The Possessed (1965) User Reviews

Dark and Mysterious

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 25 May 2020]

The famous writer Bernard (Peter Baldwin) travels to a small town nearby a lake to spend vacation out of season in the winter. He check in an old hotel owned by Enrico (Salvo Randone) and his daughter Irma (Valentina Cortese) expecting to meet the maid Tilde (Virna Lisi), from whom he had a crush last time he visited the town. However, he discovers that Tilde has committed suicide and when he meets the local photographer (Piero Anchisi), Bernard learns that she was pregnant. He becomes obsessed to find whether she really committed suicide and to guess what really happened. When Enrico's son Mario (Philippe Leroy) and his wife Adriana (Pia Lindstrom) arrive at the hotel, Bernard has daydreams about the fate of Tilde.

"La donna del lago", a.k.a. "The Lady of the Lake", is a dark and mysterious Italian film with a simple and inconclusive story. The black and white cinematography is magnificent, with great use of lighting and shadows. The cast is also excellent, supported by an intriguing screenplay with great narrative. Bernard's daydreams are interesting, showing what he is thinking and changing his reality many times. "La donna del lago" is for specific audiences that will certainly enjoy this type of story. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Mulher do Lago" ("The Lady of the Lake")

A fantastic mix of a giallo and a psychological drama

[m-sendey · 8/10 · 16 February 2013]

A young writer Bernardo (Peter Baldwin) decides to come back to a small town, set nearby a lake, where he had previously stayed and met a attractive maid and waitress – Tilde (Virna Lisi). The place is desolate then, as the action takes place in winter and the tourist are not particularly interested in this place at this part of the year. Bernardo is in search for peace and quiet and this is why he has an intention of having a rest there and working on his new book. However, after some time it dawns on him that, actually subconsciously, he wants to meet the beautiful waitress. He plans to rediscover her and starts searching, after which he is informed by the owner of the hotel about her mysterious death… This is often considered to be one of the earliest examples of giallo genre, along with Blood And Black Lace (1964). In spite of this fact, this cannot be considered, just like later effort by Bazzoni, masterful Footprints On The Moon (1975), to be a typical mystery that made a pattern for all films of this genre, as it differs drastically. In addition to this, the flick is more likely to remind Blow Up (1966) by Antonioni than The Bird With Cristal Plumage (1969) or Deep Red (1975) by Argento. The main character appears to be lost in the world of his own illusions and enquires himself what is real and what is just his imagination, just like David Hemmings in Antonioni's masterpiece. While Michelangelo Antonioni is more interested in general subject of perception and human identity in the world, in which being a witness is a very relative phenomenon, Bazzoni avoids such topics and focuses on delving into Bernardo's mind. Our protagonist himself is not a witness, he's just implicated in a twisted affair surrounding this town. To render psychological aspect even more visible and more articulate, the director utilizes a very slow pace and we can hear our character's thoughts. Owing to this, the viewer is able to follow all the vacillations of the main character and follow all possible ways of Tinde's demise accompanying this mystery envisioned by Bernardo. What is more, Bazzoni exploits black-and-white cinematography which makes things even more fascinating. To sum up, all these elements give it a very distinctive look and it is far from a simplistic murder mystery and the film becomes a sort of a psychological drama. At the end, nothing seems to be concluded and unraveled in detail. In spite of the fact that Bernardo's explanation is the most probable, there are plenty of additional subplots which suggest that many things remain obscure and inexplicable. Thanks to an exceptional editing, chilling sequences of dreams and flashbacks merged together, the ensemble looks terrific.

Therefore, nothing is certain in this flick. The whole plot is shown from the Bernardo's point of view, along with his visions and dreams. This render everything not only a murder mystery, but also a great psychoanalysis of the Bernardo's mentality, exposing all his fears, desires and his vague relationship with Tilde whose personality we get to know through his memory. Thus, this subjective nature and unusual perspective make it so extraordinary and riveting. The script itself isn't the biggest advantage of this picture. If it was made by somebody else, it would possibly be a flop. Fortunately, on account of tremendous direction by Bazzoni, his visual style, exquisite taste for creating adequate atmosphere of anticipation and ambiguity, The Possessed (1965) (La donna del lago) is a true gem.

The cast is nothing special, but all of the actors manage to achieve a satisfying level of acting artistry. Peter Baldwin, a little known television actor, gives a quite decent performance. There are a couple of familiar faces: such as Phillipe Leroy, known for his roles in Yankee (1966) by Tinto Brass, and Salvo Randone from Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) by Elio Petri. Their roles are rather a minor ones, as Peter Baldwin is the most important character and the action revolves around him.

