Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. In this episode
Speaker 1: you'll hear our take on Footprints on the Moon from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five. This episode originally published one twenty four,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. A beautifully shot, surreal mystery. This one's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 3: we are going to be talking about the nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: five Italian mystery thriller Footprints on the Moon aka Primal
Speaker 3: Impulse aka just Footprints, much less intriguing title. I don't
Speaker 3: know why anybody would just say footprints, Footprints on the Moon,
Speaker 3: much much better. But this movie stars Florinda Bulkan, Peter mckinnery,
Speaker 3: and in a bit part, klaus Kinski.
Speaker 1: Right right though, even if you just have a dash
Speaker 1: of klaus Kinski in there, you know it, people notice.
Speaker 1: It's a powerful spice.
Speaker 3: So I came to this selection in a slightly awkward
Speaker 3: way because here's where it came from, Folks to get
Speaker 3: the whole backstory.
Speaker 1: Rob.
Speaker 3: Earlier this month, you had mentioned that some creatures of
Speaker 3: the Cinemadrome celebrate something called Jallo January, a sort of
Speaker 3: J and B guzzling leather gloved cousin.
Speaker 1: Of Noir November.
Speaker 3: And when you mentioned this, I was definitely intrigued because
Speaker 3: I'm sort of something of a Jallo fan. But I
Speaker 3: think I had already decided I wanted to do a
Speaker 3: Santo movie for my previous pick, but when this week
Speaker 3: came around, I decided to give in to the reason
Speaker 3: for the season and look for a Jallo to talk about,
Speaker 3: one that would be weird enough for Weird House and
Speaker 3: one that I had never seen before. So I was
Speaker 3: poking around online reading things trying to find a good
Speaker 3: weird Jallo I was not familiar with, and I ended
Speaker 3: up settling on Footprints on the Moon. And while I
Speaker 3: think this movie is very excellent, I'm more than pleased
Speaker 3: with the choice, I am skeptical whether it would actually
Speaker 3: be considered a jallo by most fans of the genre.
Speaker 3: A lot of the online references were classifying it as such,
Speaker 3: but it's missing some of the key genre elements, though
Speaker 3: on the other hand, still maintaining a lot of the
Speaker 3: genre's signature esthetics. So maybe we can talk about this
Speaker 3: more later in the episode, but I think there will
Speaker 3: be serious debate over whether it should be thought of
Speaker 3: as a Jallo or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could make a case for it being Jallo adjacent.
Speaker 1: I guess which is close enough for our purposes here.
Speaker 3: Now, if you're not familiar with the term monology, I
Speaker 3: think we've probably gabbed about this on the show before,
Speaker 3: but hey, why not talk about it again. It's always
Speaker 3: fun to define and try to understand what the soul
Speaker 3: of the Jallo. But if you're not familiar Jallo movies,
Speaker 3: the plural is technically Jalli are typically understood as a
Speaker 3: genre of Italian murder mystery thrillers, often with strong horror
Speaker 3: elements and often erotically charged. Jalo movies are kind of
Speaker 3: a long running staple in our house. Used to be
Speaker 3: whenever I visited Videodrome, whatever else I was checking out,
Speaker 3: I would also always grab at least one unfamiliar disc
Speaker 3: from the video corner of shame, the Jallo corner there,
Speaker 3: so we know and are fans of Jallo around here,
Speaker 3: So any seemingly disparaging comments I make about the genre
Speaker 3: in the rest of this episode come from a place
Speaker 3: of familiarity in love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it makes sense. You want to
Speaker 1: get a little side item from the Jalla menu. You
Speaker 1: know it's you know, it's not super nutritious, but you
Speaker 1: know you're having a meal out, you might as well
Speaker 1: indulge yourself.
Speaker 3: It's just I don't know. So often on a Friday night,
Speaker 3: what Rachel and I wanted was a shallow.
Speaker 1: And there's so many this genre has. Just it's a
Speaker 1: never ending well. Anytime we dive into even just into
Speaker 1: the filmographies of people who worked in this genre or subgenre,
Speaker 1: I'm always discovering new titles, and it sometimes helps that
Speaker 1: there are generally multiple titles in the mix for any
Speaker 1: given film. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, coming back to what makes a shallow, of course
Speaker 3: they are these usually murder mystery thrillers. Usually the plot
Speaker 3: involves a series of grizzly, shocking homicides, often committed with
Speaker 3: a strange or disturbing weapon. So it's usually not just
Speaker 3: like a gun or a regular knife, but more often
Speaker 3: say a knitting needle or a shard of glass, or
Speaker 3: a nimous animal, or like an antique suit of armor,
Speaker 3: glove with spikes on the knuckles or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's worth noting that this is distinct from
Speaker 1: like the whole slasher genre that would then bubble up
Speaker 1: mostly in America, especially strongly during the nineteen eighties. Like
Speaker 1: there's there's something different about the way murders are committed,
Speaker 1: the way that they're stylistically portrayed, and so forth. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think Jallo is often considered a
Speaker 3: major predecessor of an influence on the wave of American
Speaker 3: slasher films that would come in the late seventies and
Speaker 3: especially in the nineteen eighties, though I think there are
Speaker 3: important differences. But I think definitely the soul of the
Speaker 3: shallow movies of the sixties and seventies is influential on
Speaker 3: the slasher movies that would come later. So the plot
Speaker 3: involves a series of murders, but the other thing is
Speaker 3: that the story is a mystery. The identity of the
Speaker 3: killer is unknown, and the viewer is pulled along to
Speaker 3: the conclusion of the movie wanting to find out who
Speaker 3: the killer is and what their motivation was. So a
Speaker 3: lot of the big jallow movies have an exciting payoff
Speaker 3: because the reveal of the killer is quite surprising. Often
Speaker 3: it's a minor character you wouldn't have expected, or someone
Speaker 3: who gave no sign of danger previously. A lot of
Speaker 3: times the reveal I think this is sort of influenced
Speaker 3: by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. The reveal of the killer's motivations
Speaker 3: is often a divulging of some kind of like psychological
Speaker 3: trauma that was previously unknown in a pre existing character's backstory.
Speaker 3: Common esthetic features of Jello, I notice what feels like
Speaker 3: a real combination of high art and pulp sensibilities all
Speaker 3: jumbled together. So these movies are on one hand, quite
Speaker 3: often trashy and prurient, but also with a really palpable
Speaker 3: sense of artistic pride that you don't get in most
Speaker 3: American slasher movies. In these Italian movies, you get the
Speaker 3: feeling that you know, while they were staging some tawdry
Speaker 3: potato peel or murder scene, they were thinking, I am
Speaker 3: like Michaelangelo, this is important artistic work.
Speaker 1: They're often It's also I think important to stress that
Speaker 1: jaala are almost always, if not always, thoroughly modern, and
Speaker 1: there's probably a subtext in there somewhere. In most of
Speaker 1: these films too, like dealing with issues boiling up around
Speaker 1: the state of modernity, be it you know, current social norms,
Speaker 1: social problems, and so forth. But yeah, it's not surprising
Speaker 1: to see like all the latest technologies that are going
Speaker 1: to be present in say nineteen seventy three or something
Speaker 1: in a given example of this sub genre.
Speaker 3: That's right, and in terms of dealing with like current
Speaker 3: social issues. Another big thing about JALLA movies is that
Speaker 3: they often explore themes of sex and gender conflict, sometimes
Speaker 3: projecting misogynist attitudes by casting women as helpless sort of
Speaker 3: feeble objects of male lust and violence, or treating women
Speaker 3: as especially psychologically frail, but in other cases sort of
Speaker 3: taking the woman's point of view and showing misogyny and
Speaker 3: pathetic forms of resentment against women as the primary motivators
Speaker 3: of the movie's villainy and the thing that has to
Speaker 3: be unmasked and destroyed at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's definitely room in a holo picture for
Speaker 1: a strong female character. You don't always find them there,
Speaker 1: but there are examples that you can turn to. Some
Speaker 1: do and some really don't. Yes.
Speaker 3: Another thing is that they tend to be visually striking
Speaker 3: a lot of times high contrast, bold or even lurid
Speaker 3: color palette, artistic attention to shot composition. Like a lot
Speaker 3: of these movies in terms of plot content might be
Speaker 3: kind of trash, but a lot of them really look great.
Speaker 1: They're kind of beautiful. Yeah, murder is often beautiful or
Speaker 1: at least stylish in these pictures. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Another thing is an often unsubtle musical score. So you
Speaker 3: can think about if you've ever heard this Dario Argento's
Speaker 3: work with Goblin that goes in his movies or in
Speaker 3: the movie we're talking about today, though it's debatable whether
Speaker 3: it's actually a jello, the kind of fugue like blasts
Speaker 3: of organ that we get throughout the film. Another thing
Speaker 3: is a tendency toward voyeuristic camera work. So in these movies,
Speaker 3: the camera watches the protagonist or the murder victim from
Speaker 3: a hiding place, maybe peeking through the slats in a
Speaker 3: wall or looking through a keyhole, or it just in
Speaker 3: some other way kind of intrudes into private spaces to
Speaker 3: see the characters at their most vulnerable, or it takes
Speaker 3: the killer's point of view. This is a cinematography choice
Speaker 3: that is often poured over into the American slashers as well.
Speaker 3: In terms of like set dressing and costuming, there are
Speaker 3: some very strong themes that occur again and again the killer.
Speaker 3: The killer often hides their identity by wearing a hat,
Speaker 3: a trench coat, and black leather gloves. And there's also
Speaker 3: just a general kind of inflammation of seventies clothing. It's
Speaker 3: one of our favorite elements of these movies when when
Speaker 3: my wife and I watch them, I love the clothes.
Speaker 1: Oh, I agree to you. I mean, anytime I watched
Speaker 1: one of these films, it's it's that that focus on
Speaker 1: the modern world and often some sense of fashion that
Speaker 1: is just thoroughly captivating. I mean, for me, having been
Speaker 1: born in the seventies, I'm just you know, endlessly fascinated
Speaker 1: with you know, the style and the culture that I
Speaker 1: was born out of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, another thing I have to mention, can't make a
Speaker 3: jallo without a J and B bottle. So you will
Speaker 3: always see one either on a shelf or being poured
Speaker 3: into a glass, into a into a kind of ornate
Speaker 3: crystal tumbler glass. There's you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: good glassware in the films, and and always a J
Speaker 3: and B. Also just a lot of focus on loud
Speaker 3: flourishes of art and design and interior decor. The movie
Speaker 3: often features, or sometimes actually directly involves in the plot
Speaker 3: crazy wallpaper patterns, bizarre tapestries, oil paintings, art exhibits, stained
Speaker 3: glass statuary, and things like that. Now, beyond that, there
Speaker 3: are also some common plot and character features of Jolly.
Speaker 3: One is that it's been observed that the main character
Speaker 3: is usually an outsider of some kind or is alienated,
Speaker 3: so they might be in an unfamiliar place, or they
Speaker 3: might be estranged from their social group for some reason.
Speaker 3: That the protagonist of Agallo is not in their element
Speaker 3: as they try to piece together the clues and solve
Speaker 3: the mystery. Another thing is protagonists are very often found
Speaker 3: questioning their sanity or being thought insane by others. And then, finally,
Speaker 3: this is one that I've read about less, but I've
Speaker 3: just always noticed it myself and found it so interesting.
