BEFORE SCROLLING TO THE WEB PAGE BELOW ABOUT TINTO BRASS, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT THESE NEWS ITEMS, WHICH ARE FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING I’VE EVER HAD TO SAY:

AMY GOODMAN:     A little-noticed story surfaced a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times newspaper about the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. “Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months,” reported Army Times staff writer Gina Cavallaro, “the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Disturbingly, she writes that “they may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control” as well. The force will be called the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force. Its acronym, CCMRF, is pronounced “sea-smurf.” These “sea-smurfs,” Cavallaro reports, have “spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle,” in a combat zone, and now will spend their 20-month “dwell time” — time troops are required to spend to “reset and regenerate after a deployment” — armed and ready to hit the U.S. streets....

FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.

It gets worse:

NAOMI WOLF:     On October 1, 2008, President Bush deployed a brigade — which means three to four thousand warriors — somewhere in America. We do not know where they are deployed though citizens have informally reported to me having seen military vehicles and troops in Georgia and Alabama. We do know that their official mandate according to the first report is “crowd control” as well as action in the event of a mass civilian catastrophe. Initial reports described their technology “module package” as involving Tasers and rubber bullets.... The First Brigade is Bush’s force: they are not answerable to Congress or to the Governors of states: they are answerable to the Commander in Chief. In an Alternet posting, I interviewed Air Force Colonel (retired) David Antoon who noted that the troops must obey the president, even if he asks them to arrest Congress or fire on civilians or attack media outlets. If they do not obey orders, he notes, they face five years in prison.... Antoon himself calls the deployment “ominous.” Troops on our streets makes us something less than a democracy: one definition of a police state is when a leader sends his own military units into civilian streets. Meanwhile the civilian policing of citizens is becoming more brutal. Hundreds of preemptive arrests took place in St Paul, dozens of journalists were arrested.... In St. Paul, funds were sent in advance to pay off the lawsuits against police forces that were guaranteed to arise from the planned abuse of citizens. This sort of thing is happening across the country. The tactic has established a closed circle that has turned citizens’ law enforcement agencies into contractors of a state that is directing acts of increasing severity against US citizens. Now a military brigade is being deployed....

FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.

Click here to see an interview with Naomi Wolf conducted in early October 2008.

For the past five years or so I hve been hearing rumors that Halliburton has been building (and has now finished building) 800 prisons throughout the USA, not yet functioning, but just waiting for the right crisis. I have not found reliable evidence for the specific quantity, readiness, functionality, locations, or details, but you might be interested in taking a look at page 5 of this Halliburton press release dated 26 January 2006: KBR has been awarded a contract announced by the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component. The Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contingency contract is to support ICE facilities and has a maximum total value of $385 million over a five-year term. The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States, or to support the rapid development of new programs.... Now, really, what are the chances of “an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States”? And what are the “new programs” that could come under “rapid development”?

FOR THE FULL PRESS RELEASE, CLICK HERE.

NOW, BACK TO THE MAIN PART OF THE WEB PAGE:

Did you happen to record Monty Python’s Flying Circus when it was shown on PBS back in the 1970s?
Do you still have the tapes?
Is there a TIME-LIFE logo at the end?
If so, please write to me. Thank you!

THE WORKS OF TINTO BRASS

Aftermath: One More Guerrilla Film and a Dream Come True—Continued

The Key

(a.k.a. La chiave, 1983)

	(Courtesy of Mrs Jenny Hanon, Japanese-Chirashi, Cardiff, Wales)

The irony of Caligula is that, while it besmirched Brass’s reputation, it eventually opened doors. After 18 years of renewing an option for film rights from Junichirô Tanizaki and then from his widow, Brass finally found a producer for his dream project. In his wonderful book, The Parade’s Gone By..., Kevin Brownlow states: “The first place in which a film is seen is in the scenario writer’s imagination. And that is where it looks its best. The imagination short-circuits practical issues and reveals the film in all its glory, untarnished by effort and undiminished by compromise. It will never look so good again” (opening of chapter 22). I suspect that The Key is an exception to this rule. I suspect it looks almost exactly the way Brass imagined it.

Who painted this French poster?

Tanizaki’s novel Kagi is completely unfilmable. It consists entirely of the diary entries of a husband and wife, revealing their thoughts. We can only infer their motives and the events of their lives. The short novel is billiantly subtle, and its character development is completely believable. Probably the only way to turn the book into a script is to draw up maybe half a page of notes on the basic ideas in the book, and put everything aside. Then, a year or so later, go back only to the half-page of notes, and write a new story based on those ideas.