Overall, La donna del lago (1965) might not be as visually striking as gorgeous Footprints On The Moon (1975), nonetheless it's a very impressive little movie that should be more known than actually it is. The story itself is nothing really new, but the way it is executed makes this one refreshing and worth a look. Luigi Bazzoni attaches a great importance to a psychological aspect of characters in the film and owing to this outshines many other flicks in its genre. Now, it remains only a hidden gem and sadly it seems there is no possibility to popularize it in the nearest future. Pity. This deserves to be more prevalent.

THE POSSESSED (Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini, 1965) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 9 August 2008]

Recently, I had been impressed with Bazzoni's weird offering FOOTPRINTS (1975); so, when I happened upon this even more obscure (and, by all accounts, rarer) earlier title from him, I decided to check it out – and, boy, is it a find for Euro-Cult/Art-house buffs! The film, in fact, can perhaps best be described as an arty semi-giallo; interestingly, it contains several echoes to Bazzoni's later effort: the resort town, the central hotel setting, the strange characters encountered by the hero (in FOOTPRINTS, the bewildered protagonist was a woman), the mystery revolving around a missing person – not to mention the deliberate (and deliberately-paced) oblique narrative.

What is immediately arresting here (in spite of the somewhat fuzzy quality of the print on display) is the supreme style allotted to the film's look – which is wintry, bleak and forbidding – by its two directors (incidentally, this was Rossellini's only stint in such capacity!); to this end, they wisely recruited veterans such as cinematographer Leonida Barboni (but who also adopts peculiar framing throughout, none more so that the pan in extreme close-up of a character's face with the gleaming lake for backdrop!) and production designer Luigi Scaccianoce. However, equally important to the fabric of the piece are the contributions of Renzo Rossellini (supplying an appropriately moody score) and editor Nino Baragli (whose frequent jump-cuts and seamless juxtaposition between reality, recollection and outright fantasy create a genuine and admirably disorientating effect on the viewer). Incidentally, THE POSSESSED – a misleading English title but a literal translation of the original, THE LADY OF THE LAKE, would be no less ambiguous! – was co-written (with Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini) by Giulio Questi; for the record, as a director in his own right, the latter went on to make such idiosyncratic yet haunting revisions of genre convention as the Spaghetti Western DJANGO, KILL…IF YOU LIVE, SHOOT! (1967) and the giallo DEATH LAID AN EGG (1968).

The cast is compact but exceptionally noteworthy: Peter Baldwin (very good in Dino Risi's LOVE IN ROME [1960] – here, in what I assume to be his most significant role, he's downright excellent!), Salvo Randone (as the owner of the hotel whom the hero suspects of both lechery and murder, he manages to alternate between a genial and sinister countenance throughout), Valentina Cortese (a typically fine performance, though her weather-beaten looks make it hard to convince us she's Randone's daughter…even if a reasonable age gap separates the two actors!), Philippe Leroy (having appeared in so many films from the 1960s and 1970s that I've watched in recent years and, thanks also to his remarkable versatility, the French actor has become a firm favorite of mine!), Virna Lisi (while undeniably sensual, her contribution basically amounts to an extended cameo – since her character, who seems to have turned the heads of virtually the entire male cast at some point, is already dead when the film opens and we only see the girl in flashback/fantasy sequences!) and Pia Lindstrom (a rare cinematic appearance by Ingrid Bergman's elder daughter – being similarly steeped in mystery, alas, she too is barely given time to create a flesh-and-blood character…but, then, her resultant fragile performance emerges to be all the more moving for it!).

The plot concerns an author (Baldwin) arriving off-season at a resort town he habitually retired to in order to work, hoping to meet again a servant-girl (Lisi) he's enamored of employed at the hotel run by Randone; however, he's told she's no longer there…but notices that her cloak is still hanging in the closet, follows a woman in the streets he sees wearing it (and is eventually disappointed to learn the outfit now belongs to Lisi's replacement). Typically, he decides to delve deeper into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the former maid's demise – still, Randone and his family (Cortese assists in the managing of the establishment while brother Leroy owns a butcher shop situated in the courtyard of the hotel itself and, coincidentally, has just returned from his honeymoon with wealthy but naïve and sickly bride Lindstrom) generally evade his probing. Even the only man who's willing to help at first – a hunchbacked local photographer (I'm not sure about the actor's name but his face is awfully familiar!), who presents Baldwin with a photo in which Lisi is visibly pregnant – suddenly opts out and leaves town in a hurry!; then, there's Lisi's alcoholic bum of a father who seems to have nothing of value for the hero to work on – venting the anger and frustration over his daughter's loss by bursting into vitriolic (but ineffectual) nightly rants outside the hotel windows! At one point, Lindstrom makes a weak attempt to communicate with Baldwin but, before they can meet (he had previously noticed the girl walking aimlessly by the lake at night a number of times, but never quite mustered the nerve to confront her), she too is found dead! Eventually, the hero starts to think he may have gotten it all wrong: perhaps Lisi wasn't so much a victim of circumstance (periodically abused by both father and son!) as a femme fatale who got killed simply because she was too greedy.

