Bene’s Salome and Chabrol’s Nada
From Oui (June 1974). –- J.R.
Salome. Meet Carmelo Bene, a vital figure in the Italian avant-garde whose
introduction to American moviegoers is long overdue. Salome, freely adapted
from the Oscar Wilde play, is the latest and perhaps the most ravishing of his
lavish camp spectacles. (Earlier efforts include Our Lady of the Turcs, Don
Giovanni, and One Hamlet Less.) The title role is played by Veruschka –- the
high-fashion model who writhed under the photographer hero at the beginning
of Blow-Up –- appearing bald, nude, and zombielike as she steps out of the
water, decorated from head to foot with multicolored gems. Bene as Herod
upstages everyone with his hysterical nonstop monologues and Woody
Woodpecker laughs. Visually, it’s a riot of extravagant colors (fluorescent
costumes, Day-Glo sets) and opulent debaucheries flashing by so quickly
that everything remains in delirious flux, and none of the fancy scenic
splendors stands still long enough to be contemplated. Try to imagine
Orson Welles’ Macbeth colored in with a Fellini paintbox, recut by
Kenneth Anger, accompanied by Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and
the Beer-Barrel Polka, and you’ll get a fraction of a notion of Bene’s
giddy madness. Depravity, thy name is Salome. –- JONATHAN ROSENBAUM
***
Nada. Claude Chabrol’s current film starts out a little like The Asphalt
Jungle or Rififi. Half a dozen misfits from different walks of life –-
including a young philosophy teacher (Michel Duchaussoy); a Catalan
revolutionary with a Che Guevara beard (Fabio testi); an ex-prostitute
named Cash (Mariangela Melato); and a veteran hired gun (Maurice
Garrel) -– join forces and pool their resources to plan a big caper. But
the motives this time are political rather than mercenary; it’s an
anarchist plot to kidnap the American ambassador in Paris. Adapting
a pop thriller by French novelist Jean-Patrick Manchette, Chabrol turns
away from the examination of provincial and suburban bourgeois
behavior that has concerned him in recent years (in La Femme Infidèle,
Le Boucher, and Just Before Nightfall, among others) to mount a
polemic against gratuitous violence in all its varying guises. The
calculated corruption and sadism of the police are shown to be
equivalent to the recklessness and ruthlessness of the anarchists.
Who identify themselves as Nada – the Spanish word for “nothing”.
(Even the American ambassador comes across as something less
than dignified when he is kidnapped in a fancy bordello, about to
sample the pleasures of a poule dressed up as Salome.) As police
and anarchists pursue their intricate counterstrategies and battle
things out to the bitter end, Chabrol puts a wry pox on both their
houses in this grim adventure of contemporary French terrorism.
-– J.R.