Now, the better a work is, the more difficult it is to describe. I’ve been thinking for years how to summarize this film, and I’m still in the dark. But I guess I can say that it is a parable about the virtue of jealousy—and about a loving marriage that never reaches satisfaction until immediately before death. It’s lovely, lyrical, and often very funny. Frank Finlay and Stefania Sandrelli obviously enjoyed their rôles as hoteliers who don’t truly discover each other until after about twenty years of marriage, when, in his effort to break down his wife’s conventional modesty, Nino instigates Teresa’s sexual interest in their daughter’s fiancé. The Key is the most emotionally complex film I’ve ever run across—and the most intricately scripted, designed, and directed. (After all, Brass had 18 years to contemplate these ideas and continually rewrite the script.) The result is a film that goes beyond being profoundly heart-rending. Almost as amazing as the film itself was the audience reaction. Because about ten minutes of the film feature Stefania Sandrelli in the nude, the movie was a sensational hit. For that same reason film intellectuals ceased to champion Brass. Go figure. Rent it, and see it several times over. Watch for Brass’s amusing cameo as the father confessor. The film improves with each viewing, and it ages well. Mondo Video’s copy is the original half-English/half-Italian version. Well, not exactly. Much of the film was shot in English, but a few of the Italian scenes were dubbed into English. I’m not sure why.

It’s interesting to compare this to Kon Ichikawa’s earlier film version, known in the US as Odd Obsession. Ichikawa’s film has none of the subtlety of the book and it also has surprisingly poor character development. Brass’s version is infinitely superior, and, while not true to the letter of the novel (how could it have been?), it is certainly true to its spirit. Ichikawa made the characters weak, almost smaller than life; he turned them into people we would have no interest in ever meeting. Brass made the characters strong and made the couple appealing.

Gustav Klimt, Idylle

Gustav Klimt, detail of the Beethoven Frieze, showing Intemperance, Lust, and Gluttony

TINTO BRASS EXPLAINS: “The story looks at adult relationships between a couple. Normally, in cinematic or TV terms, they fight and drama presents an ugly face but in The Key we look at the relationship of two people who enjoy themselves.... From the start, I always wanted Frank Finlay for the part. He was appearing as Salieri on stage in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus in London. He became very excited and after I’d told him about it I gave him the script to read.... The day after he rang me and said, ‘Stop looking for other actors. I want to play the part.’... I am interested in a certain aspect of the human condition because of “Culture”—with capital letters—has failed in its mission. After 4,000 years of civilisation the world is still full of misery, war, violence. Civilisation has not learned to live in a cultured way. It has always avoided looking at certain aspects of human nature, not cultivated dignity as a solid basic passion.... It is my job through the actors to display human emotion. Sex is secondary in that context.... The Key is a film on sexuality, but not sexy. It is full of fear, joy, excitement. My job is to deal with telling stories with lots of emotion.... I felt so deeply about it and translating the story from Japan into an Italian situation. All through it was sexuality, the fear of guilt. In talking to the author [Tanizaki], in translating it to Italy to free it of its guilt complex, he said it was like Eve in the Garden of Eden with the snake and the apple. Then he laughed and said there were no snakes in apple trees!” (Iain F. McAsh, “Take 1: People in Camera—BOLD AS BRASS,” Films on Screen and Video 5, no. 2, February 1988, pp. 22–23.)

Tinto Brass as the father confessor

HOW NOT TO EXPLAIN EROTICISM TO THE MASSES: Flesh & Blood no. 6 (1995) contained a three-page interview with Tinto Brass that made me wince. Brass’s English, while quite serviceable, is based primarily on book learning. Unfortunately, the quite-serviceable English of his Italian interviewers, Massimiliano Boldrini and Paolo Serafini, is based only on the colloquial (“vulgar”) language of the streets. So I’m sure that none of the participants realized how badly and hopelessly they all miscommunicated. Probably unbeknownst to Brass, Boldrini and Serafini took as their starting point a statement that Brass had given to a British magazine called Fiesta (vol. 15, no. 2, 1980) some years earlier:

I like pornography because it is vulgar. I like everything that’s vulgar.... I just exalt pornography because it is a vulgar way to approach the problem of screen sex. Just take it for what it is, without any taboo, any surprise, any guilt complex—anything. Sex is serious. As serious as eating. Sex is everything. There can never be enough.

Perhaps the Fiesta interview was conducted in Italian and incompetently translated into English. Or perhaps it was conducted in English, with Brass optimistically assuming that his British interviewer had a good grasp of the language. Brass had obviously meant “vulgar” in the best sense of the word. The dictionary definition is “generally used, plebian, belonging to the common people, typical, vernacular.” “Vulgar” was once a beautiful word, lending a dignity to those who were not born into the nobility. (For instance, the Latin translation of the Bible that the Catholics still use is called the Vulgate — and the term “Vulgate” refers to the vulgar Latin language spoken by the general public, as distinct from the artificial classical Latin spoken by the ruling classes.) In the English of the streets, however, “vulgar” is understood to mean something else entirely: “vile, ugly, coarse, crude, rude, reprehensible, disgusting, abhorrent, offensive.” And this is obviously how Boldrini and Serafini understood the word. The interview completely disintegrated before it even started. So, if you didn’t know the correct definition, go back and read that Fiesta quote again.