The final revelation then, takes things in another direction altogether; while certainly effectively handled, the scene does perhaps constitute a slight let-down – as it won't surprise anyone familiar with Mario Bava's THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1963), actually the film credited with originating the giallo tradition, in which Cortese also features

What happened to Tilde?

[chaos-rampant · 22 June 2010]

Some people consider this a proto-giallo. It kind of is, in the same way The Girl Who Knew Too Much resembles a giallo, actually it's a 'woman gone missing' mystery shot in black and white where a lot of the usual giallo tropes are absent for the simple reason they had not been mapped down yet; the same movie made ten years later would have probably been shot in garish Technicolor, the murders would take place on screen and we'd be treated to the black-gloved hand of the murderer. A lot of common giallo themes can be found here though, sexual obsession, distorted memory, a chain of events is unlocked when a character visits a place of his past, the boundaries between reality and fantasy/madness blurred by something that may or may not be a product of the mind, yet I'd place the movie closer to the psychological horror Polanski was yet to do than Mario Bava, or a movie that would influence the gialli of Sergio Martino more than those of Dario Argento.

If you take it apart to study the parts it was made of, you'll find a lot of familiar ideas reconfigured together in similar ways in other movies. This is the type of movie where a fiction writer (who is "dead inside" by his own admission) arrives at a remote town by a lake to look for a girl who presumably committed suicide a year ago, the town streets are empty and there's talk of a family harboring a "terrible secret", the writer stays at an old hotel where according to the suave-creepy owner "he's the only resident" because it's off-season, at some point a photo of the dead woman is presented that throws a new light into the situation, and there's a mysterious slaughterhouse behind the hotel that looks like the abandoned warehouse Nosferatu hauls his coffin to in Murnau's 1922 film.

The movie does a lot of something I find annoying: a scene where people behave in odd ways or has a certain kind of offbeat atmosphere plays out and then we cut to a shot of the writer jolted awake in his bed back at the hotel. Bazzoni is a little too quick to point out "DREAM SCENE!!" to his audience, a little too quick to reassure the viewer that "this part that didn't make sense wasn't really supposed to" so that as the movie begins to morph into something else we're lulled back to the safe environment of the genre picture, where the protagonist can narrate his thoughts in voice-over and where 'dream scene' appears to be the director's way of saying "I want to shoot with the whites washed out".

But even that is not what it seems, because at some point we get the flashback of a memory of something that happened in one of the writer's previous stays in the hotel, the writer walks up the stairs and spies on a love scene between the dead woman and a man he can't identify, and we get extreme closeup shots of an eye watching this through a keyhole. Later this memory is expanded upon in the writer's mind and what we saw at first suddenly takes new meaning so that the love scene may had not been a love scene and the victim may had not been the victim after all, but it doesn't become clear whether this is a repressed memory unlocked by circumstance or a wish fulfillment dream, the writer furnishing a twisty conclusion worthy of one of his pulpy books to an incident that remains unexplained and ambiguous like most real life situations usually are. Fittingly this new twist feels very film noir, deceit and greed is involved and for a moment the moral universe of the film is turned on its head.

This is what I take from the Lady of the Lake, like the blurry photo that is only a magnified detail of a larger frame, the sense of mystery partially revealed to us for a moment then withdrawn from our eyes again. Now the mystery is ours, literally to inhabit the memory. Or better yet, there's a strange melancholy woman in a white coat who walks by the beachwalk every night by herself and we watch her stroll under the lamp posts from the window of our hotel room. One morning she's found dead and if only we'd have gone down there to talk to her while there was still time.

Near the end the movie shifts from eye-level Shining track shots of hotel corridors to vertical shots of the protagonist going down a spiral staircase, the whole geography is now inverted, and we're invited inside the mysterious slaughterhouse for the big reveal. There we get portrait shots steeped in shadow and claw-like hands emerging in silhouette from behind a white glass panel. It's all a bit like we're seeing the seedy industrial locations of Tetsuo through the wintry viewfinder of Sven Nykvyst, or like fetish filmmaker Maria Beatty had brought her inky blacks to the glowy diffused whites of Funeral Parade of Roses.

