The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)

Dir: SERGIO MARTINO
Country: ITALY

AKA:
Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh
Next!
Blade of the Ripper
The Next Victim!

Like his contemporaries Umberto Lenzi, Enzo G. Castellari, and Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino was a director who possessed a highly developed degree of generic utility. This ensured that Martino and the others were constantly in demand in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but the price they all had to pay for this was critical marginalisation. However were it not for the commercial success of popular cycles such as the giallo, the spaghetti western, and the poliziotesschi films, the preening ‘art’ cinema of dullards such as Fellini, Antonioni, and Bertolucci, would undoubtedly have struggled to gain the domestic support they required. Sergio Martino’s renaissance has taken a little longer to come about, but like many of his ilk, the era of DVD has been critical in constructing an appreciation of a diverse and intriguing filmography. No longer do scribes have the excuse of films being unavailable. Whilst it is remiss not to place Dario Argento’s early films within the expectations of the cycle they operated within (a major weakness of Maitland McDonagh’s Broken Mirrors/Broken Mind’s was a failure to do this), it would also be equally remiss not to assess the important contribution to the cycle made by Martino and his producer brother Luciano. Although Martino was inspired by the success (and the style) of Argento’s debut picture The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), his own gialli offerings have a peculiarity and an attitude which help them to stand apart in a very overcrowded generic landscape.



Martino’s other gialli include The Case of the Scorpion’s Tale (1971), All the Colours of the Dark (1972), Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972), and Torso (1973). The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh was Martino’s first attempt, and although it displays a certain naivety, and wears its influences a little to clearly on its sleeve, it is still a major contribution to the cycle. It is also historically significant for introducing the statuesque charms of Edwige Fenech to the exaggerated and stylised environment of the giallo. Whilst Fenech is always good to look at, her performances often leave a lot to be desired. Unfortunately she seems totally incapable of carrying a film. On this occasion her inflexibility and rigidity is tempered somewhat by the prescence of George Hilton, but most notably by the excellent Ivan Rassimov. Fenech has fascinating material to work with though courtesy of a kinky and convoluted screenplay by Vittorio Caronia, Ernesto Gastaldi, and Eduardo Manzanos Brochero. Julie Wardh finds herself in a loveless marriage of convenience to bland investment broker Neil Wardh (Alberto De Mendoza), the marriage is a sham, but it does enable Julie to pursue a lavish jet setting lifestyle around the capital cities of Europe. A backdrop of diplomats and ambassadors lends the film a certain panache which is enhanced tremendously by the Viennese setting, and this in turn helps to create a striking counterpoint between the murderous intentions of a razor wielding maniac, the decadence of Vienna, and the iniquitous sexual fantasies of Mrs. Wardh.



Unusually the murder sequences represent some of the least imaginative filmmaking by the director, with the notable exception of a thrilling murder in a beautifully lit and beautifully maintained Viennese park. Martino instead saves all of his tricks for the sequences depicting Julie’s past encounters with the sadistic bad boy Jean (Ivan Rassimov). The first is shot in slow motion, in an eerie rain sodden woodland, and illustrates the centrality of violence to their relationship. The second employs a similar strategy but makes striking use of broken glass and illustrates Julie’s attraction too, and repulsion of, blood. These sequences exist outside the main body of the movie and as a result we are never sure if they are events the protagonist is remembering or imagining. The dream like quality only confuses matters further, and adds to the potency of the implied rape and sexual violence we see. The relationship between Jean and Julie is one of submission and dominance, but oddly Julie exhibits none of these characteristics or interests with the other men in her life. The strange vices of Mrs. Wardh are oddly inconsistent. Nevertheless it’s clear that Julie has the freedom of sexual expression, has several men on the go at once, and is in ultimate control of all the men in her life.



In these aspects of the plot the screenplay succeeds, but all too soon the film takes some unexpected turns; some succeed and some fail miserably. The razor wielding killer is a reasonably sophisticated red herring, but this revelation lacks power due to the almost throwaway nature of the reveal. However it does at least provide the film with a moment of genuine suspense in an underground car park. The clumsy plotting begins to take a heavier toll on the movie when the action shifts to the Spanish coast. I felt the film really began to lose its way at this point, and with the serial killer out of the way, I was mentally preparing myself for an obvious twist in the tale. But all due credit to the writers, they still manage to pull off a bizarre conclusion to the festivities. The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh is a seductive, exotic, and decadent treat. An elegant and haunting score by Nora Orlandi gives the film a real touch of class which is sometimes undermined by Martino’s own filmmaking vice; the overuse of the zoom lens.

© Shaun Anderson 2011