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| Anthony Dawson (Antonio Margheriti): Danza macabra / Danse macabre / Castle of Blood (IT/FR 1963) with Margrete Robsahm as Julia Alert. |
Castle of Blood / Gäst i fasornas hus.
Anthony Dawson / Italie-France / 1963 / 89 min / DCP / VOSTF
Film réalisé par Antonio Margheriti sous le pseudonyme d'Anthony Dawson.
Produced in 15 days in 1963, released 27 Feb 1964 (Italy) and 14 April 1965 (France).
[D'après le roman Danse macabre d'Edgar Allan Poe {no such work exists}].
DP: Riccardo Pallottini (as Richard Kramer) noir et blanc. PD: Ottavio Scotti (as Warner Scott). Set dec: Ennio Michettoni (as Mike Thony). Makeup: Sonny Arden. Hair: Adalgisa Favella (Gisa Flowers). SFX and VFX: Ettore Catalucci. M and cond: Riz Ortolani. ED: Otello Colangeli (as Otel Langhel).
Avec Barbara Steele, Georges Rivière, Margrete Robsahm, Montgomery Glenn.
E-sous-titres français par Alessandra Cocchi.
Séance présentée par Jean-François Rauger.
Viewed at the Festival Toute la mémoire du monde 2023, la Cinémathèque française, Salle Georges Franju, jeudi 9 mars 2023, 18h30 20h00
Restauration 4K menée en 2022 par la Société Cinématographique Lyre en collaboration avec la Cinémathèque française et avec le soutien du CNC, de la Mairie de Paris 8, des contributeurs du crowdfunding ProArti et des sociétés Artus Films, Lobster Films et Severin Films. Travaux réalisés au laboratoire Éclair Classics et au studio L.E. Diapason à partir des négatifs originaux et de contretypes d'époque. La version restaurée intègre certaines séquences initialement censurées lors de la première sortie du film.
" Un jeune journaliste relève le pari de passer la nuit dans un château hanté. Il perd rapidement pied car, devant ses yeux horrifiés, se rejouent des meurtres passés, dont celui du précédent couple à avoir relevé le même défi. "
" Dans le sillage des productions anglaises de la Hammer, l'Italie connaît, au début des années 1960, un engouement pour l'horreur gothique, genre qui ne revêt pas encore les couleurs sanglantes du giallo et dans lequel Danse macabre tient une place prépondérante. Tournée en moins de deux semaines dans les décors encore frais du Religieux de Monza – que vient de réaliser Sergio Corbucci –, la série B d'Antonio Margheriti produit un véritable plaisir esthétique, à la faveur d'une photographie envoûtante, explicitement inspirée par l'atmosphère fantastique des contes d'Edgar Poe. Explorant les recoins du château de Lord Blackwood, éclairé d'une chandelle vacillante, Alan Foster regrette bientôt d'avoir accepté un pari aussi funèbre, dont l'unique prétexte sert à donner corps aux histoires extraordinaires qui imprègnent les lieux. Le long des corridors aux ombres flottantes, le danger peut surgir à chaque instant, dans le reflet d'un miroir ou derrière la porte d'une chambre chargée de secrets. Pris au vieux piège de la maison hantée, coincé entre la vie et la mort d'un espace-temps poétiquement indéterminé, voici que l'intrépide mortel tombe amoureux d'une revenante. Barbara Steele, diva du genre à l'étrange beauté – révélée dans Le Masque du démon de Mario Bava –, apporte à cette Danse macabre son lot de suggestions érotiques et saphiques, lors d'une ingénieuse représentation, qu'une horde de fantômes et de vampires se plaisent à rejouer indéfiniment. "
Delphine Simon-Marsaud
AA: A well done restoration of a horror film from the period of the greatest flourishing of Italian genre cinema. Antonio Margheriti's career spanned the genre range. Danza macabra might be his lasting achievement in horror.
Danza macabra reconfirms its place among the works of Freda, Bava, Argento and Ferroni during the heyday of Italian horror cinema, simultaneous with the great waves in Britain (Hammer Horror), United States (Roger Corman), Mexico and Japan.
Despite the claim in the opening credits (of being based on "Danse macabre" by Edgar Allan Poe, although no such work exists), the title of the film is probably inspired by Camille Saint-Saëns's tone poem "Danse macabre" (whose most durable cinematic connection is Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu).
Of Edgar Allan Poe's works, Danza macabra is most directly linked with "Never Bet the Devil Your Head", the tale of Toby Dammit (modernized by Federico Fellini in Histoires extraordinaires, starring Terence Stamp as an alcoholic Shakespearean actor). The story is about a bet, and there is a similar punch ending at the gate.