For the end the movie feels the need to explain itself and provide a definitive conclusion, with the villain recounting the whodunit details to the protagonist, and then in very melodramatic fashion a crazed woman is running down the beach, arms flailing wildly. The Italo-horror fan will savour the whole thing start to finish, but there's enough surreal oddity here to make even the Last Year at Marienbad crowd sit down and take notice.

Too little to chew on

[gengar843 · 6/10 · 22 January 2011]

First, let's get this out of the way... there are no zombies! No zombie-like characters. No people under the mysterious influence. It's a simple murder mystery with lots of intentional confusion.

Second, let me be pretentious for a minute. The dream scenes were stylish, but overwrought. The plot was thin and padded. Characters went nowhere.

OK, so what's so great? Honestly, I don't know what to tell you. The acting wasn't first-rate. The locations were passable. The directing was scattershot. The ending was too pat.

But... if you didn't read this review first, you might think you were to see a ghost story. So, from that point of view, it's both tense and a letdown. Tense, because you're waiting for the kick in the gut, a letdown because it's just another mad hatter on the loose.

Now, I saw the 82m cut, not the purported 95m, so maybe there were some boffo scenes that I missed. Probably not.

Hey, is it "proto-giallo"? I watched "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" right before this, so I'll say "maybe." 1965 isn't exactly "proto."

Worst Club 18-30 resort ever

[Bezenby · 6/10 · 5 April 2018]

This early giallo has the look of Bazzoni's later The Fifth Cord and the mood of his last film Footprints On the Moon, and once again the director impresses with a mix of noir-ish visuals and people thinking a lot.

Bernardo is a burned out writer who, following a failed relationship, heads to a hotel on the edge of a lake where he was once infatuated with a maid named Tilde. He plans to take their relationship further, but only if he can find her. He should have probably asked where she was while he was on the phone booking a room because it turns out that Tilde committed suicide the previous winter. Maybe he booked through Trivago or something and didn't get the chance to speak to a real person.

Someone in town confides in Bernardo that there's a rumour going around town that as well as ingesting poison Tilde must also have accidentally slashed her own neck with a knife too, which sets off Bernardo on a quest to find out what really happened to this woman he was technically stalking. Seriously - at one point we get a flashback to Bernardo spying on Tilde getting some from a mysterious horny stranger.

The mystery deepens as certain characters in the hotel start behaving strangely. First off there's the owner's daughter Irma, who is upset that the family's reputation is shattered, then there's her brother Mario and his weird wife who barely talks and walks around the lake at midnight, then there's the owner himself, whose happy, servile façade begins to slip as Bernardo goes snooping around the place.

Although there's not a lot of action in this one the general moodiness of the piece is cranked way up. Just like the brilliant Fifth Cord, Bazzoni uses light sources a lot here and often has his actors standing in front of harsh lighting, saving the weirdest light tricks for when Bernardo is either fantasising about the suspects motives or having one of many vivid dreams. There's quite a lot to compare to Footprints on the Moon as well, with one lonely character in a deserted holiday resort trying to figure some strange puzzle out.

For a really early giallo, and for Bazzoni's debut, this is a slick, well made film. It would be a good double-bill with Libido and The Third Eye (an early giallo with all the nastiness in place).

EARLY GIALLO

[kirbylee70-599-526179 · 7/10 · 11 February 2019]

For many the giallo genre (Italian thrillers) was barely around in the sixties and didn't really kick off until the seventies when Dario Argento arrived. Truth be told the genre started much earlier than that and was even an offshoot of the earlier films known as krim titles from Germany made during the fifties and sixties. Many consider the first real giallo film to be Mario Bava's EVIL EYE (aka THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH) made in 1963. What some fail to note is that the genre did indeed begin in the sixties and this film, THE POSSESSED, was one of those earlier titles.

The story revolves around a writer named Bernard (Peter Baldwin) who feels compelled to return to a small village where he vacationed previously. When he was there he fell for a young maid named Tilda (Virna Lisi) and he's returned to renew that romance. But this is unlikely to happen. To begin with she's no longer at the hotel where he stayed and the townspeople are unwilling to talk about her. He then learns the reason why, she committed suicide.

But did she really? Unwilling to accept this as the reason for her death he begins to investigate on his own the facts behind her death. He finds that he wasn't the only man she was involved with. A photographer in town brings him pictures that shows a secret she had shortly before she died. Later he learns that they while they ruled her death as a suicide that reason seems odd since her throat was slashed.

All clues lead to the family who own and run the hotel he is staying at. With barely anyone else there since it's the off season it gives him plenty of time and access to the family. This include the man who owns the hotel, his daughter who is concerned with the hotel's reputation, the son who runs the butcher shop next door and his wife, a woman distraught who walks along the shore alone at night. There is also the Tilde's father who gets drunk and rants at the hotel from the street.