Speaker 3: So so many of the movies within this one subgenre
Speaker 3: have the same plot device, which is a protagonist who
Speaker 3: already saw the solution to the mystery, or saw some
Speaker 3: important clue with their own eyes, or sensed it with
Speaker 3: their own senses. Maybe they heard something but in somehow,
Speaker 3: they somehow sensed with their own senses, the solution to
Speaker 3: the mystery, but they can't quite remember it, or they
Speaker 3: can't quite make sense of it, and they spend the
Speaker 3: rest of the film trying to reconstruct the memory or
Speaker 3: trying to understand what it is they already saw. And
Speaker 3: this has always struck me as a potent psychological metaphor
Speaker 3: that may have some deeper cultural significance. I don't know
Speaker 3: enough about Italy in the sixties and seventies to speculate
Speaker 3: on exactly what that cultural kind of metaphor would be,
Speaker 3: but it's very interesting that the solution to the murder
Speaker 3: mystery is so often not completely hidden. It's something that
Speaker 3: you already saw, you already took it in, but now,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, you can't remember it or can't make
Speaker 3: sense of it. So the final piece of puzzle in
Speaker 3: terms of the plot structure, is often an event or
Speaker 3: a clue that causes the protagonist to suddenly fully remember
Speaker 3: or finally understand what they already saw in the beginning.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think if there's much precedent for this
Speaker 3: in other mystery stories outside of the shallow subgenre, and
Speaker 3: nothing's really coming to mind, though, I'm sure there are
Speaker 3: stories like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a trope that
Speaker 1: is present in the larger mystery genre. But then within
Speaker 1: Jalloh becomes like a part of the blueprint more or less,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, you often see that, I guess with
Speaker 1: different genre spinoffs and subgenres. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I wonder how this plot convention like in
Speaker 3: a way you already saw the answer, but you can't
Speaker 3: remember it or understand it is connected to another thing
Speaker 3: about Jelly, which is that usually the investigator or the
Speaker 3: protagonist who's trying to solve the mystery is not is
Speaker 3: not an investigator by way of like their job.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's not like these cop mystery movies where I'm a
Speaker 3: detective and I've got to be here and solve the mystery.
Speaker 3: Usually the protagonist has a personal connection to the crimes
Speaker 3: taking place and they are a non professional investigator.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, It's it's interesting when you start piecing together
Speaker 1: all of these different attributes and you get this sort
Speaker 1: of this picture of a of a stranger in a
Speaker 1: strange modern world, almost a sense of future shock to it,
Speaker 1: at least, well but less on the technological side of
Speaker 1: things and more on just like the social side of things.
Speaker 1: And you know, I guess this movie is the one
Speaker 1: that is that is that I'm most current on since
Speaker 1: I just watched it. But it lines up with this
Speaker 1: theme in a number of ways, you know, the sense
Speaker 1: of like a globe trotting modern professional woman. And while
Speaker 1: there there are you know, there are some elements where
Speaker 1: we can see that she's maybe not at odds with
Speaker 1: the world, but it has like real world stressors in play,
Speaker 1: and that sort of like bleeds over into this more
Speaker 1: surreal scenario that we see in the picture. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't want to spoil too much about the
Speaker 3: ending of the film now, though by the by the
Speaker 3: time we get to the end of the plot section,
Speaker 3: we definitely are going to spoil the ending. And this
Speaker 3: movie is full of surprises. So if you want to
Speaker 3: see Footprints on the Moon without having anything spoiled, I
Speaker 3: guess now would be a good time to pause the
Speaker 3: episode and go watch it yourself. But there are questions
Speaker 3: raised by the reveal at the end of the movie
Speaker 3: about it, like exactly what the motivation for the main
Speaker 3: character's psychological state or struggle is and to what extent
Speaker 3: that's brought on by by something within her or by
Speaker 3: circumstances outside her control. So anyway, having reviewed all of
Speaker 3: this stuff about what Jallo is is Footprints on the
Speaker 3: Moon a shallo? I think a lot of people would
Speaker 3: say no, because it is not a murder mystery. The
Speaker 3: film does not begin with a murder, and there is
Speaker 3: really almost no violence in it until closer to the end. Nevertheless,
Speaker 3: it does really feel like a shallo. It's a mystery
Speaker 3: with an aura of menace. It is somewhat sexually charged.
Speaker 3: It involves an out of place protagonist physically out of
Speaker 3: place and also alienated, a protagonist haunted by something that
Speaker 3: she apparently cannot remember. It looks and sounds like a
Speaker 3: shallo in terms of the musical soundtrack, it looks like
Speaker 3: one in the shot composition and the use of color
Speaker 3: and all that.
Speaker 1: And one of.
Speaker 3: The clues to solve the mystery is a memory of
Speaker 3: a giant stained glass peacock. So my ruling is, I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: you can call it a yellow even though it does
Speaker 3: not have the main plot element that defines as shallow. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know, it's not solving a murder mystery, though it
Speaker 3: does have murders within a recurring dream, and as a bonus,
Speaker 3: they are they are moon murders.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned that the giant stained glass peacock,
Speaker 1: which we'll come back to, because that is almost literally
Speaker 1: a bird with crystal plumage, you know, Yes, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the most important thing to stress about the and
Speaker 1: the Gallo or no Jallo conversation is that I think
Speaker 1: you probably do the film a disservice if you hype
Speaker 1: it up Ashallo too much, because then you run the
Speaker 1: risk of people coming into it expecting an Argento film
Speaker 1: or expecting a folk sci film. And if you do that,
Speaker 1: you're going to be disappointed. It's just not that sort
Speaker 1: of picture, and it's it's really very tame by Jallow standard.
Speaker 1: It's almost like g rated Joao likewise, even on the
Speaker 1: color uh in visual spectrum. If you're if you come
Speaker 1: in expecting it to be in line with Mario Bava,
Speaker 1: I mean, gon be disappointed with any non Mariobava film
Speaker 1: if you're doing that, but come in expecting suspiria or
Speaker 1: something like that. This film is gorgeous in its own right,
Speaker 1: but it's it's doing its own thing for the most part.
Speaker 1: Some scenes are definitely more surreal in their color scheme
Speaker 1: than others. But you're it's not a picture that's going
Speaker 1: for those Mario Bava sequences either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not going nuts with the Jeli. It's like
Speaker 3: Bob right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, So I think it's better to really think of
Speaker 1: it as art house surreal or psychological mystery.
Speaker 3: Yes, But I don't know if I've emphasized this enough already.
Speaker 3: I loved Footprints on the Moon. I thought this movie
Speaker 3: created such an enticing atmosphere of mystery. I can't remember
Speaker 3: the last time I saw a movie and I was
Speaker 3: so curious to know what the solution was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's exceedingly beautiful, as we'll discuss, Like
Speaker 1: the first twenty minutes of this picture, I was just
Speaker 1: captivated by the cinematography and the shot composition. Like I get,
Speaker 1: it's something you can take for granted in a lot
Speaker 1: of movies, obviously, but this film does such a great
Speaker 1: job with just like the little details and like's there's
Speaker 1: some puttsing around in an apartment building early on in
Speaker 1: the picture. They could just be, you know, thankless and
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit boring in another picture, But It
Speaker 1: was very captivating here, just in large part because of
Speaker 1: the way it was shot and the way it was presented. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mentioned that a lot of shallow films are more
Speaker 3: visually striking than you would imagine given their subject matter.
Speaker 3: But I feel like this is an especially beautiful movie.
Speaker 3: It is better looking even than the shallow standard. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and there are some ugly shallows. I just meant that
Speaker 3: generalization on average.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the better ones are often remembered for their stunning visuals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, well hit us with an elevator pitch. Here
Speaker 1: we go.
Speaker 3: Alice Chespie is missing three days of her memory and
Speaker 3: is haunted by visions of an astronaut murdered on the
Speaker 3: surface of the moon to her, And what does klaus
Speaker 3: Kinsky have to do with it?
Speaker 1: All right, let's hear a little bit of the trailer audio.
Speaker 4: Why am I here? Why did I come to Gama,
Speaker 4: to this strange town? I know I was never in
Speaker 4: before your pinces, Alice, my name is Alice. That's not true.
Speaker 4: Look it looks like blood. What was I doing for
Speaker 4: those three things? Why can't I remember a single thing
Speaker 4: about them? It's all those tranquilized as you take You
Speaker 4: probably took a larger notes than usual and slept right
Speaker 4: through to this morning. I saw you on the beach.
Speaker 4: I think one day this week?
Speaker 1: Was it Tuesday?
Speaker 4: Are you sure it was me? No? I didn't see
Speaker 4: her at all on Tuesday, Alice.
Speaker 1: I know you can hear me open the door.
Speaker 4: Did you find him? Name? Who? Your friend? What friend?
Speaker 4: Your friend?
Speaker 1: Harry?
Speaker 4: Who told you I had a friend named Harry?
Speaker 1: All right, So at this point, if you would like
Speaker 1: to go out and watch Footprints on the Moon, well,
Speaker 1: there is a DVD of the film, but it's also
Speaker 1: widely available for digital rental or purchase, and is also
Speaker 1: in some of the package streaming services. I was snowed in,
Speaker 1: so I rented it on Prime and the quality was great. However,
Speaker 1: I will say I had no audio options. I do
Speaker 1: not know if there are other language dubs for this,
Speaker 1: but the version I watched it in was English.
Speaker 3: You said the disc version is a DVD, but I'm
Speaker 3: pretty sure there is a blu ray from Severin.
Speaker 1: Is there? Okay? Yeah? Well that, oh it would be
Speaker 1: even better.
Speaker 3: It's under the alternate title. It's not called Footprints on
Speaker 3: the Moon. It just says Footprints. I mean, why I
Speaker 3: put the Moon in the title. That's what sells it.
Speaker 1: I think that was the name of the original Italian novel.
Speaker 1: But all right, now I'm pulling up the Severin's website.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the cuts. Let's see what do we have.
Speaker 1: We have an Italian cut and a US cut. I'm
Speaker 1: assuming I probably watched the US cut based on everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's probably what I saw that. We may have
Speaker 3: watched the same streaming version. I watched the one available
Speaker 3: through scream Box, which is a premium subscription on Prime.
Speaker 1: My main question is just about like the version I watched,
Speaker 1: Kloskinski is dubbed. It's not Klaskinski's voice. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: know is we'll discuss his is a bit part and
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. But I mean that whether it's
Speaker 1: his voice or not. But I was just wondering, well,
Speaker 1: does this mean there's a different cut like in the
Speaker 1: Italian cut?
Speaker 4: Is?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. They're probably dubbed in either case,
Speaker 1: But at any rate, the version I watched was in English.
Speaker 1: But this blu ray does look excellent, soul. This would
Speaker 1: be the ideal physical media viewing choice right here. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's get into the people behind Footprints on the Moon,
Speaker 1: starting at the top with the director Luigi Bzzoni born
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine died at twenty twelve, also a writer
Speaker 1: on the picture, A Tiger director and screenwriter with five
Speaker 1: films to his credit, all genre pictures of different types.
