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THE WORKS OF TINTO BRASSAction(1979)
The protracted lawsuits involving Caligula made Brass unemployable. In order to rescue his reputation, he paid for his next production himself. He moved his crew to England and made this 16mm movie about an actor, Bruno (Luc Merenda), who specializes in gangster rôles in cheap action dramas. He is fired for cutting up on Tinto Brass’s set and ruining a take, and so follows his agent’s advice by taking a job with a porno production, which puts even further strain on his already strained marriage. Before he has a chance to act in a scene, he rescues Doris, an abused would-be Shakespearean actress who prefers to call herself Ophelia, from the set. Together they set forth on a journey through England, where they are attacked in a junkyard by punks, are taken in by an escaped lunatic who thinks he’s Garibaldi, and are incarcerated in an insane asylum where the delicate and emotionally unstable Ophelia commits suicide. An escape from the asylum is easy, and Bruno and Garibaldi steal a car, rob a cash register, shoot a cop, get a job pumping gas at a petrol station in the middle of nowhere, and find themselves caught in the middle of a domestic feud. This magnificent surreal work proves what we have suspected all along, namely, that the national language of England is Italian. The film was a family affair, as Brass’s wife Carla “Tinta” Cipriani was production secretary, their daughter Beatrice was continuity girl and played two rôles (continuity girl on the set at the beginning and the girl in the garbage dump who won’t wear her cast), and their son Bonifacio was still photographer. A lot of fun! Too bad it flopped.
There is a much-longer version on DVD in Italy,
poorly derived from Tinto Brass’s personal print, and it has
significantly more dialogue. Surprisingly, it was not the nudity
that was cut from the release version.
A NOTE AND A QUESTION: Brass dubs an extra’s line: “Cosa sei, un prete?” Who dubbed Osiride Pevarello?
THE END OF PHASE ONE: This was the only
time that Brass collaborated with both of his favorite writers,
Giancarlo
Fusco and Roberto
Lerici, and it was his last collaboration with Fusco. Never again
would Brass’s films have the same raw forcefulness and earthy
feel that he achieved with these two artists. Never again would his
films look so organically grown, almost improvised. Yes, he would
achieve greatness again, but not this sort of greatness. I
really miss this old style. It puts one in mind of the great comics
of the teens and twenties, who felt free enough, creative enough, and
confident enough to let films take on lives of their own. Pier Paolo
Pasolini also had that gift. Dusan Makavejev, in WR: Mysteries of the Organism
(1971) and Sweet Movie (1974) worked the same magic. But who
else? I know of no one. Action not only brought to a close
the most vibrant phase of Brass’s career; it also brought to a
close an entire era.
Here’s something interesting: a few frames from a 35mm release print.
So that settles some arguments. The original release prints were 1:1.85. So there.
The movie had been shot in standard 16mm, and for the blowup the top and bottom of the image were blacked out.
The VHS in my collection was something closer to 1:1.66, but with the sides lopped off.
The VHS revealed something: the black borders at the top and bottom were not entirely black.
They contained the faintest vestige of an image that the lab had cropped off from the original 16mm.
Tinto Brass presentaActionCIDIF: Consorzio Italiano Distributori Indipendenti Film
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