The movie combines elements of the whodunit with a ghost like quality though it involves no spirits. But the ever present sense of Tilde over the entire group seems to linger over them all. Much like her meeting with the writer influenced his decision to return looking for her, her presence hovers over the entire town as the true fate she befell gets closer with each passing minute of film.

Shot in black and white the movie does possess a certain haunting quality to it. Well-made with a certain style that doesn't go for the normal use of light and shadow the film holds the viewer's interest from start to finish. The pieces of the puzzle are not delivered quickly but in painstaking fashion that will have you guessing until the final revelation. It's an entertaining movie that fans of giallo will certainly enjoy.

Arrow Video is releasing this version of the film in pristine fashion with a 2k restoration made from the original camera negative. They're also offering the numerous extras that fans have come to expect from them including a new commentary track by writer/critic Tim Lucas, "Richard Dyer on The Possessed" a filmed video appreciation by critic/academic Dyer, "Cat's Eyes" an interview with the film's makeup artists Giannetto De Rossi, "Two Days a Week" an interview with the film's award-winning assistant art director Dante Ferretti, "The Legacy of the Bazzoni Brothers" an interview with actor/director Francesco Barilli, the original trailers, reversible artwork featuring the original and newly commissioned artwork by Sean Phillips and for the first pressing only an illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Andreas Ehrenreich, Roberto Curti and original reviews.

Beautiful, undeservedly obscure proto giallo

[Francoesque-2 · 10/10 · 26 November 2005]

Having been very impressed by co-director Bazzoni's subsequent "The Fifth Cord", I have been very keen to see "The Lady of the Lake" since I first heard of it four or five years ago when i read Adrian Luther Smith's Excellent "Bloody and Black Lace" - a definitive collection of giallo reviews. It appears, under the title "The Possessed" in the obscure and rare titles section, along with a superlative review. Subsequent attempts to track the title down were in vain, until I popped into El Corte Ingles on my most recent Spanish holiday and found it on Filmax's "Giallo" collection under the title "El Mujer Del Lago". This is the only DVD outing I've ever heard of and there were both pros (a fantastic anamorphic print) and cons (it's Spanish and Italian only, with Spanish subs) - the cons apply as I'm an English speaker, but I was able to manage enough Spanish (with my dictionary at hand) to navigate through this beautiful, atmospheric film in Spanish with subs showing.

It's as good as it's advance word suggests - an ice cool, incredibly shot mood piece which emerges as a giallo only in hindsight, as at the time it was filmed, the concept hadn't been formed and we were still four years away from the giallo cycle proper which was initiated by the box office success of Argento's "The Bird with the Crystal Plummage" and Martino's "The Case of the Scorpion's Tail" amongst others.

The plot: A writer returns to the small town where he had vacationed previously. he's keen to meet up with his former maid, Tilde, with whom he had enjoyed a romance previously. However, she isn't there and the locals are not keen on talking about why. As he goes through the town, casual encounters build up an atmosphere of menace as everyone seems to be brushing her untimely death under the carpet. The writer presses on in his investigations, seeking the facts behind her death and finding an awful lot of problems lying beneath the town's impassive surface, but in doing so unleashes the pitch black heart of darkness that lies within this film's conclusion.

In terms of style, this is far away from the post-Argento iconography of the giallo. There are no black leather gloved killers here, no stalk and slash killings. All of the (physical) violence occurs off camera. But this remains one of the most claustrophobic, oppressive films of it's time. Much of the drama unfolds within the walls of the hotel, with flashbacks, fantasies and the present unfolding in this space. The film it feels most like is Renais' "Last year At marienbad", but with a more defined narrative. I suspect a lot of the time shifts come from co-screenwriter Gulio Questi, who would later return to the editing styles shown here in his own films such as "Django Kill... If you live, shoot!". Bazzoni contributes his unnerving eye for architecture as counterpoint and subtext to the story (he's on a par with Michael Mann in this respect).

This is a film about love, all types of love, from the casual to the obsessive, and the film gradually cranks up the tension until the conclusion. I hope that a wider audience will be able to embrance this with a DVD release from an outfit such as No Shame or Blue Underground. In the meantime, I'd advise anyone who cares about atmospheric horror/ thriller cinema to pick up the Spanish release, which can be had for a remarkable price (I paid €8.95).

