Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Aldo Lado
Starring: George Lazenby, Anita Strindberg, Adolfo Celi,
Nicoletta Elmi, Dominique Boschero
Aldo Lado's giallo Who Saw Her Die? features a couple
grieving the death of a child while becoming embroiled in a mystery in foggy
Venice. Sound familiar? Given Italian genre cinema's infamous propensity for
cashing in on hits from the Anglo-Saxon world, you'd be forgiven for
assuming Lado was ripping off Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Far from it. Lado's film was actually released in 1972, a full year
before Roeg's.
The grieving couple here are sculptor Franco (George Lazenby) and
his estranged wife Elizabeth (Anita Strindberg). In a shocking French
Alps-set prologue we witness a young girl killed when a veiled figure bashes
her head in with a rock before burying her body in the snow. Cut to four
years later and Franco's young daughter Roberta (Nicoletta Elmi)
arrives from her mother's home in London to stay with her father in Venice.
Franco isn't the most attentive father, a trait picked up by the returning
veiled killer, who begins to stalk Roberta. After several failed attempts,
the killer finally gets Roberta alone. Her body is found floating in a canal
the next morning.
When Elizabeth flies to Venice for the funeral (which involves a
boat-hearse disappearing into the mist, as though transporting the child to
another realm) she sticks around and rekindles something of a bond with
Franco. In another similarity to Don't Look Now, Franco and Elizabeth's grief is expressed through a sex scene. Seeing
Franco timidly thrust as a tear streams down Elizabeth's face tells us more
about their shared pain than any confessional monologue, but the film could
have done with wallowing in said grief a little longer. Almost immediately
Franco sets out on a path of revenge as he determines to find his daughter's
killer.
In similar fashion to Massimo Dallamano's What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, Who Saw Her Die? suggests a moral rot in the higher
echelons of Italian society, with women and girls paying the price. The
question marks of both titles are directed not at the perpetrators, but at
potential witnesses and victims, suggesting all of society is complicit in
the crimes of the elites. There's an anger to these films that makes them
stand out from more traditional gialli. It's telling that the most brutal
death depicted by Lado is reserved for the comeuppance of the killer. Lado
portrays it in slow motion, cutting back several times as though revelling
in it, as if he were the vengeful father rather than his film's
protagonist.
Gialli usually opted for a foreign protagonist, usually an American or
Brit, but despite casting the former James Bond, Lazenby is given the role
of an Italian. Lado clearly wants an Italian audience to see themselves in
Franco, who learns that the world he inhabits is a sinister one filled
with deviants to whom he previously gave little thought. Lado shoots
Venice as a local would experience it, all disused factories and empty,
fog-shrouded squares. Far from the tourist perception, one character even
describes the iconic city as "boring." Various suspects are lined up, all
from Franco's circle of wealthy, arty-farty friends. Seasoned giallo fans
will likely correctly guess the identity of the killer, though the reveal
is heavily diluted by what feels like a disclaimer tacked on so as not to
upset an Italian audience too much.
Unlike more conventional gialli, Who Saw Her Die? doesn't
feature any particularly extravagant murders. Lado's kills are more
upsetting than stylish. We don't see Roberta's death on screen, which
frankly would have been too much to take. Elmi was often cast as creepy
moppets during this period, but here she delivers a performance that's so
endearing we're genuinely unsettled by her death; arguably more than her
own father. Roberta is killed while Franco is enjoying some afternoon
delight with a mistress, but he expresses little in the way of guilt over
this, which makes him far from a likeable protagonist. As he barges into
rooms and assaults suspects with little to no evidence, we get the sense
that Franco is using his daughter's death as an excuse to indulge in toxic
behaviour.
Despite its more solemn tone, Who Saw Her Die? is
unmistakably a giallo. The killer may wear a woman's outfit and the gloves
may be lace rather than leather, but they're a classic giallo antagonist
nonetheless, with Lado shooting their POV through their distinctive black
veil. Ennio Morricone's score is surprisingly sparse and largely
reserved for the stalking sequences, which employ the giallo staple of
utilising a children's rhyme to nightmarish effect. It's as though only
the killer really knows they're in a giallo. Look out for a neat bit of
Hitchcockian humour when Franco is forced to play ping pong with an
oddball he questions, a scene that plays like the more comic moments of
Dario Argento's early gialli.
Who Saw Her Die? is available on Blu-ray and digital on
demand 26 August from Shameless Films.