Director: Aldo Lado
Screenplay: Francesco Barilli, Massimo D’Avak, Aldo Lado, Rüdiger von Spies
Starring: George Lazenby, Anita Strindberg, Adolfo Celi, Dominique Boschero, Peter Chatel, Piero Vida, José Quaglio, Alessandro Haber, Nicoletta Elmi
Country: Italy, West Germany, Monaco
Running Time: 94 mins
Year: 1972
BBFC Certificate: 15
Aldo Lado had been working as an assistant director through the late 60s and by 1970 he was assisting Bernardo Bertolucci on his classic The Conformist. However, the following year Lado was offered the chance to direct his own film, with Short Night of the Glass Dolls. Bertolucci thought this move would prevent Lado from working on his next planned feature, Last Tango in Paris but Lado told him he’d still love to be assistant director on the project.
However, whilst Last Tango got held back due to scheduling issues and such, another opportunity came Lado’s way. He was offered a directing gig in his home city of Venice. That, on top of a personal experience linking him to the subject matter (explaining this may be considered a spoiler), made him jump at the chance, turning Bertolucci down after all.
The film in question was Who Saw Her Die? (a.k.a. The Child or Chi l’ha vista morire?) and, like Lado’s previous film, it was a giallo. It’s perhaps not one of the best-known entries in the genre, but it’s relatively well regarded and now Shameless are releasing the film on Blu-ray and digital on-demand. I got hold of a copy and my thoughts follow.
Who Saw Her Die? opens with a young girl being killed in France by a mysterious figure wearing a black veil.
We then jump forward some time later to Venice, where sculptor Franco Serpieri (George Lazenby) currently lives and works. His daughter Roberta (Nicoletta Elmi), who normally lives with her mother (the couple are drifting apart), comes to stay for a while.
Tragically, Roberta falls victim to the black-veiled murderer, who now prowls the Venice streets. Devastated and unhappy with the lack of effort the authorities are putting into finding the killer, Serpieri decides to investigate himself.
Serpieri’s detective work unveils a sinister world kept alive through coverups in the upper echelons of society. This, as you might imagine, lands him and his wife Elizabeth (Anita Strindberg) in hot water themselves.
The press blurb and a number of the reviews I’ve seen of Who Saw Her Die? like to point out how there are a number of similarities to the film and Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, which was released a year later. On watching Lado’s earlier film, I can confirm that it does bear an uncanny resemblance to Don’t Look Now in places, at least in its initial setup (a young girl dies and her father prowls the dark streets of Venice for answers).
Like Roeg’s film, Who Saw Her Die? avoids the typical tourist view of Venice as a city of romance. Instead, particularly through being shot in Autumn, the film takes advantage of the fog, degradation and darker corners of the city. Lado claims he added a number of details to make the film truer to his memory and experience of Venice and this comes through.
Lado and Roeg’s films notably diverge as they move on though. Whilst Don’t Look Now goes in a dreamlike, supernatural direction, Who Saw Her Die? prefers to look at some harsh realities. Lado and the rest of the scriptwriting team (he only made changes to the original script) explore the corruption embedded in the city and, indeed, country at the time. It was quite daring subject matter to tackle back then, with both the censors and the Catholic church having such power. The anti-authority message loses a little bite towards the end, as the story feels a little clumsily written as it moves on, but it adds weight to this otherwise generic tale.
Where the film is more successful is in its style. As mentioned earlier, great use is made of its locations, but even more impressive to me was the film’s editing by Jutta Brandstaedter and Angelo Curi. There are some clever match cuts between scenes and the set pieces and montages are sharply constructed. Some of the intercutting between situations is boldly abrupt too.
Aiding the visuals is Ennio Morricone’s score. You know you’re in for a treat when the maestro’s name appears in the credits and this is a fine example of why he’s so highly regarded. With the child killer subject matter, Morricone decided to make extensive use of children’s choirs on the soundtrack, and this gives the film a wonderfully unsettling atmosphere.
The cast is decent. Lazenby got some stick for his portrayal of James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but he lost a good deal of weight for this role and is quite effective as the desperate father. Nicoletta Elmi is very good too, playing his character’s daughter. She has the perfect innocent look for the role and her scenes with Lazenby are convincingly warm. She was the go-to child actor in Italian genre movies of the 70s, due to her striking appearance. Anita Strindberg’s character is sadly severely underwritten but she’s captivating when on screen.
Overall, Who Saw Her Die? is a well-polished murder mystery that keeps you intrigued for the most part but becomes sadly a little generic and muddled by the end. Nevertheless, it’s a solid giallo that fans of the genre will enjoy.
Film: 
Who Saw Her Die? is out now on Blu-ray and digital on-demand, released by Shameless. I saw the Blu-ray version and it looks gorgeous – clean and detailed with natural colours. I’ve used screengrabs throughout this review to give you an idea of how it looks, though these have been compressed. You get a choice of either English or Italian tracks for audio. I watched with the Italian track and it sounded decent, with no issues standing out.
SPECIAL FEATURES
– Interview of Director Aldo Lado – ‘Ring a Ring o’Rosie’
– Interview of Producer Enzo Doria – ‘The Quest for Money’
– Interview of writer Francesco Barilli – ‘To Live and Die in Venice’
– Aldo Lado Q&A courtesy of the ‘Abertoir International Horror Film Festival’
– Original English soundtrack with additional English SDH
– Alternative Italian audio track with new English subtitles
– New encode in Full HD 1080P from 2K-Restored full-length original negative
– All region
Director Aldo Lado appears in an interview that runs around half an hour and covers a lot of ground. He discusses how the project came to him, as well as describing his memories of the shoot.
The Q&A with Lado takes a little getting through as you hear questions and answers in Italian before they’re translated to English but the director has some interesting things to say about his career and the film itself so it’s worth persevering with.
Producer Enzo Doria gives a refreshingly honest account of his troubles in the industry. He started out as an actor but after getting annoyed with the producers he worked with he stepped up himself. He found himself in a world of jokers though who would pay with bad cheques or promissory notes. He also has a little gossip about the Who Saw Her Die? shoot.
Writer Francesco Barilli is a little bitchy too but his interview is a little more rambling. It’s still worth a watch though, as he talks about the gialli he made back then and his relationships with those involved.
It’s a decent release then, of a solid giallo. Well worth a look.
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