Oppressive, atmospheric mystery

[mackjay2 · 6/10 · 13 November 2019]

Atmospheric, slow moving mystery set in a beautiful and somber Italian location. American actor Peter Baldwin is cast as a man drawn back to the town where he had known people connected to a hotel on a magnificent lake. What became of the young woman he remembers who disappeared? In the past he had witnessed her with one of the hotel men--or did he? Everyone in the film seems to have a secret and it can be a bit frustrating if you're not compelled to figure it out, or to wait for the revelation. There is a heavy quality to this film, dreamlike at times, and the b&w cinematography establishes an oppressive feeling. Also in the cast Virna Lisi, Philippe Leroy and the great Valentina Cortese. Worth a look for handsome Baldwin, a decent actor whose career moved to Italy in the 1960s, and as a nearly forgotten Italian production from that decade.

Moody and atmospheric Italian mystery

[The_Void · 8/10 · 13 August 2008]

The Lady in the Lake is often seen as a precursor to the Giallo style that would reach it's peak in the early seventies; and I can certainly see why. However, I would say that the film is closer to a supernatural mystery film than a Giallo and it also shares a lot in common with the popular American film noir style; stemming from it's picture, execution and subject material. The film is very much of the high quality variety and director Luigi Bazzoni takes time and a lot of care to ensure that the film is haunting and mysterious as possible - which pays dividends as the plot starts to pan out. We focus on Bernard; a writer who goes to spend some time in a dilapidated hotel where he spent some time the previous year. Once he gets there, he begins searching for Tilde; a young maid he fell in love with during his previous visit, but he's surprised by the news that Tilde killed herself. However, it would appear that there is more to the apparent suicide as Bernard is shown a picture suggesting she was pregnant...

The film is directed by Luigi Bazzoni, who go on to make one of the best seventies Giallo's with the excellent The Fifth Cord as well as one of the oddest genre films with Footsteps in 1975. There's also a writer's credit for Death Laid an Egg writer-director Giulio Questi, so rather unsurprisingly - The Lady of the Lake is a rather bizarre film! It starts off simple enough and the first half of the movie is pretty easy viewing, but then things start to get a bit stranger in the second half and it becomes easy to loose the plot. It's lucky then that there's more than enough to keep the audience otherwise entertained. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and the black and white picture allows the director to capture a real macabre and moody atmosphere. The town in which the film takes place is a masterpiece within itself - the ghostly local population in particular is memorable. The plot comes back together towards the end and the film does give closure to its central plot line. Overall, The Lady of the Lake will probably not please all viewers; but it's a very well made mystery and anyone that considers themselves a fan of Italian cinema should check it out!

Luigi Bazzoni's enigmatic, almost impenetrable quasi-giallo is a visual treat!

[Weirdling_Wolf · 8/10 · 23 January 2014]

Fascinatingly dark and elusive, 'La Donna Del Lago' (aka) 'The Possessed' (1965) ominously remains a thrillingly enigmatic, majestically mysterious, almost impenetrable crypto-Giallo by the consistently excellent film stylist, Luigi Bazzoni, the prodigiously talented, intellectual auteur behind equally idiosyncratic, doom-laden, darkly dreamt anti-Gialli masterpiece, 'Footsteps on the Moon'(1975). Since 'La Donna Del Lago' was also written by fellow dramatic iconoclast, Gulio 'Death Laid an Egg' Questi, one might certainly expect to experience a similarly oblique tone, and in terms of starkly confounding genre conventions, skewed scrivener, Questi most certainly doesn't disappoint! While some might consider 'Lady of The Lake' to be just another indulgent example of overwrought nouvelle vague-esque cinematic doodling; but to blithely dismiss this eerily elegiac work as mere self-indulgence is, perhaps, to miss out of one of Italian genre cinema's most glacial,immaculately shot, singularly strange, wickedly off-key, noggin-scratchingly unique thrillers!

beautifully shot and quite boring

[dopefishie · 4/10 · 8 July 2021]

Beautifully shot black and white.

Very fine craftsmanship!

However, the script is terribly boring. It's basically dream sequences mixed with a guy wandering around asking mysterious people questions about a dead girl. Each person says they don't know what happened to her. Then, he has another dream sequence. That goes on for the first hour of the film. The ending was underwhelming.

It's a shame b/c it's a good looking film.

A rare find

[c532c · 14 September 2007]

I saw this on late-night local TV in the early 70s, tolerably dubbed, under the title LOVE, HATE AND DISHONOR, and was immediately taken by it's eerie, VAMPYRE-like style.

It never played on TV again, and in the late 70s to 90s I searched for it in vain. I did catch a reference to it under the title Possessed in the Encyclpedia of Horror Movies.

