In short: Il fascino dell’insolito: La mezzatinta (1980)

Architect Marco (Sergio Fiorentini) gets into possession of a curious mezzotint of a stately Italian villa. It’s a haunted picture, indeed, for slowly but surely, it changes, showing how a hooded figure breaks into the villa, only to return with a little baby in its arms. After some time, the figure becomes clear enough so that Marco can see it is Death in female form. Other people can see the picture’s peculiar behaviour as well, so it’s not Marco’s admittedly somewhat fragile and melodramatic mind playing tricks on him during his midlife crisis.

The whole thing obviously deeply disturbs Marco, so much so, his obsession with the picture’s meaning puts an ever increasing strain on the relationship between him and his wife Lidia (Marisa Belli). Which, given his tendency to long monologues of self-flagellation and whining about “the times”, is already somewhat strained.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I though Mark Gatiss’s adaptation of M.R. James’s story “The Mezzotint” was the first and only time this tale was professionally adapted. Then, a fansubbed version of this episode from an Italian series of short TV movies of the supernatural and the fantastic came into my grubby hands, and I learned better.

Directed by Biagio Proietti, the film uses Monty’s story as a starting and ending point, making changes to some of the tale’s central details – for good thematic reasons in the case of the nature of the baby-stealing figure – and filling in the middle with some of the sort of heightened melodrama that thinks it’s Bergman but has rather a lot more to do with rich people whining about their so-called existential problems. Which would be perfectly fine, if the film also explained why I should care about Marco’s problems, or find what his incessant whining eventually leads to all that tragic.

It’s not a bad little TV movie, mind you. Fiorentini and Belli certainly put quite a bit of work into their portrayal of insufferable suffering, and whenever the film remembers its basis in a ghost story, Proietti actually manages to evoke some properly spooky moods. In between set-bound scenes, there are a handful of very atmospheric location shots in which Marco and/or the camera explore the surroundings of the creepy yet grand villa by night; some of the scenes of Marco just staring disturbed at the picture work just as well, creating a mood of desperation and dread you don’t actually get out of reading one of James’s more harmless stories. There’s also a fantastic electronic score that manages to keep the mood weird even when we return to monologues about our protagonist’s midlife crisis.

While I’m not too fond of the film’s thematic main direction, this is still a very interesting attempt at contemporizing the original story, showing at least some moments of fine filmmaking in the process, as well.