Death Rite
Synopsis
While traveling to a resort in Tunisia, the magician and clairvoyant Professor Vestar befriends the idle millionaire Edouard Vangard and he offers a ride in his car. Vestar discloses to Edouard that he had had a premonition of a woman being murdered in a desert area. Meanwhile, the Tunisian architect and engineer Sadry Fahres has relationship problems with his spoiled wife Sylvia, who refuses to visit her mother-in-law that is terminal. Sadry meets his former mistress Martine and she travels with him to visit his mother, rekindling their passion. Edouard observers the behavior of the trio of lover and decides to help the vision of Professor Vestar to come true, intriguing each one of them to force the murder.
Source : IMDb
Credits
Director (1)
Actors (8)
Production and distribution (3)
- Executive Producer : Carthago Films
- Foreign production companies : Maran Film, Mondial Televisione Film (Mondial Te-Fi)
- French distribution : SN Prodis
Full credits (10)
- Screenwriters : Paul Gégauff, Claude Chabrol, Pierre Vial-Lesou
- Director of Photography : Jean Rabier
- Editors : Monique Fardoulis, Monique Gaillard, Luce Grünenwaldt
- Sound Recordist : Guy Chichignoud
- Author of original work : Frédéric Dard
- Producers : Tarak Ben Ammar, Jean Boujnah, Tablouti Temini
- Line Producer : Philippe Dussart
- Camera Operator : Yves Agostini
- Continuity supervisor : Aurore Chabrol
- Production Designer : Jean Labussière
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Technical details
- Type : Feature film
- Genres : Fiction
- Sub-genre : Film noir
- Production language : French, English
- Coproducer countries : France, Germany, Italy
- Original French-language productions : Unspecified
- Nationality : 50% French (France, Germany, Italy)
- Production year : 1974
- French release : 12/05/1976
- Runtime : 1 h 34 min
- Current status : Released
- Visa number : 44184
- Visa issue date : 28/08/1975
- Approval : Unknown
- Production formats : 35mm
- Color type : Color
- Audio format : Mono
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About
This is yet another fine unsung (because obscure) gem from Chabrol, which shows him once again in rather experimental vein (particularly the elliptical editing) though sticking close in this case to his fortuitous genre i.e. the thriller.
Death Rite really shows off the director's affinity with the cinema of Fritz Lang: not only are balloons a key motif here à la M (1931), but he even utilizes for one of the various protagonists in the film an actor (Gert Frobe) from Lang's swan-song – The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse (1960; actually one of a long-running series to which Chabrol himself would contribute an entry in 1990), with which this also shares a narrative concern in parapsychology!
As ever, the French master does very well by his actors – particularly the afore-mentioned Frobe as a magician/clairvoyant (the original French title of this one was in fact Les Magiciens) and Jean Rochefort as a self-confessed member of the idle rich who becomes involved with his stage act (which includes a sawing-in-half routine the director would re-use 30 years later in the aptly-named A Girl Cut Into Two [2007]) and even 'helps', albeit behind Frobe's back, in the realization of a vision that is obsessing the latter! With this in mind, as indeed it is stated in the brief didactic prologue, the film attempts (via a fiendishly clever script) to rationalize the gift of second sight: could the alleged perception of future events somehow make one predisposed towards their ultimate accomplishment? The role-reversal twist at the end, then, recalls the shocking climax of Don't Look Now (1973); similarly, the Tunisian setting draws parallels with the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet (though largely eschewing its trademark obliqueness).
Anyway, the rest of the principal cast features a typically intense Franco Nero, married to luscious Stefania Sandrelli (whose character began as atypically ditsy but gradually acquired maturity and scope), as well as Gila von Weitershausen (a former companion of French director Louis Malle here playing an ex-lover of Nero, a relationship that is eventually rekindled – following his estrangement from the belligerent Sandrelli who, in turn, is herself seduced by the Macchiavellian Rochefort!). Incidentally, in what appears to be a deliberate decision on the film-makers' part (though no allusion is ever made to this end), the latter quartet of actors bear strikingly similar physical features – with Nero and Rochefort both sporting a moustache, while Sandrelli and von Weitershausen are each given a frizzy hair-do!
Source : IMDb
