosocial tableaux: Attacked by policemen (sped-up Keystone Cops style) and gang-raping soldiers, they join some sort of youth revolt. Busses burn, perverse fetishes abound, a self-proclaimed philosopher regresses to prehistoric cannibalism. Still the (otherwise dada) voice-over claims “this is a simple documentary,” even as the happenings are merrily pulverized in mind-fuck montage patterns. The rejection of coherence fits the blithely anti-authoritarian agenda, which makes L’Urlo a key work, culminating in a dictum that hints at Brass’ subsequent career in the erotic genre: “Logic is always false — like morale.” (Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater; Fridays at midnight; thru Fri., April 17. www.cinefamily.org.)
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Kelly 04/14/2009 10:30:02 AM
These Brass films blew me away! I'm so excited that they're out again, and that new people will discover these wonderful films. They are some of the most intense, thoughtful, yet insane films I have seen (and I consider myself quite a fan of this genre). Nerosubianco is my favorite, though they each shine in their own ways. I definitely recommend these films to anyone who wants to vastly broaden their horizons from typical hollywood blockbuster films, to true art and creativity.