Finally found a poor quality English-subtitled VHS a few years back from VideoSearch of Miami and enjoyed it once again. I guess I have to add two more lines of text to meet the minimum requirement to post. I hope this is enough

dreamy substantial cameo from the lovely Virna Lisi

[christopher-underwood · 8/10 · 7 April 2019]

Glorious first film from Luigi Bazzoni, who would go on to make, The Fifth Cord and Footprints. Here with wonderful b/w cinematography from Barboni we have a straightforward enough, if noirish, beginning, gradually deepening into something resembling a gothic horror before developing before our very eyes into something more resembling a giallo. Always good to look at and with persuasive and involving dialogue, this engages from the start and although the tale is leisurely told, occasionally resembling Last Year At Marienbad, we never loose interest. Yet another near lost gem wonderfully restored thanks to Arrow. Oh and I almost forgot, we get a dreamy substantial cameo from the lovely Virna Lisi.

A winter suicide investigation off season in the mountains by a lake

[clanciai · 9/10 · 9 August 2022]

A writer wants to get away from it all, so after a last telephone call with his mistress, he goes on his own up in the mountains to a lake resort where he once had a love affair with one of the maids. He finds her coat in a closet but not herself, so he asks about her and learns to his dismay that she committed suicide. There the mystery begins, and the major part of this film concerns his personal investigation into this enigmatic suicide, talking rot everyone who knew her but missing the most important witness, the daughter of the host, who knows too much and even tries to reach him but fails. He gets bewildered and can't get head or tails out of the mystery, although he steadily learns new details, some appearing in his dreams as revelations. He falls ill in a fever, which leads to a crisis and finally to yet another suicide and what is worse. He finally leaves the lake resort with the full story but with the most important body still not recovered.

In style this film is very reminiscent of Polanski's "Repulsion" two years earlier, it's the same kind of suggestive visualisation of nightmare imagination that proves too true to be bearable, and the cinematography is fantastic. The music in all its experimental suggestive effects is also quite well done, and since both the director and composer are called Rossellini, this appears to be a family project, but as such it is a treat.

Moody Gothic Mystery

[thalassafischer · 8/10 · 17 February 2024]

The Woman in the Lake, also known as The Possessed in English, is a surreal and haunting mystery set in an isolated resort town in the cold, windy off-season. An imaginative writer who feels depressed and empty seeks rest and possibly inspiration in the bucolic setting and a young woman named Tilde.

Much of the film takes place inside of the writer's head and he imagines various scenarios of "what if" with only the barest clues about the woman's suicide. The atmosphere is suggestive of ghost stories and gothic horror, updated to the mid-20th century rather than a Victorian setting. La donna del lago is considered a proto-giallo but frankly I find it a bit of a stretch.

There's no black gloved killer nor gore, in fact very little blood is shed other than a reoccurring vision of Tilde's slashed throat. Sexual exploitation is kept to a tasteful minimum of suggested erotica rather than explicit nudity, and while the architecture of the old hotel and visual cinematography share something in common with gialli, it's not a feature that is specific to the sub-genre and is an aspect found in many horror films throughout the 1960s and 70s.

Other than this being a mystery with a femme fatale, I see very little in common with any giallo I'm familiar with. In fact, there is no punchy twist ending, instead The Possessed suggests strongly that it's just an Italian arthouse flick that leaves the viewer with more questions than answers.

Giallo, film noir, or arthouse borefest?

[BA_Harrison · 2/10 · 12 November 2023]

The Possessed is often referred to as a proto-giallo, but I think it feels more like a film noir, with its main character providing narration for much of the time. Either way, it's incredibly dull.

Peter Baldwin plays writer Bernard, who checks into a hotel in the hope of meeting pretty maid Tilde (Virna Lise), who he remembers from a previous stay. He is shocked to learn that she is dead, supposedly having taken her own life, although there are rumours that she was murdered. As the days roll by, Bernard slowly (and boy, do I mean slowly!) unravels the truth...

Shot in an arthouse fashion by directors Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini, The Possessed is full of lingering shots and considered camerawork that results in a sluggish pace. The mystery is a meandering mess, one that ends in a very confusing fashion, with a clumsy denouement in which nearly everyone but the protagonist ends up dead.

La Donna Del Lago

[RaulFerreiraZem · 8/10 · 25 February 2020]

Beautiful. The plot may be underwhelming at points but ultimately that doesn't matter all that much because the overall atmosphere of the film is good enough to make up for it. The dream sequences make for the most beautiful chiaroscuro compositions i have seen so far in cinema, the soundtrack is quite effective most of the time and eventually surprisingly disturbing with its scream like sounds in the background and the constant wind blowing sounds. I was pleasantly surprised by La donna del lago, the ending might be a bit of a let down but it doesn't really hurt the film all that much

Midnight movie

[chemba_85 · 8/10 · 10 July 2020]

A noir story Hitchcock and a bit of Bergman style made it watchable perfect midnight movie

A true find!