Margheriti's film, Saint-Saëns's tone poem and Poe's story all take place in the All Souls' Day / Halloween period. In Finland, the day of commemorating the dead is called Pyhäinpäivä. In France it is known as Toussaint. Mexicans celebrate the Día de Muertos, cinematically memorable from ¡Que viva México! and Under the Volcano. (I was also thinking about Les Orgueilleux. Although it does not take place on the Day of the Dead, it is also a danse macabre film, powerfully linking Eros and Thanatos). In the cinema Walt Disney's The Skeleton Dance is also relevant.
More than an adaptation of a specific story, Danza macabra is an Edgar Allan Poe tribute in the same way as Griffith's The Avenging Conscience, Epstein's La Chute de la Maison Usher – and Histoires extraordinaires, and why not, Corman's portmanteau film Tales of Terror. Poe himself is a key character, and the male protagonist is a journalist, Alan Foster (Georges Rivière), who wants to find out if the tales of Poe (Silvano Tranquilli) are based on imagination or reality.
The film deals with several of Poe's obsessions: death, being buried alive, the life of the spirit continuing after corporeal death, and the idea that "The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover." ("The Philosophy of Composition", 1846).
Freedom is of the essence in a successful film adaptation. In Danza macabra, shadows of the night, mist, fog, smoke, fire and candlelight are simple but eloquent elements. Clothes and veils hide something more than naked flesh: evanescence. Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas. Behind the door is the secret that we all finally meet. The image of dust flying from the coffin lingers in memory.
"For he knoweth our frame;
he remembereth that we are dust.
As for man, his days are as grass:
as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it,
and it is gone;
and the place thereof shall know it no more."
– Psalm 103: 14–16 (King James Bible)
Add to the mix the phantoms' lust for blood. Like vampires, they need blood for their undead existence.
An original feature is the focus on female desire. Elisabeth Blackwood (Barbara Steele), Julia Alert (Margrete Robsahm) and Elsi Perrente (Sylvia Sorrente) are active, pheromone-charged women. Elisabeth's life force is so strong that even from beyond death she attempts to rescue Alan Foster to the living while all other phantoms try to trap him into their domain.
As Delphine Simon-Marsaud comments in her program note, there is a Sapphic dimension. Julia Alert desires Elisabeth Blackwood and is jealous of her male lovers.
The focus on sexuality stems from exploitation needs but is successfully integrated. Glimpses of the bride's beauty as God intended are added into the restored version. They may be gratuitous but contribute agreeably to the Eros – Thanatos dynamics.
In Delphine Seyrig's Sois belle et tais-toi!, Barbara Steele is one of the interviewees. She distances herself unequivocally from her exploitation film career, films she did not want to make now adulated as cult films, while all she wants to say is: "That's not me". Yet in Danza macabra she creates the most unforgettable character as Elisabeth, both dead and full of life. Barbara Steele is worthy of better things, but there is nothing to be ashamed of in her presence here.
Jean-François Rauger in his introduction gave us the suggestion to pay attention to the documentary insert of a snake, a startling illustration of the mystery of life and death.
Danza macabra, produced simultaneously with Roger Corman's eight Poe cycle films, is as good as the best of them. Although quickly made, crazy and abrupt, it sustains a compelling dream mode and conveys the Poe spirit memorably.
Danza macabra inspires me to digressions. They may never end, since the day of the commemoration of the dead is a universal phenomenon, and the dance of death and the skeleton dance are ubiquitous in world art (Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal is a well-known example, drawing from classic medieval imagery which seems to have its origins in Paris, in the Cimetière des Innocents, long since demolished).
For me, a candidate for the best study of horror fiction is Stephen King's Danse Macabre (1981). Its title is, indeed, a perfect motto for the genre.
...
" Car il sait
de quoi nous sommes formés,
Il se souvient que nous sommes poussière.
L'homme! ses jours sont comme l'herbe,
Il fleurit comme la fleur des champs.
Lorsqu'un vent passe sur elle,
elle n'est plus,
Et le lieu qu'elle occupait ne la reconnaît plus. "
– Psaumes 103:14–16 (La Bible Louis Segond)
Sillä hän tietää,
minkäkaltaista tekoa me olemme:
hän muistaa meidät tomuksi.
Ihmisen elinpäivät ovat niinkuin ruoho,
hän kukoistaa niinkuin kukkanen kedolla.
Kun tuuli käy hänen ylitsensä,
ei häntä enää ole,
eikä hänen asuinsijansa häntä enää tunne.
– Psalmit 103:14–16 (Raamattu 1938)
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