... aka: L'étrangleur par Paul Vecchiali (The Strangler by Paul Vecchiali)
... aka: O Homem do Cachecol Branco (The Man in the White Scarf)
... aka: Strangler, The
Directed by:
Paul Vecchiali
I'm sure I've bitched about the term "giallo" plenty here already, but sometimes you really can't avoid bringing it up, especially nowadays! Once again, people who should really know better continue to try to stretch this small sub-category of film into an exaggerated relevance using invisible genre parameters. Michael Den Boer over at 10K Bullets begins their review, "The Strangler is a French thriller that is heavily influenced by the giallo genre..." (Uh actually, no, it wasn't. Please name a single 60s giallo that notably and heavily influenced this film. I'll wait.) Gary Tooze's piece on DVD Beaver claims "The giallo tag earns its keep in the later sections..." and then goes on to compare this to the films of Hitchcock, probably because he's unable to name a single actual giallo to compare this to. In her review over at Screen Anarchy, Olga Artemyeva seems a bit confused as she shoots off a few Bava titles (that are absolutely nothing like this film), claims that because this has a killer with a past trauma and a "meddling heroine" that it's "well within reason" to call it a giallo (ha, is that really all it takes these days?) and then curiously proceeds to backtrack her way out of the genre classification. Clayton Dillard's review at Slant is on the money in its first paragraph using Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Claude Chabrol's The Champagne Murders as reference points, but even he cannot resist throwing out a "proto giallo" label later on.
So in case you're keeping score here, apparently this was made before giallo was an established thing yet somehow also was influenced by what would later be called a giallo and it's OK to call it a giallo even though it really isn't one and Hitchcock films that were made decades earlier are now retroactively also basically giallo. No wonder people get so confused!
As for how this all got started, in this instance at least, you can trace it back to misleading marketing. The folks over at Altered Innocence, who've done a very fine job remastering the film after a long period of dormancy, whipped up a shitty press package to go along with the release. It describes this as, "An unconventional French giallo released before the subgenre's popularity boom resulting from filmmakers like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci..." I'll give them this much, it certainly IS unconventional... so unconventional it has almost nothing in common with the subgenre you're trying to stick it in. Guess we can now safely start referring to vampire and mummy films as zombie films since they all feature still-functioning undead things. Who cares about all the little details!
Is there anything to gain from all this nonsense? Not really, aside from acknowledging that plenty of folks (who probably want to appear film savvy or in-the-know) misuse "giallo" as an all-encompassing term to mean any suspense, mystery, drama, crime OR horror film involving a killer that was produced in Europe in the 60s, 70s or 80s. What they accomplish is the exact opposite as far as I'm concerned, but never mind that. Let's instead single out a few other reviewers who weren't taking the bait. Glenn Kenny at RogerEbert.com rejects the "lost giallo" label (probably because he's aware of the defining characteristics of a giallo), while Kathy Fennessy at Seattle Film Blog returns us to reality when she notes this is actually a "character piece" and "not a full-fledged giallo as some have claimed." Thank you, Glenn and Kathy.
I found a few amusing Letterboxd comments I'd also like to share that really encapsulate the amount of confusion caused when a certain film classification is stretched beyond its point of usefulness. Username Dorian Wright refers to this as a "melancholy anti-giallo" (so not a giallo then?), another chap called Michael says this is "an early giallo that deconstructs the genre before it had fully cohered" (kind of like the time travel implications behind this) and a third fella named M I L E S admits, "If it wasn't marketed as a proto-giallo, I may have liked it less" (which may explain why Altered Innocence marketed this the way they did to begin with).
As for the film itself, well, it's French and has been given the "art house" designation by many, which basically means it's going to be slow-moving, non-exploitative as not to potentially piss off moralistic critics who will refuse to take it seriously otherwise and enigmatic to the point where sophisticated cineastes with a refined palate (i.e. not me) will be extracting one of five hundred different meanings from it. Not that any of this is necessarily a bad thing to all viewers, but you should at least know what you're getting yourself into here and whether or not this is even gonna appeal to you.
We first meet Émile, a young boy from a presumably abusive home who's just been "punished" by his parents. He breaks open his piggy bank, sneaks out late at night and goes to a train station to buy some comics. His memorable little adventure is topped off when a well-dressed man borrows his white knit scarf long enough to strangle a crying woman who seems curiously unperturbed by the entire experience. Many years later, a serial killer who's already claimed five victims is prowling around the city strangling women with a white, tasseled knit scarf. He's intentionally choosing victims who are single, unhappy, depressed and suicidal. Could it possibly be a now 30-something Émile (Jacques Perrin)? Of course. As has already been pointed out, the killer's identity is never a mystery.
Given the unenviable task of apprehending the psycho, Inspector Simon Dangret (Julien Guiomar) goes on a local TV news program to try to set a trap. Claiming to be a reporter, he publicly announces his address and phone number in hopes the killer is listening and encourages him to get in touch. Someone unexpected hunts him down immediately after: A strange young college student named Anna Cardiff (Eva Simonet). Newly-single and depressed herself after another failed relationship, Anna is paranoid she may be next on the asphyxiation block and offers herself up as a potential decoy to help catch the killer. While the investigator passes on that, he does eventually enlist other services from her.