Speaker 1: There's a nineteen sixty five's The Possessed that was a
Speaker 1: mystery starring Peter Baldwin. Sixty seven's Man Pride and Vengeance
Speaker 1: that's a Western with Franco Nero and Klauskinski. Seventy one's
Speaker 1: The Fifth Chord that's a Franco Nero Jallo and and
Speaker 1: then there's seventy three's Brothers Blue that's say western with
Speaker 1: Jack Pallets. And then came this film, Footprints on the Moon,
Speaker 1: which was his final picture.
Speaker 3: Never seen anything else by this guy, but Footprints is
Speaker 3: so strong. I may have to check these other ones out.
Speaker 3: Even the westerns. Oh, come on a Franco Niro and
Speaker 3: Klauskinski western.
Speaker 1: What I mean? They are a number of of spaghetti
Speaker 1: westerns that are on my eventual viewing list. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: really hard to pass up a horror film for a western,
Speaker 1: but some of these are very well regarded, and there
Speaker 1: you know, obviously there are some real classics in the
Speaker 1: spaghetti western zone, so yeah, we should maybe come back
Speaker 1: to one, even on Weird House. There are some weird
Speaker 1: spaghetti westerns for sure, all right. The other writing credit
Speaker 1: and also credit for the original novel goes to Mario Finelli,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen twenty four through nineteen ninety one, an
Speaker 1: Italian writer, screenwriter, and director in his own right. In fact,
Speaker 1: he seemingly directed some on this film in an uncredited capacity. Again,
Speaker 1: the film is based on his original novel The Footprints,
Speaker 1: but he'd also worked with Bozzoni on The Fifth Chord
Speaker 1: and Brothers Blue. He has an extensive directing filmography as well,
Speaker 1: including a great deal of TV work. All right, Now
Speaker 1: getting into the cast, The star of the picture is
Speaker 1: Florinda Bulkin playing Alice. Born nineteen forty one, Brazilian actress
Speaker 1: and model who moved through both art house and like grindhouse,
Speaker 1: Italian cinema. She was active to one degree or another
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty eight through twenty nineteen. Her first film
Speaker 1: credit was a supporting role in the nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: picture of Candy, which had an all star international cast.
Speaker 1: Like I Think, John Houston was in it, and Ringo
Speaker 1: star and just various other folks. It was a lot
Speaker 1: of pretty crowded cast on that one. What kind of
Speaker 1: movie is that? Is it a screwball comedy or it
Speaker 1: is a sex farce? Oh boy? But it's from a
Speaker 1: screenplay by Buck Henry. I haven't seen it, but again,
Speaker 1: it's like, it's got Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Walter Mathowl, Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: James Coburn. Yeah, it's a loaded cast. But I can't
Speaker 1: I can't really speak for it beyond that, just that
Speaker 1: it's it has a lot of people I recognize in it.
Speaker 1: Oki Dokie her subsequent work again weave's back and forth
Speaker 1: between the genres, including the likes of Luccio Fulci's Lizard
Speaker 1: in a Woman's Skin in seventy one and Don't Torture
Speaker 1: a Duckling in seventy two, as well as pictures like
Speaker 1: the James Clavel directed and adapted The Last Valley in
Speaker 1: seventy one that starred Michael Caine and Omar Sharif. I
Speaker 1: was a big fan of this picture when I was younger.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in a long time, but it's
Speaker 1: set during the thirty years war has to do with
Speaker 1: this whole mercenary crew that's headed up by Michael Kaine's character,
Speaker 1: and they defect, and as they defect, he stabs somebody
Speaker 1: to death with his spiked tilmeut. So that was That's
Speaker 1: a pretty fun I think I've probably mentioned that before
Speaker 1: on the show. Okay, anyway, Bulkan was also in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, and yeah, she's
Speaker 1: been in a ton of stuff. She also wrote and
Speaker 1: directed the two thousand film I Didn't Know Taruru, and
Speaker 1: she was the longtime partner of producer Marina Chigona.
Speaker 3: Florida Bolcan is fantastic in this movie, and she has
Speaker 3: to The movie really rests on her because there are
Speaker 3: long stretches of the film where she is acting alone.
Speaker 3: She is in scenes without anyone, in scenes with no dialogue,
Speaker 3: with no one to act against, and so she's communicating
Speaker 3: the whole arc of her of her characters, you know,
Speaker 3: feelings and discovery of things, just silently kind of reacting
Speaker 3: to her environment. And I think she's she really carries
Speaker 3: the film. She's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, she's terrific in this This is not a picture
Speaker 1: where she's going to spend the run time running from
Speaker 1: a mass man trying to stab her with a moon rock.
Speaker 1: And now it's it's it's her quietly investigating her surroundings,
Speaker 1: and it's very psychological in nature for the most part,
Speaker 1: with that psiological psychological focus turned inward. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: always takes a skilled performer to really bring that sort
Speaker 1: of thing to life. So we were talking about the
Speaker 1: potential for strong female characters in a Jallah or Jallah
Speaker 1: adjacent film, and I feel like this is a pretty
Speaker 1: strong character in a definitely a strong performance. Definitely strong performance.
Speaker 3: I think, I don't know people would argue about the
Speaker 3: meaning of the ending in that regard, but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: regardless there, I mean, I think it is definitely a
Speaker 3: fascinating character and a wonderful performance by Florinda Bulkan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. Another character that turns up is the
Speaker 1: character Henry played by Peter mcchinry born nineteen forty, a
Speaker 1: well regarded actor with a long career on the British
Speaker 1: stage and in British television obviously some euro projects as well.
Speaker 1: We chatted about him before in one of our core
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes anthology of Horror seven,
Speaker 1: because he starred in the nineteen eighty Hammer House of
Speaker 1: Horror episode The Mark of Satan. Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we did that in an anthology episode because it
Speaker 3: was a movie about a man who became who became
Speaker 3: possessed of the notion that there was an evil virus
Speaker 3: that was infecting people and turning them against him.
Speaker 1: And it was a kind of.
Speaker 3: Loss of sanity play as well. But that was an
Speaker 3: interesting Hammer episode, and I think we ended up relating
Speaker 3: it to certain kinds of viral viral conditions in real life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Among the other things that he was in, there
Speaker 1: was a seventy three this nineteen seventy three horror anthology
Speaker 1: picture Tales that Witness Madness. Oh, and he was in
Speaker 1: a wonderful nineteen eighty one adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Speaker 1: one that I believe I watched in a Shakespeare class
Speaker 1: in college. It's not too much if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: it's not too much more than a film play. There
Speaker 1: are a number of these that, you know, like British
Speaker 1: productions where it's you know, there aren't a bunch of
Speaker 1: like Lavish locations and sets. It's pretty minimal. But then
Speaker 1: the performances are generally really top notch, and this particular
Speaker 1: production had the likes of Helen Mirren as Titania, Phil
Speaker 1: Daniels from Billy the Kid in the Green Bays Vampire
Speaker 1: and many other things. Obviously, but he played Puck in it,
Speaker 1: and then Brian Glover from Alien three plays bottom. You
Speaker 1: remember Brian Glover. He was the bald guy. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: the he's like the boss at the prison. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they're all bald. That's the joke for H'm sorry, you're
Speaker 1: right there. His head, I think, is bigger, so he's more.
Speaker 1: He's more. Yeah. But mcginny played Oberon in that adaptation
Speaker 1: of Midsummer Night's Dream.
Speaker 3: I can see that he's got range. I mean in
Speaker 3: the Hammer House of Horror episode he played a very unsettling,
Speaker 3: troubled guy who did not at all have the same
Speaker 3: energy he has in this and Footprints on the Moon,
Speaker 3: he plays a kind of intriguing, good natured and mysterious hunk.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and and one is mustache and one is
Speaker 1: not must No mustache. In this picture he had a mustache.
Speaker 1: And yeah the Hammer Horror anthology. But yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: quite good. And there may be some other thing I've
Speaker 1: seen him in. He has, like I say, he has
Speaker 1: had a very long career. All right, another role in
Speaker 1: this one, and this one definitely gets into some other
Speaker 1: Jallo credits. We have Nicoletta Elmi playing this child, this
Speaker 1: child that wanders up and has various interactions with our
Speaker 1: star and a face that you will recognize from various
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies Italian genre in horror pictures, including seventy one's
Speaker 1: Bay of Blood, seventy two's Barren Blood, seventy three's Flesh
Speaker 1: for Frankenstein, seventy five's Night Child, and of course nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five's Deep Red Dario Argento film. And she continued
Speaker 1: to act through the nineteen eighties as an adult, appearing
Speaker 1: in such pictures as nineteen eighty five's Demons.
Speaker 3: What would it be like to, you know, have your
Speaker 3: acting career start when you were younger? Is like, I
Speaker 3: was the recurring character character type of creepy child in
Speaker 3: Jallo film. Actually she's not so creepy in this one.
Speaker 3: She's creepy I think in some of the other ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, in this she's I mean she's a little creepy,
Speaker 1: but but not to the to the point where you're like,
Speaker 1: is this a ghost child or not? Yeah, Like when
Speaker 1: this character is I believe she slapped at one point
Speaker 1: at one point, oh yeah, yeah, our main character slaps her,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, that's not okay. And whereas if we
Speaker 1: thought she was a ghost child, I don't know, then
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a gray area at that point.
Speaker 1: Is it okay to slap a ghost It's not really
Speaker 1: a child, it's not really a person anymore. It's a ghost.
Speaker 1: And can your hand make contact with a ghost? I'm
Speaker 1: not sure important questions? Yeah, all right, the okay, the
Speaker 1: next two actors. I want to mention there are characters
Speaker 1: I honestly don't completely one remember from this film because
Speaker 1: not all the A lot of the investigations end up
Speaker 1: being very visually memorable, but I don't necessarily remember what
Speaker 1: information was gained from them. There's a character named Mary,
Speaker 1: and then there's a character named Marie.
Speaker 3: So, if I'm getting this right, Alice has there are
Speaker 3: essentially three other women her age that she interacts with
Speaker 3: in the beginning of the movie before she leaves for Garma,
Speaker 3: and they are named Rosemary, Mary, and Marie.
Speaker 1: Okay, these two characters are not very important to the
Speaker 1: picture towards, but I did want to mention them briefly,
Speaker 1: just because they do have connections to other Jallo pictures
Speaker 1: and some pictures we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 1: So Ida Golli born nineteen thirty nine, credited here as
Speaker 1: Evelyn Stewart, She's an Italian actress who pops up in
Speaker 1: a number of Spaghetti Western Jaalo pictures. We previously mentioned
Speaker 1: her in our episode on Mario Bava's dark peplum film
Speaker 1: Hercules in the Haunted World, in which she played a
Speaker 1: character I don't one hundred percent remember named miss Otidi.
Speaker 1: I don't remember her at all, but her other credits
Speaker 1: include sixty threes, The Whip in the Body, sixty fours,
Speaker 1: War of the Zombies, sixty six, Django Shoots First, and
Speaker 1: Lucio Fulci's seventy seven thriller The Psychic and Then Marie
Speaker 1: is played by Rosita Torros. As Rosita Torros, she lived
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five through nineteen ninety five Italian actress who
Speaker 1: also appeared in various Shalloh and horror films, including nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Gentle Picture and
Speaker 1: seventy four is almost human from umberto Lindsay.