Giorgione’s La tempesta, which is referenced in the film, directly and obliquely

A FAR BETTER WAY TO EXPLAIN EROTICISM TO THE MASSES: In an interview conducted entirely in Italian (and not too badly translated into English) for 99 donne (Milano: MediaWorld 1999, pp. 228, 282), the same idea is expressed much more eloquently and accurately. Interviewers Manlio Gomarasca and Davide Pulici asked Brass: “Is there still sexual repression in Italy nowadays, in your opinion?” Brass responded:

No, there isn’t, at least regarding the masses. There is still repression—or rather a cultural removal—amidst the élitist classes, undoubtedly the most inhibited. I always asked myself the reason, and the only answer I can think of is that since rules, laws, taboos, commandments—which transformed nature’s most splendid pleasure into a monstrous form of madness—were conceived by culture (religious or otherwise), the more one is cultured, the more one is neurotic and inhibited, and this burden keeps one from enjoying sexuality in a quiet, serene, and natural way, even regarding the so-called perversions, which are in fact nothing but different sides of the same thing.

“Serene” is indeed the operative word in describing Brass’s usual approach to sex in his films.

REQUEST: If you know how to get hold of a copy of Fiesta 15 no. 2, please contact me. Thanks!

THE LONELINESS OF A WRITER: This is the first film that Brass wrote entirely on his own. Surely, though, he wrote the script in Italian, and hired someone (maybe Frank Finlay? maybe Ted Rusoff?) to brush up the dialogue in the English-language scenes. Brass’s previous films all looked like collaborations — for the simple reason that that’s precisely what they were. This film definitely has the solo look about it. Brass would write solo again for three more movies, which were all, like The Key, freely adapted from literary works: Capriccio, L’uomo che guarda, and Senso ’45. All four have a heavy, but not heavy-handed, emphasis on people’s sexual lives. Beginning with The Key, all of Brass’s films focus on eroticism, and, unlike most of his previous films, they look as carefully and deliberately scripted and crafted as Hitchcock’s films. The old free-style-improv look definitively came to an end.

CVC VHS	Raro DVD
Eolo Capritti as the fascist military band conductor	Father and daughter
	Does the English-language master dialogue tape for this scene still exist somewhere? If you know where it is located, please write to me right away! Thanks so much!
	Lulù and Tinta
	Sig.ra Zaira
	The priest on the left: Is he Bonifacio’s grandfather from In capo al mondo?

STRONG OPINIONS: This is probably my second-favorite movie, coming close on the heels of Buster Keaton’s The General. Why do I regard it so highly? Perhaps I shouldn’t, because it’s not perfect. There are a few clumsy moments and Laszlo is badly dubbed. But I still find it affecting. The highlight of the movie, for me, is certainly toward the end, as Teresa and Nino are in bed together talking about when the Pope arrested Marcantonio Raimondi. For my money, that is the most moving and evocative dialogue I have ever heard in any movie, in any play, in any novel. Not even in real life have I heard dialogue half as good as that. And it was so simple. The little chat about an outside subject revealed that, finally, after 20 years of marriage, the wife and husband had a new understanding of one another, and could relate on a far deeper level than ever before. The superficialities of the past 20 years are all gone, and they can speak now only on a more meaningful level. The mention of timelessness is the height of perfection — and the height of tragic irony. This scene is, I think, the most perfect moment I have ever encountered in any movie. It brings tears to my eyes every time and stirs emotions I don’t know how to describe. More than anything else, that is why I so love this movie. (To my ears the scene doesn’t work as well in the Italian dub. The timing of the two languages is different. A casually delivered line in English needs to be spoken at a mile a minute for a dub. Oh well.) I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen The Key, and I never tire of it. I love showing it to people, largely because I get a kick out of their comments, which are usually similar — namely that, unlike any other films they’ve seen that deal with sex, The Key does not seem as though it was made by snickering adolescents; rather, it deals with the subject in a completely mature and unsensational way.

