Mémoires diaboliques

Mauro Bolognini, that master of Italian costume and period dramas, gives us a peculiar slice of Grand Guignol with Gran Bollito (Black Journal, 1977). The film stars Shelley Winters as a mother so insanely over-protective of her grown son that she decides to make a deal with death by offering alternate victims, plucked from among her fellow tenants in a 1938 Italian apartment building; among these are several men playing women, including the one and only Max Von Sydow. Laura Antonelli and Rita Tushingham also star.

Gran Bollito unravels secrets of a pre-war Italian condominium with the skill of a cartoon magician. It is as though the sentimental treasures in Rimbaud’s ‘Le Buffet’ are brought back to life. The faded laces, the locks of hair, the dried flowers: they are all given a second chance. However, the glamour and camaraderie conceal some dark dealings.

Shelley Winters plays Lea, as she begins to piece her life together following a spate in a sanatorium. Her methods are unconventional, her execution flawless.

The story, based on Leonarda Ciancuilli, culminates in a cryptic juxtaposition of the two follies: Lea’s, with all its bizarre twists, emerging as less absurd than the brewing war.