[BandSAboutMovies · 9/10 · 11 February 2019]

The Possessed is based on one of Italy's most notorious crimes, The Alleghe killings, and adapted from the book by acclaimed literary figure Giovanni Comisso. It seems like a giallo, but it's way closer to a film noir. Or maybe an art film. Often, people say that a movie feels like it's inside a dream, but so much of this movie feels like one long evening of interconnected night terrors.

Also known as The Lady of the Lake, this films was written by Giulio Questi (Death Laid an Egg) and co-directed by Franco Rossellini (who would later produce Caligula) and Luigi Bazzoni (The Fifth Cord, Footprints on the Moon).

Bernard (Peter Baldwin) is a novelist who has given up on life, despite his growing fame. Last summer, he fell in love with a maid named Tilde and hasn't been able to get her out of his mind. As time goes on, despite the friendly way everyone at the inn treats him, he grows more and more worried about the conspiracy within this small town. That's because while he was gone, Tilde committed suicide. And she may not have been the perfect woman that his creativity made her out to be.

Much like the giallo protagonist -- a stranger on a strange who is often an untrustworthy narrator who must now investigate a crime that they themselves are implicated in -- Bernard learns more about how his vacation getaway also isn't the heaven that he dreamed that it was.

Thanks to the recent Arrow Video releases, I've done a deep dive on the films Bazzoni and wish that he had made more than the three giallo-esque films on his resume. Each of them subverts the form while working within it, offering challenging narratives and films that refuse to simply be background noise.

Their new release of The Possessed features a brand new 2K restoration from the original camera negative, as well as the original Italian and English soundtracks, titles and credits. Plus, you get the original trailers, audio commentary by writer and critic Tim Lucas, an appreciation of the film by Richard Dyer, an interview with the film's makeup artist and art director, and actor/director Francesco Barilli discussing the Bazzoni brothers.

I'd never heard of this film before they announced it and am pleased to say that it's moved up on the list of my favorite films. Consider this my highest recommendation.

Too uneventful for me

[Angel_Peter · 2/10 · 15 July 2017]

This movie is about a writer that takes on a trip to the place where he use to go to write in hope of meeting the girl that was maid in the hotel last time he was there.

He finds out she is dead and that it possibly is murder and not suicide as the official explanation is. Then he starts to search for the truth about her fate and very few clues is found during the movie and very few events that really make the story interesting. In the end all is explained though.

I think the camera work and acting is fine. For me the story was after an interesting start just as exiting to follow as it is to read a newspaper. I would not recommend this movie to people where the story is the important thing. I think it is most for people that enjoy some certain style of black and white movies.

Mystery on freeze lake!!

[elo-equipamentos · 8/10 · 17 November 2018]

The difining moment for a man looking for something in the past took him in a cold resort try to find a mystery woman that disappeared without a trace, a rare picture that to fill up more a mystery than a giallo, whatever be the genre doesn't really matter at all, the freeze atmosphere hook the anxious audience who knows what's coming to next, two false step is cleary noticed, a lack of more acting of Virna and the scene in the shore of lake, the last one specifically, a priceless fine moment to see Valentina Cortese once again who was a great italian actress in near past, above average mystery!!!

Resume:

First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8

Atmospheric and Off-Kilter Giallo gem

[acidburn-10 · 8/10 · 1 February 2023]

'The Possessed' is a haunting atmospheric Italian Giallo flick that thrives in its gothic film noir tones and compelling narrative which is clouded in mystery and uncertainty. The movie is a curious yet fascinating little gem that is often overlooked within the Giallo genre.

The plot = A writer Bernard (Peter Baldwin) goes to visit Alleghe a small resort town during the off-season and once there he finds out that his old flame Tilde (Virna Lisi) committed suicide under suspicious circumstances which prompts him to investigate the town's secrets.

The movie's production is stellar where both directors Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini creates an off-kilter and dream-like atmosphere with excellent use of shadows and lighting as well as the stunning black and white visuals which adds to the overall weirdness of the film. There's enough tension and ambiguity to sustain interest throughout as you're never entirely certain of what's real or is just a fantasy. Now this flick is certainly might not be to everyone's taste, as the slow pacing and confusing narrative may be a bit off putting to some viewers, but personally I found it interesting.

Overall 'The Possessed' may be a bit too smart for casual viewers, but thanks to its stellar cast, striking visuals and intriguing mystery, the movie is a treat for any fans of the genre and should be more talked about.

A waste of time!

[RodrigAndrisan · 25 July 2022]

Of course I wanted to see the film because of Virna Lisi. Disappointment, small, insignificant role. The whole movie is disappointing. Despite the presence of several good actors: Valentina Cortese, Salvo Randone, Philippe Leroy. The story is confusing and absurd.