Speaker 3: So, I think this is the character of Marie Leblanche,
Speaker 3: the translator who takes Alice's job after she disappeared.
Speaker 1: That's right, yeah, So again they're not vital too the
Speaker 1: large stretches of the picture, but they're kind of interesting connections.
Speaker 1: And then, of course Klaskinsky we mentioned plays Professor Blackman.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was the same for you,
Speaker 1: but I found different versions. Different renditions of this character's
Speaker 1: name have different numbers of n's and k's in it,
Speaker 1: so that may vary depending on where you're looking. Kinsky
Speaker 1: saught two ends at the end. Maybe I just I
Speaker 1: imagined the extra k, but at any rate, Klaus Kinsky
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twenty six through nineteen ninety one. We've previously
Speaker 1: discussed Kinsky in our episodes on Venom from eighty one
Speaker 1: and Creature from eighty five. You know, this was, of
Speaker 1: course an infamous actor known for his crazed intensity, and
Speaker 1: his career also is one of those that straddles worlds
Speaker 1: of both art house and grind house, you know, B
Speaker 1: movies and very well regarded productions as well. We're not
Speaker 1: going to go into put too much depth here, in
Speaker 1: part because it is a bit part for Kinski. We
Speaker 1: only see him in dream sequences in Stunning Black and White,
Speaker 1: and his voice, at least for me, was dubbed with
Speaker 1: a thoroughly non Kinsky voice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it didn't sound like him at all. I don't
Speaker 3: think even had a German accent.
Speaker 1: No, they weren't even going for Kinski. They were just like, ye,
Speaker 1: just dub him over.
Speaker 3: But Kinsky's voice would have made sense because the character
Speaker 3: he plays as a mad scientist, like the character he
Speaker 3: plays as a character who sounds like Klaus Kinsky does
Speaker 3: in real life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like Kinski's voice is one of those that, like,
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people can do, so
Speaker 1: it seems like a very deliberate choice. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like if you dubbed Peter Lorie, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like somebody could do that voice. Come on. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right. I mentioned how I spent the first twenty
Speaker 1: minutes of the film like just really admiring the composition
Speaker 1: of it all. And that's the point where I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't check to see who the cinematographer was. And
Speaker 1: that's when I checked and saw that the director of
Speaker 1: photography was Vittorio Storaro, who was born in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: and is a three time Oscar winner. He earned the
Speaker 1: Oscar for his work on nineteen seventy nine Apocalypse Now,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one's Reds that was I Haven't seen That
Speaker 1: was written and directed by Warren Beatty, and nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: seven's The Last Emperor. So a legendary cinematographer working on
Speaker 1: this pic. Sure he was also nominated for nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: Dick Tracy.
Speaker 3: I've wondered before if we should cover Dick Tracy on
Speaker 3: the show because.
Speaker 1: Talk about weird, weird movies. Yes, a weird film that
Speaker 1: I loved as a kid, haven't seen in forever, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a brightly colored comic book, old time comic book,
Speaker 1: gangster picture full of mutant gangsters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't know how well it would hold up,
Speaker 3: but it's got to be one of the weirder mainstream
Speaker 3: films ever released.
Speaker 1: It has to be. Yeah, I would like to revisit
Speaker 1: it sometime. Other pictures of note for Starro include nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies The Bird with a Crystal Plumage Another Bird related
Speaker 1: picture nineteen eighty five's Lady Hawk and the two thousand
Speaker 1: Doune mini series, which all of these had very strong
Speaker 1: visual composition, So you know, yeah, this is a big
Speaker 1: name and it makes sense that a big name was
Speaker 1: involved here given out great everything looks.
Speaker 3: It is a gorgeously shot film, so this makes a
Speaker 3: lot of sense. I'm still kind of processing where the
Speaker 3: two thousand Dune mini series fits in. Maybe I'm not
Speaker 3: being fair because I haven't seen that, but I've seen
Speaker 3: stills from it. It never struck me as something that
Speaker 3: looked amazing, But maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: I recently rewatched parts of it and I will have
Speaker 1: to say the CGI did not hold up well at all,
Speaker 1: and it does feel I know it cost a pretty penny,
Speaker 1: but it feels like a TV production, you know, in
Speaker 1: many respects. But on the other hand, like the costumes
Speaker 1: are very inventive, It's got some great performances in it,
Speaker 1: and given its length, it actually gives you a chance
Speaker 1: to see some of the scenes that are often omitted
Speaker 1: from adaptations of Doom. All Right, and finally, the composer
Speaker 1: on this one already mentioned how nice the music is.
Speaker 1: It is the work of Nicola Piovan born nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: Italian composer who won an Oscar himself in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: nine for Life Is Beautiful. His other credits include seventy
Speaker 1: four's The Perfume of the Lady in Black. I don't
Speaker 1: think I have to tell you that's a Jalla picture
Speaker 1: with a title like that, as well as Flavia the Heretic,
Speaker 1: which starred Florinda bulcan Ah. All right, do you want
Speaker 1: to start talking about the plot. Yeah, let's get into
Speaker 1: the plot of Footprints on the Moon. Okay.
Speaker 3: Well, the credits play in yellow type script over a
Speaker 3: deep blue night sky with no stars in sight, just
Speaker 3: the moon, which is pale and gray in the center
Speaker 3: of the frame. And I quite like the music that
Speaker 3: plays over the opening credits here, So at the beginning
Speaker 3: it's mostly strings and flute, and the melody is subtle, mysterious,
Speaker 3: kind of cold. I was thinking of it as the
Speaker 3: sound of like seeing something that looks very odd far
Speaker 3: away out of window, and then looking back to try
Speaker 3: to see it more clearly, and it's gone. But suddenly
Speaker 3: into this texture, the pipe organ comes roaring in and
Speaker 3: it's immediately like we are phantoming the opera out of this, yes,
Speaker 3: So the credits roll and we zoom in on the
Speaker 3: Moon to reveal this is not genuine night sky photography.
Speaker 3: This is an illustration of the Moon in a gorgeous
Speaker 3: but old school style, so it looks like something out
Speaker 3: of one of those great old nineteenth century astronomy books
Speaker 3: with the hand drawn illustrations of the craters and the
Speaker 3: lunar maria. And then in the foreground we see a
Speaker 3: lunar landing vehicle appear, so it's drifting gracefully down toward
Speaker 3: toward the Moon, down toward the surface. And then when
Speaker 3: we see the surface in close up, it's another classic
Speaker 3: style illustration, the kind of planet surface you would get
Speaker 3: in Planet of the Vampires and these landing party adventures
Speaker 3: of the fifties and sixties. So it's not just rocks
Speaker 3: and dust, but these craggy spires which you don't really
Speaker 3: get in the actual topography of the Moon, at least
Speaker 3: not our moon. So after the lander sets down, we
Speaker 3: cut to a rather surprising shot. We see one astronaut
Speaker 3: in a suit and a classic bubble helmet, apparently unconscious,
Speaker 3: being dragged across the surface by another astronaut with his
Speaker 3: boots leaving these streaks in the regolith as his limp
Speaker 3: body is pulled along, and then the upright astronaut drops
Speaker 3: the other one in the dust in a field that
Speaker 3: is framed by these pointy moon spires, and then begins
Speaker 3: to walk away. So is somebody just being abandoned on
Speaker 3: the surface of the Moon, It seems yes. We watch
Speaker 3: the lander begin to take off and then rise up
Speaker 3: into orbit once again, and it's only once the lander
Speaker 3: is far away that the astronaut comes to and sits
Speaker 3: up and realizes what's happening, and they watch in terror
Speaker 3: as the vehicle departs and rob I attached a couple
Speaker 3: of screenshots of this moment for you to look at
Speaker 3: here because I thought this part was wonderful. It's so
Speaker 3: strange and mysterious and evocative. The soundtrack goes on alternating
Speaker 3: between the cold, ominous strings and woodwinds with these sudden
Speaker 3: explosions of pipe organ and we're thrown off by this
Speaker 3: unusual scenario and the mid century science fiction aesthetics of
Speaker 3: the eva suits and the lunar set design. So it
Speaker 3: sounds based on that the latter stuff there like the
Speaker 3: effect of this could be comical, but it's really not
Speaker 3: in this moment, because we're seeing the abandoned astronaut's eyes
Speaker 3: wide in fear behind the curved glass of the face plate,
Speaker 3: but the glass is partially fogged over, so we only
Speaker 3: see their face through this obscuring screen of fog, which
Speaker 3: kind of mutes the detection of emotion there and makes
Speaker 3: them inaccessible and haunting. I think it's a really great moments.
Speaker 1: It's extremely well executed because it manages to walk that
Speaker 1: line where it never feels hokey, but it also is
Speaker 1: not going for like a like a high highly accurate rendition,
Speaker 1: like they're not trying to make it look like the
Speaker 1: actual surface of the moon in actual like lunar landings
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, then from here we cut to a different scene,
Speaker 3: still in the esthetics of old school sci fi, but
Speaker 3: now fully in black and white. So we see a
Speaker 3: gruff man in an EVA helmet starting a radio communication.
Speaker 3: He announces himself as Gunter, and he calls out for
Speaker 3: a professor Blachmann. Who could that be? Why it's Klaus Kinski.
Speaker 3: Kinsky says, receiving you over in a non Kinsky voice,
Speaker 3: and so Kinsky is hunched over in some kind of
Speaker 3: mad science mission control room with lights flashing everywhere and
Speaker 3: computers making little beeps and boops, and we learn from
Speaker 3: their exchange that Blackman and Gunter are collaborating on some
Speaker 3: kind of morbid experiment. They intentionally abandoned the other astronaut,
Speaker 3: whose name is we learn as McGregor, on the Moon
Speaker 3: so they could study something about him from a distance.
Speaker 3: And by the way, when we get a look at
Speaker 3: this full control room, I was kind of wondering for
Speaker 3: some reason if they shot these in like a real
Speaker 3: decommissioned nuclear plant like they did in Shocking Dark. Whatever
Speaker 3: these control panels are, they look pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I love this gritty black and white that
Speaker 1: they shoot everything, And it reminds me a lot of
Speaker 1: a picture that would come much later two thousand and
Speaker 1: one's the American Astronauts. The same kind of quality where
Speaker 1: it's just like grungy black and white and it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel it doesn't have that feeling like you just turned
Speaker 1: down the color settings on your old school television or anything.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, yeah, black and white. You can taste
Speaker 1: get the grid of it in your teeth. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit salty. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the mads mad scientists conspirators. Here they confirm that
Speaker 3: the experiment is underway, and then Kinsky says, I will
Speaker 3: alert the organization. And from here we cut to a
Speaker 3: telephone buzzing on a furry shag carpet. Could this be
Speaker 3: Kinsky's call to the organization? I don't think so, because
Speaker 3: something has changed. We have gone from black and white
Speaker 3: to full color, and we pan up to see our protagonist,
Speaker 3: Alice Chespie, sleeping on her bed. She's wearing a black
Speaker 3: eye mask, curiously in almost the same posture as the
Speaker 3: unconscious astronaut from the other story, and the blinds are
Speaker 3: drawn over the windows in the room, but from in
Speaker 3: between them. The light is falling in over her face
Speaker 3: in a way that suggests it's late morning. She has
Speaker 3: overslept groggily. Alice answers the phone, and it's her friend Rosemary,
Speaker 3: who says she's been trying to reach her for hours.