Émile, who works at a produce stand at an outdoor market when he isn't stalking victims, decides to call Simon and give him some insight into why he does what he does. He claims killing makes him feel nothing, he doesn't know why he does it and that he's always happy, whether he's killing someone or not. OK, so no real insight then. He then starts breaking into Simon's home and leaves him notes made out of magazine clippings. The two will later meet up in person, where the killer explains that he is "sick with happiness" to the point where he can't "bear seeing tragedy." He views the murders as mercy killings and most of his victims seem more than willing to go along with it. Knowing he's going to go meet the killer, Simon doesn't inform anyone nor does he bring a weapon with him and, after their conversation is over, the detective simply lets him walk away so he can go kill other women! Huh?!
Set pieces briefly showcase the victims but these bits are never played for suspense, thrills, scares or even black humor. Some will perhaps say there's some insight here into the human condition but to me it was basically just a parade of lonely, depressed, miserable woman. Torch singer Monique (Jacqueline Danno, a real-life singer and recording artist) treats us to a dreary sailor-themed musical number at a nightclub and is killed after trying to drown herself in the river. Posing as a scarf salesman, Émile manages to weasel his way into the home of lonely, washed up former movie star Hélène (Hélène Surgère), who won't be making a comeback anytime soon. Upset about choosing money over her art, ballerina Florence (real-life ballerina Katja Cavagnac) is the next victim. Each seem resigned to their fate and Émile even claims he has something of a sixth sense in picking up on this before he kills them.
Instead of showing an actual strangulation or attack, the glassy-eyed, submissive victims instead freeze like they're posing for a still photo as the killer loosely drapes the scarf around their neck. Though this is clearly purposefully done and probably has some sort of significance, it mostly just reminded me a laughably pretentious perfume commercial. I ended up just assuming this wasn't a realistic depiction of the murders and instead the emotionally-detached killer's own perception of them. The film ditches this approach altogether toward the end when Émile goes after a hooker and he's run off by the woman's streetwalker sisters. Some viewers have tried to extract feminist meaning from this, but I'm not so sure I agree. All of the female characters who are educated and have careers are shown to be miserable, resigned, weak, suicidal and helpless, while the women who service men's sexual needs are shown to be happy, spunky, strong and independent. That doesn't feel very feminist to me, and this is coming from someone who 100% thinks one can be both a feminist and a sex worker. It's really about the contrast here.
As the killings are going on, a man known only as "The Jackal" (Paul Barge), who should have instead been called "The Vulture," is stalking Émile and using the murders as an excuse to pick the corpses clean of all valuables. That not only upsets the killer (who amusingly takes offense to being wrongly labeled a thief, though he's fine with being a killer) but is also harming the actual investigation. With the police force and the public both breathing down his neck, the main detective eventually quits his job, yet still stays involved with the case. Now that I think about it, they could have spared us the dozen or so boring police scenes had they just made the Simon character an actual reporter to begin with as opposed to a detective posing as one.
As with a number of other films that fall into the French High Art™ category, no one acts like a normal human being who does normal human being things here. A lot of the actions are perplexing, nonsensical and, frequently, downright stupid. The characters are cold, joyless, self-obsessed, humorless and terminally glum as they shuffle through their everyday lives like apathetic zombies. While this approach does provoke a little thought as to why the filmmaker chose to portray everyone like this, that doesn't make this dramatically inert film any less tedious to sit through.
There are a couple of dream sequences thrown in, which are at least a little more intriguing than the primary story arc. In one, the killer envisions himself having a picnic with his victims while his late mother watches. In another, he's walking down the street and keeps seeing quick glimpses of an anarchic society filled with masked criminals and rampant beatings, murders, muggings, rapes, etc. Sandra Julien, who'd later become a Euro sex film star (she headlined Jean Rollin's Shiver of the Vampires right after this), appears in this footage for about five seconds getting her clothes torn off by hooligans. In addition, there's a scene where a married (to a woman) closeted gay guy confesses to his friend that his wife sticking her finger up his ass no longer satisfies him, and another scene where a man attempts to extort money from Émile after he mistakes him for a gay prostitute, which I'm sure are relevant somehow.
This played at Cannes in 1970 but did not make much of an impact back then and does not appear to have been wide released outside of its home country. After its film festival run, it vanished for decades, did not appear on VHS or DVD anywhere and would not be resurrected again until over 40 years after the fact. In 2015, it was given a limited theatrical re-release in France. Two years later, it played at a Portuguese film festival. And, just last year, it turned up at the New York Film Festival and other select American film festivals. This was followed by its release on streaming platforms like The Criterion Channel and Shudder (where I viewed it). You may have more fun analyzing this than I did. I had much more fun analyzing the effects the initial press release had on subsequent reviews and audience reception.
★★
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