Country: ITALY
AKA:
L'uoma Senza Memoria
Man Without a Memory
Having carved himself a niche in the ripped torso’s, tests of strength, and myth and fantasy of the peplum, and then confidently leaped into the saddle for the dusty heat and cynical violence of the spaghetti western, it was inevitable that director Duccio Tessari would eventually find himself staring into a bottle of J&B Whiskey and making himself at home amid the chunky turtle neck sweaters, blazers, and camp penthouse apartments of the giallo. But like Fernando Di Leo, Enzo G. Castellari, and Tonino Valerii, directors more commonly associated with other popular cycles, Dessari’s journey into the jet-set cosmopolitanism of the giallo was brief, but in one case at least, very memorable. This memorable addition to the fabric of the cycle was in actual fact his first foray, the beautiful and evocatively titled The Bloodstained Butterfly (1971). Tessari’s means of stylistic expression was significantly more restrained in this example, and the broad violent punctuation marks represented by the set piece are barely in evidence. Instead Tessari very wisely adopted a more simplified filmmaking approach which serves the tightly plotted narrative, instead of overwhelming it. He was aided in his cause by a fine score from Gianni Ferrio, expert cinematography by Carlo Carlini, and a solid lead performance by Helmut Berger.