Speaker 1: I think she.
Speaker 3: Literally says the phone, the phone has been ringing for hours.
Speaker 3: That's that's dedication for Rosemary to wait that long?
Speaker 1: What is wrong with you? Why would you the phone
Speaker 1: ring for hours, not just on the receiving end, but
Speaker 1: on the calling in is why would you do that?
Speaker 3: So Alice seems disoriented, but discovers it's late in the
Speaker 3: morning and she has to turn in a translation she
Speaker 3: hasn't finished yet. Alice works as a translator for some
Speaker 3: kind of consolate or diplomatic office, apparently specializing in scientific topics,
Speaker 3: I think. So she makes plans to meet with Rosemary
Speaker 3: later that morning, and then she gets to business. So
Speaker 3: there are kind of some scenes here of like you
Speaker 3: said earlier, Alice, she's just kind of puttering around her
Speaker 3: apartment doing nothing all that mysterious, but they are framed
Speaker 3: in such a strange and beautiful way. Immediately something feels significant.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of looking for clues, even before the plot
Speaker 3: suggests I should.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we.
Speaker 3: See her standing at her window, looking in the mirror,
Speaker 3: getting ready for the day, lighting the gas under her
Speaker 3: coffee maker, settling down to typing her translation of an
Speaker 3: audio tape. And one thing I noticed is that outside
Speaker 3: of her apartment window there is first of all, a
Speaker 3: beautiful view of whatever city this is.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is Rome or whatever.
Speaker 3: But the second thing is there is a giant construction crane,
Speaker 3: and Alice's body is a couple of times seen framed
Speaker 3: within the angle of the crane, feels like it means something,
Speaker 3: So while she goes about her business, Alice at one
Speaker 3: point finds something on the floor of her kitchen next
Speaker 3: to the garbage can. It is a torn up postcard
Speaker 3: bearing the image of a stately old hotel. She puzzles
Speaker 3: the pieces back together and then looks at it and
Speaker 3: then flips it over to see that this is the
Speaker 3: hotel Garma, of a place called Garma.
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 3: She has no idea where it came from, so Alice
Speaker 3: leaves home and then goes about her day. First of all,
Speaker 3: she meets up with her friend Rosemary. There's a funny
Speaker 3: scene where Rosemary's trying to tell her a story about
Speaker 3: something that happened when she went to a club on
Speaker 3: Tuesday night, which is strange because we just saw Alice
Speaker 3: flip her daily calendar from Monday to Tuesday. And she
Speaker 3: realizes Alice is lost in thought, not really paying attention,
Speaker 3: and Alice says she is thinking about a dream she
Speaker 3: had the night before, and in fact, a dream she's
Speaker 3: had many times, where she says a man is abandoned
Speaker 3: on the moon for an experiment. Rosemary says this sounds
Speaker 3: like science fiction, and Alice says, yes, it was. In fact,
Speaker 3: this was a dream that was inspired by a film
Speaker 3: she saw when she was young. The movie was called
Speaker 3: Footprints on the Moon, and it scared her so much
Speaker 3: that she ran out of the theater and never saw
Speaker 3: the end of it, so it's just kind of been
Speaker 3: hanging in her mind all these years.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: After this, we see Alice going to work. She's going
Speaker 3: to whatever this diplomatic office is to turn in her translations,
Speaker 3: and on the way there she moves through such interesting spaces,
Speaker 3: like this big empty audio datorium with all these green
Speaker 3: chairs lined up and these stained wooden walls, and then
Speaker 3: walking through behind this colonnade with these doorways framed against
Speaker 3: the sunlight. She eventually comes for a meeting with her
Speaker 3: boss or maybe it's her client.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: Actually she's supposed to be a freelancer. But when she
Speaker 3: gets there, everything is confused, like she tries to turn
Speaker 3: in the translation which was due at noon, but this
Speaker 3: leads to a bizarre revelation. The translation was of a
Speaker 3: speech I think concerning science and astronautics that was given
Speaker 3: on Monday, and it was supposed to be turned in
Speaker 3: at noon on Tuesday, which is what time Alice believes
Speaker 3: it is, but actually her client here informs her that
Speaker 3: it is now noon on Thursday, and Alice has no
Speaker 3: memory of the missing two days. Her handler tells her
Speaker 3: that she abruptly left in the middle of the address
Speaker 3: in the forum there and then for the fall several
Speaker 3: days they tried to contact her and got nothing, so
Speaker 3: in her absence they had to hire a different translator,
Speaker 3: a miss Lablanche, and Alice is clearly shaken by this.
Speaker 3: She doesn't know what to make of it, and apparently
Speaker 3: has no memory of leaving the speech or of the
Speaker 3: missing time.
Speaker 1: And so in this we really begin to get into
Speaker 1: the big psychological mysteries of the picture of missing time,
Speaker 1: of lost memories. And again these are questions that are
Speaker 1: very internal, and so it's another way that this performance
Speaker 1: is so good. It's that you know, they're not really
Speaker 1: exploring all this through flashbacks or exploring it through conversations
Speaker 1: in facial expressions. It's very nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this is also another way it really does
Speaker 3: fit Jallo conventions, even though it's not a murder mystery.
Speaker 3: I mean this idea of like having to reconstruct the
Speaker 3: lost memory to solve the mystery of what happened is
Speaker 3: absolutely like core Jallo feeling.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Alice meets with.
Speaker 3: Another friend of hers named Mary to talk about what's
Speaker 3: going on. Mary asks if she can remember anything about
Speaker 3: what happened at this session in the assembly that she
Speaker 3: apparently ran out in the middle of. So we cut
Speaker 3: to this big public auditorium with a stage and electern
Speaker 3: with a speaker talking into the microphone, and at the
Speaker 3: back of the room there are sound isolated translation booths
Speaker 3: surrounded by glass, with a line of these different booths,
Speaker 3: each one filled with a worker translating the speech into
Speaker 3: different languages in real time, and Alice is one of
Speaker 3: these translators. Curiously, this memory is in black and white
Speaker 3: and on a grainier film stock, and in that way
Speaker 3: it resembles Alice's dreams of the science fiction movie Footprints
Speaker 3: on the Moon. The speaker who's talking and being translated
Speaker 3: in the scene is someone named Madame Verdi, who says,
Speaker 3: I actually wrote down because it's kind of confusing because
Speaker 3: we were seeing subtitles of the translation of the narration,
Speaker 3: but then also the subtitles of the speech that's going on.
Speaker 3: The speech says so that man will find the possibility
Speaker 3: of surviving extremely difficult unless he begins immediately to totally
Speaker 3: alter his ways of thinking and living, to devote all
Speaker 3: his energies to try to avoid these dangers which are
Speaker 3: rushing upon him. By nineteen ninety, pollution and poisoning will
Speaker 3: have killed all the biological life in the sea. Our
Speaker 3: computer has also shown us that in the year two thousand,
Speaker 3: it will be almost impossible for men to live on
Speaker 3: planet Earth. So within the scenario of this movie, it's
Speaker 3: funny because she's listening to this speech that's full of
Speaker 3: these extremely dire warnings of like coming environmental catastrophe, but
Speaker 3: she makes no direct reference to the contents of the speech. Instead,
Speaker 3: this is just presented as like it's just her job
Speaker 3: to translate this, and the content is almost like neutral,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter what's being said. She's just there to trans.
Speaker 1: But it's so effective, isn't it, Because the content is horrifying. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just flowing through her being translated. It's
Speaker 1: part of her job. And so you get kind of
Speaker 1: an early idea that, yeah, this could be having a
Speaker 1: toll on her. She may not be quite aware of it,
Speaker 1: but like this is horrible news, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting to sort of take this sort of forecast, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly within the context again of a very modern setting
Speaker 1: of the original picture, but then as a contemporary viewer
Speaker 1: of this film, like on one level, like you hear
Speaker 1: that and you're like, oh, it's like it's like realizing
Speaker 1: you've been you know, eating, you know, using a jar
Speaker 1: of jam and it expired you know, twenty five years ago. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so in a way it like feels even
Speaker 1: more dire. And then also the other part of the course,
Speaker 1: it is that like this is still the scenario that
Speaker 1: we have roughly without the exact dates in play, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: like we're on a terrible path and it does to
Speaker 1: have a toll take a toll on one.
Speaker 3: Yes, But it's so interesting the way that it's like
Speaker 3: it's presented to us the viewer, so we can see
Speaker 3: that and we can see the emotional effect it should have,
Speaker 3: but she doesn't really comment on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a wonderful tool that is these sometimes
Speaker 1: you see used in pictures. I'm reminded of the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five neo noir film Trouble in Mind by Alan
Speaker 1: Rudolph that starred Chris Christofferson. That picture is also super weird,
Speaker 1: and I go back and forth on whether we should
Speaker 1: cover it on the show maybe someday. But in the
Speaker 1: background of that setting, like it's clear that there's some
Speaker 1: sort of a foreign occupation of the city, which I
Speaker 1: think is like Seattle or something, but it's never really
Speaker 1: like nobody ever really comments on it as far as
Speaker 1: I remember, it's just sort of in the background. But
Speaker 1: then you know, it's in the psyche, it's in the world,
Speaker 1: Like it's definitely it's presented as background material, but it's
Speaker 1: very much a part of the four as well. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean in storytelling, like what characters don't see
Speaker 3: fit to comment on, it can be such a powerful
Speaker 3: storytelling tool.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and so they're just wonderful job with it here
Speaker 1: in this picture.
Speaker 3: So anyway, in this scene, we pan over the different translators,
Speaker 3: each speaking their respective languages while taking down the speech.
Speaker 3: And this really also kind of takes on the feeling
Speaker 3: of a political espionage thriller. You know, it has that
Speaker 3: feeling of I don't know, like three Days of Condor
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: Alice talking to.
Speaker 3: Mary while we watched this scene play out in black
Speaker 3: and white from her memory. Talking to Mary, she says
Speaker 3: that the speech was very long, and in her isolation booth,
Speaker 3: she became very hot, so hot she couldn't breathe and
Speaker 3: she couldn't really concentrate. And then she noticed, looking down
Speaker 3: at the crowd below, that Marie le Blanche was sitting there,
Speaker 3: and ooh, we get a rear window style zoom in
Speaker 3: on Leblanche. Remember she's the woman who the Diplomatic Office
Speaker 3: hired to replace Alice when she disappeared. And she says
Speaker 3: that le Blanche was just staring at her, so like
Speaker 3: everybody else in the room is looking forward, but Leblanche
Speaker 3: is in her chair looking straight back up at Alice,
Speaker 3: and she says, you know, it's like she was willing
Speaker 3: her to make a mistake, kind of putting a curse
Speaker 3: on her from a distance. And Alice says she felt overwhelmed.
Speaker 3: She couldn't keep up with the voice she was translating.