VARYING OPINIONS: I checked for other people’s opinions on the Internet, and the few I found are all derisive. “Guy Grand” (probably no relation of Terry Southern) of Los Angeles wrote a completely negative review for IMDb. There’s another negative (and hopelessly inaccurate) review published at Elm Video. And a Brit named Edward Higgins publishes a web site called T and A Exhibition: The Films of Tinto Brass, in which he disparages all the Brass films he’s seen, and by implication all those he has not seen. I think I’ve found the common denominators here. The authors of the negative reviews are all fans of exploitation films. My friends and I, on the other hand, detest exploitation films; instead, we’re all big fans of Laurel and Hardy. I would argue that the exploitation buffs who hate The Key are unable to see the wood for the trees. They, of course, could turn that around and accuse me of being unable to see the trees for the wood. So although those who hate The Key and we who love The Key all physically watch the same movie, we don’t actually perceive it as the same movie at all. And there’s another reason for the disconnect, which is at least as deep: everything with the name “Tinto Brass” on it is now tainted by association with Caligula. Many people who seek out Brass’s movies do so only because they’re looking for a Caligula-like sleaze fest — and it’s normal human psychology to see what we’re looking for, rather than what’s actually there. (NOTE ADDED ON 2 DECEMBER 2007: More recent opinions published on the Internet are more varied. Thank goodness! Yet still, no one, but no one, will just go all out and admit that The Key is a great movie. Go for it, people, just admit it, even if the critics dismiss it and even though it never won an award and even though it was never released theatrically in the US. Despite all that, it’s still a great movie.)

NOTE: Tinto Brass dubbed the voice of a minor character at the beginning as well as that of the waiter, and I’m pretty sure he also dubbed the barber for the English version. In the Italian dub Paolo Bonacelli’s excellent voice replaces Frank Finlay’s magnificent voice.

QUESTIONS: Who dubbed Osiride Pevarello’s voice? And what about Barbara Cupisti’s and Franco Branciaroli’s voices? I’ve spent too much time trying to identify the actors. I can’t even recognize Gianfranco Bullo. And that looks like Eleonora Rossi Drago as Signora Zaira, but if so, she’s not credited. Can someone help me here?

THE SAME OLD TIRESOME STORY: Golan-Globus purchased the US distribution rights for The Key. But then, presumably because the MPAA’s tiresome Ratings Board awarded it an X, they decided against distributing it.

HOW CAN ANYONE NOT LOVE STEFANIA SANDRELLI?
“I Turned Down The Godfather,” Stefania Sandrelli, Actress, 4 July 2001

POINTLESS MUSING: After the project to film the Marquis De Sade’s La philosophie dans la boudoir fell apart, is it interesting that Brass chose to name the two maids Giulietta and Giustina?

The only Tinto Brass-authorized edition. About six minutes longer than any previously released edition. This is the artwork as originally advertised, but I think this was rejected in favor of the design to the right. (Region-2 PAL DVD, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)	The same as the one on the left, but this time with the revised artwork, which is probably what’s actually being issued. (Region-2 PAL DVD, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)
The US Region-0 NTSC DVD, with optional English subtitles for the Italian sequences, and a nice interview with Tinto Brass in the supplements.	Out-of-print Italian DVD, which had both the English and Italian soundtracks. The box gives no indication of this, but hit your AUDIO button a couple of times, and there you go! It’s so nice to be able to switch back and forth. But there are no English subtitles. Sadly, this was cropped at about 1:1.78, which lops off far, far, far too much of the image. (Region-2 PAL, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)
A box set, which was to be released on 6 December 2006. Sadly, plans were changed, and instead we’ll get the box set to the right. (Region-2 PAL DVDs, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)	This is the box set that will actually be released on 6 December 2006. (Region-2 PAL DVDs, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)

FASCINATING BACKGROUND:

TECHNICAL NOTES: The film was masked in the camera not at the then-usual Italian format of 1.85:1, but at the taller 1.66:1, which was then standard for most of the rest of Europe. I have eight different editions at home—two in Italian and six in English. The two British VHS releases of the English version crop the width, they have four censor cuts, and they have misspelled, accidentally mistranslated, and deliberately mistranslated subtitles. The British DVD has no subtitles. The Canadian VHS is a miserable transfer that crops both height and width. The original DVD release in the US by Cult Epics was pretty bad, but the more recent issues are worth getting. The VHS of the Italian dub is the only home-video edition that does not crop the height at all, and hence it’s the only one in which we can see all of what Nino writes in his diary. But the picture is a bit soft and a bit too blue and a bit too dark, with some short nighttime sequences almost disappearing. As much as I like it, I can read the actors’ English-speaking lips and find it awkward to hear Italian words coming out of them. There was once a DVD release in Italy that was cropped too much and that was censored, but that offered the choice of either the Italian or the English soundtrack. The current uncensored Italian dub available from Raro Video is quite nice, but the color timers at the telecine lab got a bit carried away.

CVC VHS

Raro Video DVD

Arrow Video DVD

Cult Epics DVD

Giovanni Bertolucci presenta

The Key / La chiave

Il libro “LA CHIAVE” è pubblicato in Italia da Bompiani
Filmed on location in Venice and at De Paolis Studios, Rome
Copyright © 1983 by San Francisco Film
All rights reserved
Released by San Francisco Film S.r.L. - Rome

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