GIORNO D'AMORE SUL FILO DI UNA LAMA
Italy 1973
D: Giuseppe Pellegrini
P: Fausto Del Chicca//St & Sc: Camillo Fantacci,
Giuseppe Pellegrini, & Dante Cesaretti//DP: Mario Vitale//E: Enzo
Alabiso//M: Gianfranco & Felice Di Stefano
Cast: Peter Lee Lawrence, Erika Blanc, Ivana Novak,
Silvano Tranquilli, Enzo Loglisci, Fausto Del Chicca.
Stefano, upon
meeting Lidia, falls deeply in love with her. They carry on a torrid
relationship until tragedy strikes Lidia when she is killed in a car wreck.
Stefano remains depressed until he meets one of his client's daughter. Their
relationship renews Stefano's zest for life. Soon after however, he sees a girl
who looks exactly like Lidia. He becomes obsessed with finding her, to the
detriment of his current relationship. Eventually he discovers just what
happened to Lidia and ends up becoming involved in drug running. Lidia was
never killed and is being used by a gang to secure Stefano's help in pulling
off one last job.
Here's a
thriller that deserves its obscure status as there is far too much
sentimentality and not nearly enough murder and mayhem. The film's middle
portion really bogs down as we become witness to Stefano's soap opera-style
love life. The scenes of Peter Lee Lawrence and Erika Blanc falling in love utilizes
all the cliches in the book—slow motion, soft focus and a syrupy score by the
De Stefanos. Giuseppe Pellegrini only directed one other film (a Spaghetti
Western) and it's easy to see why he wasn't given more opportunities as he
appears to have no conception of how to direct a film. All he had to do was
ripoff Hitchcock's VERTIGO (Lord knows the screenplay writer sure did) for 90
minutes and he would have been hailed as a genius (ie Brian De Palma's
OBSESSION).
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