Speaker 3: She was afraid it would just keep going on without her,
Speaker 3: which I guess it would write, you know, if she
Speaker 3: can't keep up, it's just going to keep going. Then
Speaker 3: she says, something happened, and we don't really know exactly
Speaker 3: what it was. But in the black and white memory,
Speaker 3: now everyone in the hall turns to stare up at Alice,
Speaker 3: And in this moment, we don't really have a way
Speaker 3: of knowing whether that actually happened, or whether her memory
Speaker 3: of this event might be faulty, or we're getting a
Speaker 3: kind of emotionally tinged version of it. So suddenly everybody
Speaker 3: turns and looks and is staring at her in this
Speaker 3: isolation booth, and she gets up and runs. She remembers
Speaker 3: she got up and ran out and rushed out of
Speaker 3: the building through the gardens next door, like she was
Speaker 3: running away from something. But that's where her memory stops.
Speaker 3: She can't recall where she went after that or why now.
Speaker 3: Mary suggests it's all those tranquilizers in take. She says,
Speaker 3: you know, you took a big dose and you just
Speaker 3: simply slept through two whole days. And Mary reminds her
Speaker 3: of how exhausted she has been from work.
Speaker 1: She's like, look, it's the seventies.
Speaker 3: It happens, yeah, But Alice has good reason for thinking
Speaker 3: that's not what happened, because she brings up something she
Speaker 3: hasn't told anybody else so far, the torn up postcard
Speaker 3: of the Hotel Garma. She says that the facade of
Speaker 3: the building looked so familiar to her. She doesn't have
Speaker 3: a memory of going there, but she could swear she
Speaker 3: had seen it before. And she has a memory of
Speaker 3: a room inside the hotel with a window painted and
Speaker 3: stained showing a giant peacock. Oh, then there are some
Speaker 3: more clues that something must have been going on. Back
Speaker 3: in her apartment, Alice realizes that she only has one
Speaker 3: of her two gold ear rings. She's got one for
Speaker 3: one ear but it's missing its mate. Also, she is
Speaker 3: missing a gray suit that should be in her closet,
Speaker 3: and in its place she finds a yellow dress her
Speaker 3: size that she has never seen before. Then on that
Speaker 3: yellow dress there is a small stain, a spot of blood.
Speaker 3: Also right around here. There's these little things throughout the
Speaker 3: movie that I think are so clever, because there will
Speaker 3: be a scene where nothing overtly scary happens, but there's
Speaker 3: just a little strange, slightly ominous accident. So one case
Speaker 3: of something like that that happens here is her phone
Speaker 3: rings and she answers and there's just silence on the
Speaker 3: other side. No one is there, Nothing super scary happens.
Speaker 1: But I don't know what.
Speaker 3: Things like that pile up in a movie. They can really,
Speaker 3: they can really be effective. It just feels like something
Speaker 3: is wrong with the world. She's being targeted somehow. And
Speaker 3: I also love that the phone looks like a computer mouse.
Speaker 1: This phone is it is a this is a plug
Speaker 1: into the wall telephone. Yes, but yeah, it looks the
Speaker 1: most like a like a mouse. But I couldn't even
Speaker 1: I didn't even know what it was when I saw
Speaker 1: it there. I was like, is this something that you
Speaker 1: use like on your body or you scan something? I like,
Speaker 1: I just this is clearly some sort of modern technology,
Speaker 1: but it's like so cutting edge that it's unrecognizable decades later,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: So Alice is troubled by this situation and by her
Speaker 3: inability to remember the past two days. So she wakes
Speaker 3: up in the middle of the night. She's clearly wrestling
Speaker 3: with this, and she goes to the kitchen and retrieves
Speaker 3: the pieces of the torn up postcard and once again
Speaker 3: puts them together. And this causes her to think once
Speaker 3: again of the painted peacock in the glass, what is
Speaker 3: the source of that memory? And it seems if there
Speaker 3: is an answer to this riddle. It may lie in
Speaker 3: Garma wherever.
Speaker 1: That is.
Speaker 3: From what I can tell, Garma is not a real place.
Speaker 3: I tried to look it up and couldn't really come
Speaker 3: up with anything. But within the world of the movie,
Speaker 3: it is a small island in the Mediterranean. I think
Speaker 3: it's supposed to be off the coast of Turkey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks like they film at a couple of
Speaker 1: different locations in Turkey, so I think that's fair too soon.
Speaker 3: So Alice books a flight to the nearest airport. There's
Speaker 3: no airport on Garma. She has to fly to another
Speaker 3: island or a town on the mainland, I think, and
Speaker 3: then take a boat out to Garma. And on the
Speaker 3: airplane we see she like sleeps in the in the
Speaker 3: airplane chair and she's dreaming about the astronauts strained on
Speaker 3: the moon again. And it's again a haunting image because
Speaker 3: the astronaut is this is after the lander has already left.
Speaker 3: So the astronaut is like stumbling around in the moon dust.
Speaker 1: But where can he go?
Speaker 3: You know, you imagine yourself in that situation, like why
Speaker 3: what sense would it even make to walk anywhere?
Speaker 1: There's no help to be found? You're on the moon.
Speaker 3: So she arrives at the port of Garma, where she
Speaker 3: disembarks from the boat and then meets a friendly young
Speaker 3: man with a British accent named Henry, who offers to
Speaker 3: give her a ride to the hotel. And on the
Speaker 3: way we see some beautiful local sites and architecture. There
Speaker 3: are these old stone mosques with huge rising domes and minarets.
Speaker 3: There are wooded cemeteries with tall, slender headstones. I really
Speaker 3: liked these graveyards where there would be like trees in them,
Speaker 3: and the trees are kind of the low branches are
Speaker 3: hanging out and mingling among the tall headstones of the graves.
Speaker 3: There's even what looks like an antique city wall with
Speaker 3: an arched gateway and the car just drives underneath it.
Speaker 3: It looks like something where I don't know, they want
Speaker 3: to keep traffic away from it or something, But I
Speaker 3: guess you get that more in I don't know, in
Speaker 3: like Europe and Turkey and stuff, where just like the
Speaker 3: ancient and the modern or just commingled, everything's right there together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean that is one of the great
Speaker 1: things about about traveling to locations like this. I've never
Speaker 1: been to Turkey, but these these Turkish locations look look fabulous,
Speaker 1: and this film really found some great locations for these shots.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder what this main mosque that we keep
Speaker 3: seeing is with the minarets. It's really really gorgeous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure. I think there are, like there
Speaker 1: are three different Turkish locations that are cited in IMDb.
Speaker 1: One of them is Kemra, which I'm to understand is
Speaker 1: essentially like a Mediterranean vacation destination. So I think when
Speaker 1: we see the more vacation y parts of this place
Speaker 1: where we're looking at Kemra, I'm not sure about these,
Speaker 1: about the cemetery or the mosque and so forth.
Speaker 3: So Alice tells Henry on the car ride that it
Speaker 3: is her first time visiting Garma, and Henry explains that
Speaker 3: he's there because he owns an old house. There's an
Speaker 3: old house on the island in the woods, and he's
Speaker 3: trying to fix it up, though he says he is
Speaker 3: not a very good carpenter, and he holds up a
Speaker 3: bandaged hand as proof of that.
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 3: It would have been funnier if there was like still
Speaker 3: a nail sticking out of it, but it's just a
Speaker 3: bandage hand. Henry drops Alice off at the hotel, the
Speaker 3: one from the postcard, and we see it framed exactly
Speaker 3: the same way it is in the postcard. There's a
Speaker 3: nice little touch where a flock of pigeons on the
Speaker 3: sidewalk scatter into the air as the car arrives outside,
Speaker 3: and then they all just kind of settle down again.
Speaker 1: But at the hotel, Alice tries to ask.
Speaker 3: For the room she remembers the room with the peacock
Speaker 3: painted on the window, but the manager doesn't seem to
Speaker 3: know what she's talking about, so she takes a regular
Speaker 3: room with a balcony facing the ocean. And as with
Speaker 3: so many of the sets, the inside of this hotel
Speaker 3: is elegantly wacky. Lobby is just beautiful. It has these
Speaker 3: pillars and arches and this tile pattern, and I guess
Speaker 3: a lot of this looks like, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: classic Islamic architecture, so those kind of like arch window styles.
Speaker 3: But then also these beautiful hanging lights that have I
Speaker 3: don't know, they're not like a normal chandelier. They're more
Speaker 3: like randomly arranged lights along I don't know, kind of
Speaker 3: a Christmas light vibe and then the plants indoors and
Speaker 3: old furniture. It's just a beautiful looking place. And also
Speaker 3: her room is by contrast, kind of lovely but hideous,
Speaker 3: like a totally red blanket on the bed and then
Speaker 3: these wallpaper walls and like bear light bulbs. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: it's something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this movie does a great job at something that.
Speaker 1: This is another thing is easy to take for granted
Speaker 1: in a film, and not all films pulled this off,
Speaker 1: but making you so invested in the speculativelopment or pre
Speaker 1: call to adventures and so forth aspect of the plot.
Speaker 1: You're like on vacation with this woman and you're like this,
Speaker 1: this is pleasant. I want to see what's next. What's
Speaker 1: she doing for lunch? Yeah, right, let's look at more
Speaker 1: details in her hotel room. Like I'm game. I'm totally
Speaker 1: down with the pace at which we're exploring this world.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: So Alice explores the island, she takes in more of
Speaker 3: the sites in the atmosphere. There's one particularly lovely shot
Speaker 3: where she's i think, wandering around outside the mosque we
Speaker 3: saw earlier, and there are these trees in the courtyard.
Speaker 3: Sort of you just see like the tree trunks and
Speaker 3: these stone pillars framed in almost the same way, like
Speaker 3: you can mistake one for the other, and it's quite beautiful.
Speaker 3: And so she's exploring the island, lounging on the coast.
Speaker 3: There's one thing that's kind of interesting here. We were
Speaker 3: talking about the scene earlier with the speech about the
Speaker 3: coming environmental catastrophe, where this very captivating and disturbing premise
Speaker 3: is established by what's happening in the background, but the
Speaker 3: characters don't really acknowledge or comment on this at all,
Speaker 3: So it's like it might not be affecting them, or
Speaker 3: maybe maybe it is affecting them, but they don't acknowledge
Speaker 3: or realize themselves.
Speaker 1: How it is affecting them.
Speaker 3: There's a similar thing with the history in the setting,
Speaker 3: this island being full of old buildings, holy places, ruins,
Speaker 3: ruins in the woods, ancient city walls, and cemeteries. Very
Speaker 3: little is said about this, but the setting really contributes
Speaker 3: to the psychic connotations of the action, like something is old, buried,
Speaker 3: maybe sacred may be haunted. So I guess at this
Speaker 3: point it makes sense to kind of zoom out and
Speaker 3: give a more summary description of this middle portion of
Speaker 3: the movie, a lot of which is Alice going about
Speaker 3: having various encounters on the island, trying to piece together
Speaker 3: what happened, what her connection to this place is, and
Speaker 3: what people know. And a big thing is that as
Speaker 3: she meets people on the island, especially other tourists, she
Speaker 3: gets recognized. So she meets a red haired girl named Paula.
Speaker 3: They're out on the beach. I think she's lounging in
Speaker 3: a chair sort of in the shade of a tree
Speaker 3: that's very close to the beach. It just looks closer
Speaker 3: to the beach than tree usually is, I think. But
Speaker 3: she's sitting there and this girl, Paula, comes up and
Speaker 3: talks to her as if she already knows her, and
Speaker 3: she says they've met before, but this girl knows her
Speaker 3: not as Alice, but as Nicole, and Paula says that
Speaker 3: Nicole looked alike her, but with long red hair, and
Speaker 3: I like that a sort of double doppelganger theme is
Speaker 3: established here. It's sort of spooky because not only is
Speaker 3: the implication that Alice has some kind of unknown lookalike,
Speaker 3: but also it's kind of spooky because the child telling
Speaker 3: her about this lookalike with long red hair, also has
Speaker 3: long red hair.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and so these are the moments where you
Speaker 1: do wonder. It's like, is the child also some manner
Speaker 1: of doppelganger or a ghost of the child that you were,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Paula says that Alice is similar to Nicole, but nicer.
Speaker 3: Something about Nicole was frightening and she did something scary
Speaker 3: out in the woods. And I love in the setting here,
Speaker 3: the presence of these woods kind of at the edge
Speaker 3: of a lot of these beach scenes. So we'll see
Speaker 3: Alice talking to people out on the beach or out
Speaker 3: on the rocks near the coast, and then there's often
Speaker 3: like a throw, a throw of attention towards this peninsular
Speaker 3: coast that's got a pine forest on it and it's
Speaker 3: very ominous. So something about the energy that these woods
Speaker 3: radiate is powerful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they feel thick and wild, as if all the
Speaker 1: like the resort town energy that we see elsewhere, and
Speaker 1: even the deeper history of the island, the human history
Speaker 1: that they seem to to struggle here in these woods.
Speaker 1: These woods are more primal, wilder, and less touched by humanity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a really good scene in them coming up
Speaker 3: in a minute. But first of all, Alice also has
Speaker 3: an encounter with an older woman named missus Him, also
Speaker 3: a tourist on the island, who also recently saw Nicole,
Speaker 3: This woman who looked.
Speaker 1: Like Alice but with long red hair.
Speaker 3: So what's going on? Does Alice have a secret look
Speaker 3: alike or was she somehow here in disguise in the
Speaker 3: days she can't remember? Why would she have been in
Speaker 3: disguise if that was her. She also has another meeting
Speaker 3: with Henry, the nice man who gave her a ride
Speaker 3: to the hotel, and there is a hint of romantic
Speaker 3: interest between them, and Henry invites her to meet him
Speaker 3: for a drink later. But I mentioned the creepy scene
Speaker 3: in the woods is the scene with the dog and
Speaker 3: the wig. So there's a scene where Alice and Paula,
Speaker 3: the younger girl, they go out into the woods into
Speaker 3: I think these are like there are ruins in the
Speaker 3: pine woods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like an arch that's still intact.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And they go here because am I remembering right
Speaker 3: that this? They went here because this is the place
Speaker 3: where Paula said she saw Nicole burning things in a fire. Yes,
Speaker 3: so they go here and they find the remains of
Speaker 3: whatever Nicole had been burning, and Paula confesses that Nicole
Speaker 3: scared her. Nicole herself apparently was afraid she had been
Speaker 3: acting erradically and she was afraid that people were following her,
Speaker 3: hunting her. And there's some kind of espionage story implication,
Speaker 3: like was Alice burning documents in the woods, burning something
Speaker 3: having to do with her work, maybe diplomatic secrets about
Speaker 3: scientific research, and was somebody trying to get a hold
Speaker 3: of that information. But in the end of the scene,
Speaker 3: Paula is scared by Nicole slash Alice and runs away,
Speaker 3: and Alice sees a stray dog. I think they have
Speaker 3: a name for this dog. Is he called Fox or something?
Speaker 1: Yes? Fox?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a stray dog who hangs around and the
Speaker 3: dog is like chewing on a red wig. So Alice
Speaker 3: retrieves the wig, and this is another clue, and it
Speaker 3: takes her to the local wig shop. So Garma appears
Speaker 3: to have a very it's a small town, but they
Speaker 3: do have a wig shop and like a wig styling specialist.
Speaker 1: Yeah. She brings it in and she's like, I would
Speaker 1: like this washed, she says, washed and combed. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which I don't know. I don't know much about wigs,
Speaker 1: but I was just assumed, like once it's in the
Speaker 1: woods in the mouth of a dog, like, maybe that
Speaker 1: wig's gone. I don't know, but maybe you can bring
Speaker 1: him back from that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you can always bring a wig back, I'm sure. Anyway,
Speaker 3: at the wig shop, Alice is once again recognized as Nicole.
Speaker 3: The man there fixes up her wig and offers to
Speaker 3: redo her makeup in the way that he had done
Speaker 3: it before. So, if Nicole was Alice, it seems maybe
Speaker 3: she had been trying to change her whole appearance, and
Speaker 3: there are multiple possibilities there. Was she trying to hide
Speaker 3: her identity or was she trying to change it entirely,
Speaker 3: like change.
Speaker 1: Who she was? We don't know at this point.
Speaker 3: From here, Alice traces the path of Nichole's business with
Speaker 3: various shops in town. She finds the shop where she
Speaker 3: had bought the yellow dress with the spot of blood
Speaker 3: on it that she found in her closet. She finds
Speaker 3: somehow reference to an order at the stationery store, and
Speaker 3: when she goes to pick it up, the shopkeeper there says, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, this order was already filled. You already got
Speaker 3: the item, but Alice asks for the same item again
Speaker 3: to find out what it is. When she gets it,
Speaker 3: it is a large, sharp pair of scissors. Also throughout
Speaker 3: this middle section of the movie, there are scenes that
Speaker 3: just raised the specter of Alice being pursued or watched
Speaker 3: in some way. You know, are there people who are
Speaker 3: following her? And other people are telling her that if
Speaker 3: Nicole was her Nicole was afraid of men who had
Speaker 3: been following her, and she has recurring dreams of the
Speaker 3: science fiction film with klas Kinski killing these astronauts on
Speaker 3: the moon to complete the experiment. There's a scene where
Speaker 3: Alice meets Henry for a drink, and here he acts
Speaker 3: a little bit strange. He still he comes across as
Speaker 3: very nice, like not threatening at all, but he does
Speaker 3: start to say things like is there something you'd like
Speaker 3: to tell me? You have something you want to say,
Speaker 3: and she doesn't understand what's going on and.
Speaker 1: Ends up leaving.
Speaker 3: Alice tries to make arrangements to leave the island on
Speaker 3: the last boat of the day, but this ends up
Speaker 3: going wrong. She misses the boat because she first has
Speaker 3: to pick up her wallet which she lost, which is
Speaker 3: in the possession of missus Him that other tourists she met,
Speaker 3: and missus Him has asked her to meet to meet
Speaker 3: at an organ concert in a local church, and this
Speaker 3: is supposed to be some great traveling organ who is performing.
Speaker 3: I don't normally I'm not gonna knock other people's musical
Speaker 3: performance as a sloppy musician myself, but I heard what
Speaker 3: sounded like a lot of mistakes on this organ playing.
Speaker 3: I don't know how like world class this one, this
Speaker 3: performer was it.
Speaker 1: I can't speak to that, but I did find that
Speaker 1: the whole organ performance felt kind of like creepy and
Speaker 1: low energy at the same time, where I'm like, is
Speaker 1: this really the only thing to do in this town
Speaker 1: right now? I don't know, maybe it is.
Speaker 3: It just kind of sounded like the music that's, you know,
Speaker 3: playing at a local church when people are like filing
Speaker 3: in and finding their seats.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now somehow from here, Alice ends up back in
Speaker 3: the woods trying to piece together what happened, and she
Speaker 3: she has some kind of mental exhaustion episode and she
Speaker 3: falls down and faints. Do you remember what the exact
Speaker 3: trigger of this moment is?
Speaker 1: I do not. I don't think it was the organ
Speaker 1: concert specifically, Yeah, that organ music was so bad. But
Speaker 1: is it? Is it ever established that it is perhaps
Speaker 1: off season in Garma? Yes, they talk about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're good, that's what I because it feels
Speaker 1: very off season.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's not the high tourist season. Henry says that
Speaker 3: when they're first traveling together, when they're in the car
Speaker 3: heading into town. So I think this is why the
Speaker 3: tourist locations are sparsely populated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the organ music is the only the only
Speaker 1: act in town, because otherwise you'd think, well, maybe there'd
Speaker 1: be some more traditional Turkish music to listen to, or
Speaker 1: various uh, you know, European acts coming in to appeal
Speaker 1: to the European tourists. And I guess that's what the
Speaker 1: organist is doing here anyway.
Speaker 3: So she falls down unconscious and wakes up in a
Speaker 3: different place. She is in an old, empty mansion, and
Speaker 3: looking around, she discovers the peacock, the one from her memory,
Speaker 3: the window painted with the peacock on the glass.
Speaker 1: What is this place?
Speaker 3: Well, here we get the payoff of an earlier conversation.
Speaker 3: Remember when she met Henry, he said he was fixing
Speaker 3: up an old house in the woods here it is
Speaker 3: so with Henry's help, Alice remembers what apparently happened earlier
Speaker 3: this week, and in fact, what happened earlier in their lives.
Speaker 3: Do we learn I think here that Henry is not
Speaker 3: Henry's real name, that he has another name.
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting what it is. I don't remember what Henry's
Speaker 1: other possible name is, but there's a lot of insisting
Speaker 1: that he is actually Henry.
Speaker 3: Yes, anyway, whatever his real name is. These two characters,
Speaker 3: when Alice and Henry were both teenagers, they met one
Speaker 3: summer while Alice's family was on vacation in Garma, and
Speaker 3: I think Henry's family had owned this house there, And
Speaker 3: so when they met all these years ago, they had
Speaker 3: a brief but intense young love, and Alice recalls in
Speaker 3: me of taking Henry's hand in front of the peacock window.
Speaker 3: And so it seems earlier this week what happened was
Speaker 3: something in Alice's life back in Rome caused her to snap,
Speaker 3: and she fled Rome and fled to Garma and assumed
Speaker 3: this new identity of Nicole, and so she wore a
Speaker 3: wig and dressed herself differently. They say that She somehow
Speaker 3: remembered that Henry's favorite color was yellow, and so she
Speaker 3: bought a yellow dress in town and wore it and
Speaker 3: came to Henry, seeking to connect with this time in
Speaker 3: her past when she had felt happy, when she felt
Speaker 3: loved and felt safe. She came here, she found Henry,
Speaker 3: and they rekindled their love after these many years. But
Speaker 3: for some reason she left again. She'd only been she
Speaker 3: only stayed for I guess a day or two. She left,
Speaker 3: went back to Rome, and then somehow lost all memory
Speaker 3: of what had happened.
Speaker 1: Well that's that's a red flag for everyone involved here,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: So now it seems at this point like, well, maybe
Speaker 3: we could have a happy ending here. Maybe they rekindle
Speaker 3: their love and they you know, they find happiness in
Speaker 3: each other. You know, they take care of each other
Speaker 3: and it's all good.
Speaker 1: Right. Unfortunately, that's not the trajectory of this motion picture. Right.
Speaker 3: So Alice she rests, but she wakes again later and
Speaker 3: she sneaks downstairs to hear Henry on the phone talking
Speaker 3: to someone about the fact that he now has Alice
Speaker 3: here at his house. I think he's talking to somebody
Speaker 3: on the phone and he's like, yes, I went and
Speaker 3: I retrieved her things from the hotel. Yes, you don't
Speaker 3: have to worry about that now I've got them. And
Speaker 3: something about the conversation sounds suspicious, and Alice begins to fear.
Speaker 3: Wait a second, is this really my lost teenage love
Speaker 3: or is this guy here part of the plot, the
Speaker 3: plot of the men who have been pursuing me? Why
Speaker 3: was I hiding is Nicole when I came here last?
Speaker 3: Why was I doing that?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: Something doesn't feel right here. So she confronts Henry, and
Speaker 3: he claims that he was only on the phone with
Speaker 3: the doctor. He was trying to arrange for her to
Speaker 3: receive some medical attention since she obviously suffered some kind
Speaker 3: of mental episode, and she doesn't believe him, and then
Speaker 3: it is revealed how their last encounter ended. The wound
Speaker 3: on his hand is not because he's a bad carpenter
Speaker 3: and like hammered his own fingers. The bandaged hand is
Speaker 3: from where she slashed him with the scissors she bought
Speaker 3: the last time they were together earlier this week. So
Speaker 3: why didn't he acknowledge this when they met the day before?
Speaker 3: Henry says that he wanted her to remember naturally, he
Speaker 3: didn't want to put pressure on her to recall this
Speaker 3: all at once, not to force it on her all
Speaker 3: at once, So he just was giving her space, I guess.
Speaker 1: But also lying, yeah, also gaslighting herself. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: This makes her very fearful and suspicious. She is now
Speaker 3: thinking about this more like it's the espionage movie we've
Speaker 3: been talking about, where she's being pursued by agents. Increasingly,
Speaker 3: it's clear that she's thinking of these as the agents
Speaker 3: of Blackmun, the professor in the science fiction movie that
Speaker 3: she has these nightmares about. There are agents working for this,
Speaker 3: for this evil, mad scientist, and they are following her,
Speaker 3: and it seems kind of plausible even from our perspective.
Speaker 3: I mean that the the identity of the pursuer doesn't
Speaker 3: seem plausible. But even from the viewer's perspective, I wasn't
Speaker 3: sure what was going on. I was wondering, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: maybe is Henry trying to exploit her in some way?
Speaker 3: Is he trying to get her diplomatic information, you know,
Speaker 3: like like learn something for an enemy government?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's we're unsure as the viewer, like
Speaker 1: where to stand on this. And it adding to this
Speaker 1: is that this sequence feels increasingly surreal because we have
Speaker 1: that huge peacock stained glass piece behind them, the colors
Speaker 1: are very vibrant. Things. Really feel that this is the
Speaker 1: sequence in the picture that feels the most bada asque
Speaker 1: guy would say, of any sequence.
Speaker 3: And so as Henry is trying to approach her and
Speaker 3: calm her, she panics and she stabs him with the scissors,
Speaker 3: with the scissors she got from the stationary.
Speaker 1: Store, seemingly fatally this time.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, Henry falls down dead, and then we see
Speaker 3: we see Alice in a panic. She flees out into
Speaker 3: the woods, is running through the woods and then is
Speaker 3: running on the beach and is looking over her shoulder
Speaker 3: everywhere we see her, like looking in the woods and
Speaker 3: looking for people who she thinks might be Henry's co conspirators,
Speaker 3: the people who have been following her. And in the
Speaker 3: end they appear. In fact, they are not just like
Speaker 3: I was imagining, like if there are men following her,
Speaker 3: what are we going to see kind of guys in
Speaker 3: suits with dark sunglasses or what. When they appear, they
Speaker 3: are astronauts dressed in full EVA suits with the bubble helmets,
Speaker 3: and they chase her down on the beach, which is
Speaker 3: interesting because the pebbles of the beach somewhat resemble the
Speaker 3: surface of the moon set. The astronauts chase her down
Speaker 3: and they capture her, and that is the end of
Speaker 3: the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also the coloration of the chase sequence eventually
Speaker 1: transfers over to it like a deep blue very much
Speaker 1: exactly like those sequences we saw earlier in the picture
Speaker 1: at at the start of the picture. So instead of
Speaker 1: a happy ending, we get a descent into madness ending,
Speaker 1: which I guess in many ways is more in keeping
Speaker 1: with the genre.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I think it's a very ambiguous ending. I
Speaker 3: mean I took it to most likely mean she's not
Speaker 3: actually being pursued by anyone that like she's she's having
Speaker 3: delusion of persecution most likely. But then again I wondered, well,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, I wonder also if maybe somebody is
Speaker 3: pursuing her here and it's just that she's she's also
Speaker 3: having a mental health episode where she's overlaying the frame
Speaker 3: of like her nightmares about the astronauts on top of
Speaker 3: this whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these could be operatives for some nation, but she
Speaker 1: is seeing them as astronauts from this film that scarred
Speaker 1: her so as a child.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I really am interested by the choice that
Speaker 3: they they don't make explicitly clear what caused her to
Speaker 3: have this psychotic break where she's like where she broke
Speaker 3: down in the middle of her work and fled to
Speaker 3: Garma and was trying to seek solace in her young love.
Speaker 3: We get the indication that, like she's very stressed out
Speaker 3: by her job, and so it could just be that
Speaker 3: she's overworked and like reached, you know, a level of
Speaker 3: burnout at work that you know that sent her into
Speaker 3: having a mental health episode, or is it something else?
Speaker 3: I mean we we are also given these hints, though
Speaker 3: she never acknowledges it, that there's that there's something wrong
Speaker 3: with the world, that there's like these heavy themes of
Speaker 3: doom kind of just in the air around her all
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And as a translator, she's kind of been, like
Speaker 1: we said earlier, this conduit for all of this terrible
Speaker 1: news and these these terrible forecasts for the future. And
Speaker 1: you know, she feels on some level like it has
Speaker 1: just rolled through her and she has been this conduit,
Speaker 1: but perhaps it has seeped out into her in disastrous ways.
Speaker 3: I think back to the scene where she's translating, and
Speaker 3: she says that she, you know, she was feeling hot
Speaker 3: in the room and like she couldn't breathe, And she
Speaker 3: says what she feared was that the words would just
Speaker 3: keep going past her and that she wouldn't be able
Speaker 3: to keep up. And that's like, literally, what would happen,
Speaker 3: you know, if you're like, if you can't stop and
Speaker 3: you're supposed to be a real time translator. The speech
Speaker 3: doesn't stop, They just keep going. But it's also a
Speaker 3: speech about the coming destruction of human life on Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and again with kind of I think it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be unrealistic at all to apply some future shock
Speaker 1: to this scenario. I mean, it's the right decade as well,
Speaker 1: on top of everything. But again instead of it being
Speaker 1: like a pure technological future shock, which future shock, as
Speaker 1: the Toddler's laid out, doesn't necessarily mean just technological change,
Speaker 1: but also all these other changes social and environmental. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the skin she puts on her panic is as
Speaker 3: a science fiction one. It's from this science fiction movie
Speaker 3: that scared her when she was younger.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's so strange and interesting to think how
Speaker 3: that interacts or doesn't with like the kind of comfort
Speaker 3: she's seeking from what she's suffering, and the comfort she's
Speaker 3: seeking is trying to find her you know, her one
Speaker 3: true love again from you know, this boy she she
Speaker 3: met all these years ago and has never seen since.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's probably a great deal of deconstruction one could
Speaker 1: do in the film too, regarding the differences between Alice
Speaker 1: and Nicole, Nicole being described as more feminine as having
Speaker 1: you know, a different makeup and longer hair, and yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's there's something to be made of all that
Speaker 1: as well. So there's a there's a lot going on
Speaker 1: in this in this picture, uh, and and a lot
Speaker 1: of it is kind of beneath the surface, and is
Speaker 1: you know, it's not really you know, pushed pushed down
Speaker 1: your throat at all. It's uh, there's a lot of ambiguity,
Speaker 1: and I think that's one of the things that makes
Speaker 1: it so tantalizing. It is like a it is a
Speaker 1: true mystery in so many respects, and it is it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a piece of surrealistic art where you
Speaker 1: get to sort of apply your own interpretation to it.
Speaker 3: We we do and do not get an answer to
Speaker 3: the mystery, like we do learn in the end, it
Speaker 3: seems what happened, and so like we learned the physical
Speaker 3: circumstances that were missing that we didn't know earlier, but
Speaker 3: we're still left with a lot of questions about why
Speaker 3: and how.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I also like how, and this may be this
Speaker 1: was different in the original novel, but I like how
Speaker 1: nobody was like, oh, yeah, this movie, you're talking about
Speaker 1: footprints on the moon. I remember that because there is
Speaker 1: something tantalizing about films you remember or think you remember
Speaker 1: from your childhood. You know, in some cases they might
Speaker 1: not exist or you never find out what they are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I liked that detail as well. There's so many ways
Speaker 1: that the mystery could have been deluded by just little
Speaker 1: moments like that.
Speaker 3: The fact that nobody else in the movie ever claims
Speaker 3: to have seen this science fiction film. Yeah, it isolates her,
Speaker 3: and in many ways she is isolated in the film,
Speaker 3: I mean, keeping with the kind of Jello themes. Even
Speaker 3: though this isn't strictly as Yellow Probably, it has so
Speaker 3: many of these themes. I mean, the main character is
Speaker 3: an outsider and is alienated. She's both in an unfamiliar
Speaker 3: location and she is in psychological ways sort of estranged
Speaker 3: from everyone else. She is the astronaut who is alone
Speaker 3: on the surface.
Speaker 1: Of the Moon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, Okay, does that do it for footprints on
Speaker 3: the Moon?
Speaker 1: I believe it does. Yeah. This was a very interesting one,
Speaker 1: and again I can't stress enough how beautiful the cinematography
Speaker 1: is in this one. It's definitely worth worth checking out.
Speaker 1: But again, don't go into it expecting Dario Argento. Don't
Speaker 1: go into it expecting, you know, Kloskinsky stabbing people with
Speaker 1: the moon rock or anything like that. It's a much
Speaker 1: more subtle affair, but it is rewarding totally. Yeah. All right,
Speaker 1: well we're gonna go ahead and close out this episode
Speaker 1: of Weird House Cinema. A reminder that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We do a short
Speaker 1: form episode on Windnesdays, and on Fridays, we set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema. If you'd like to keep up
Speaker 1: with Weird House Cinema, you can find us on letterbox
Speaker 1: dot com. Our username is weird house and we have
Speaker 1: a list of all the films that we have covered
Speaker 1: so far. Sometimes there's even a peek ahead at what
Speaker 1: comes up next. You'll also find us on some other
Speaker 1: social media platforms under the Stuff to Blow Your Mind banner,
Speaker 1: including Instagram, where we are stbym podcast.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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