by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
At first glance, Francesco Barilli’s The Perfume of the Lady in Black (Il Profumo della signora in nero, 1974) appears to stretch its overblown enigmas so far to the extreme that its incomprehensibility collapses into intellectual futility: certainly the public and critical rejection of the film would support this. The film pitches two separate horror tropes against each other that, while rarely intersecting as such, support broader claims for the film as less enigmatic than simply underdeveloped. On one hand, the bulk of the screen time is dedicated to the downward spiral into insanity of its female protagonist, a workaholic industrial scientist named Silvia Hacherman (Mimsy Farmer). From Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) to Bava’s Shock (1977), few would attempt to label this narrative trajectory particularly original in Euro psycho-sexual thrillers of this period. The second parallel horror plot—involving a mysterious and undefined cannibalistic cult conspiracy—has drawn more than a few passing comparisons to Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968). But rather than a random and unsuccessful homage, The Perfume of the Lady in Black may be most effectively viewed as generic re-interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)*. Laden with intertextual references, it is in their gleeful excess that these elements suggest Barilli’s film is a far more tightly constructed text than it has previously been credited.
This interpretation of the film hinges heavily upon identifying the precise moment where Silvia enters her alternate universe. This point is essential as it necessarily implies a point of comparison for the later horrors; everything before that moment sets the parameters of what normative ‘reality’ (insomuch as either of these exist within the film’s diegesis) the events that follow aim to subvert. Just as Alice tumbles down the rabbit hole in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), and later crosses over into the Looking-Glass world when she steps through a mirror in her house in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, this privileged moment becomes a wormhole for each stories protagonist to transcend their realm of assumed normalcy into an opposing space where the conceptual fun can really begin. It is here where assumed binaries such as sanity/insanity, logic/illogic, child/adult and innocence/guilt may be thwarted. But unlike Alice, Silvia’s exact point of transformation is not explicitly identified within the narrative: rather, there are a series of increasingly unavoidable moments where it appears things vaguely just not as they should be, whether it is the unexplained destruction in her bedroom, the appearance of Little Silvia when she plays tennis with Andy and the first appearance of her mother, the titular lady in black.
That the precise moment when Silvia enters this secondary realm is not privileged in the narrative does not mean that this point is not communicated formally. In this sense, the moment of transformation could not be more obvious in one sense but so universally ignored in another: how could a single, static shot of 80 seconds be missed? For Barilli, the answer is simple, as he positions it at the very beginning of the film, as the credits play. The image, showing a vintage-themed family of a portrait that includes the deliberately Alice-looking Little Silvia, not only marks the influence of Carroll’s books from the outset, but even more importantly denies the audience any point of comparative normalcy within the film’s cross-realm diegesis. We’re through the looking glass before the story even begins:
Evidence that the entire film that follows after the credit sequence occurs in a ‘fantasy’ realm is formally abundant. Most notable is the heavy emphasis upon synthetic environments that consistently dominate the mise en scene. Immediately after the family portrait image, for instance, the film cuts in a neat conceptual link between the father’s Navy uniform to a shot of rippling, clear blue water:
This is immediately exposed, however, as a “pretend” ocean, as tiny plastic boats sail across its surface:
If there is a through-the-looking-glass equivalent, then this is surely it: the third shot in this sequence pulls back to introduce the entirely new context of adult Silvia’s apartment building:
Other examples of this type of synthetic environment consistently appear the film. Attending a dinner party at her boyfriend Roberto’s friend Andy’s house, the African academic hosts them in a modern, hyper-stylized ‘garden’:
In another clearly “plastic” environment, Roberto’s bedroom has sky blue painted walls with framed butterflies and stuffed birds – as if the faux skyline is not complete, a white cloud-like lamp is added to complete the image:
Near-psychedelic floral wallpapers and murals appear regularly throughout the film as hypertheatrical synthetic backdrops that both mimic natural environments while simultaneously flaunting their status as artistic constructions:
These synthetic environments do not increase throughout the film, nor do they become more abstract: as regular as a pulse, they are maintained from the moment the small plastic toy boats are shown on the ocean-like pond.
Aside from this consistent emphasis upon ‘pretend’ backgrounds, the frequent use of mirrors within the film are an explicit reference to Alice’s adventures through the looking glass. The most immediate instance of ‘mirroring’, of course, is between people: between Big Silvia and Little Silvia, and Big Silvia and her mother. But even from very early on in the film, mirrors appear with significant regularity. Silvia’s bedroom not only has many mirrors in it, but above the bed is a large painting that ‘reflects’ her bedroom scene – a green bed showing the back of a figure wearing the same shade that Silvia herself often wears:
Add to this, it’s worth pointing out that the first time Silvia sees her mother’s apparition, it is in a mirror:
The film’s two sex scenes are also shown in mirrors (firstly when Silvia and Roberto have sex, and secondly when Silvia recalls discovering her mother and Nicola in bed together). Additionally, as Nicola chases Silvia around her deserted childhood home before raping her, his reflection is also shown in mirrors:
Just as it deviates from Carroll’s work by refusing an initial ‘everyday’ point of comparison for its fantasy component, The Perfume of the Lady in Black also complicates the limiting of the mirrors directional gaze to only two realms. The infinite scope of this literal Mise en Abyme is also heavily emphasised, the thematic drive of the film far from Alice’s adventures between polarities into a sphere far less structured, even chaotic. Silvia has no Humpty Dumpty or White Rabbit to explain to her the rules. Rather, there are no rules, neither for her nor for the spectator. That the bulk of the film (sans the opening credit sequence) functions as an undefined ‘beyond’, is complicated by the fact that this fantasy realm is itself neither singular or cohesive: it is itself riddled with fractured imagery, shattering the Alice’s polarized (reality/fantasy) experience, replacing it instead by what is both diegetically and non-diegetically an untenable scenario.
These examples of Mise en Abyme permit some of the film’s most striking images. One of the most memorable sequences is a séance held at Silvia’s neighbour, Francesca’s, apartment. Clearly upset at the thought of having to remember her father’s and mother’s deaths, the claustrophobia of Silvia’s spiralling mental condition is effectively communicated through the intense and visually confusing environment (again, dominated by a synthetic, hypertheatrical ‘garden’ of its garish floral wallpaper):
However again, this formal motif can also be expressed less literally. For example, the first shot of Silvia shows her at the window in her bedroom: a 3-way mirror reflects not only the room itself, but a painting on the wall that itself ‘reflects’ her bedroom – a green bed showing the back of a figure wearing the same shade as Silvia herself:
This same mirror allows an even more complex proliferation of images near the end of the film before Silvia’s death: it shows both Little Silvia and Big Silvia (the latter of whom is dressed as her mother):
Both literally and figuratively, Silvia is the only person in this shot. But, replicating the fracturing of her own crumbling mental state, it may also be viewed as depicting 3 people (Big Silvia, Little Silvia, and Silvia’s mother), while at the same time there are 4 shown in shot (Big Silvia herself and two of her reflections, and the reflection of Little Silvia).
This consideration of these motifs offer a reconsideration of what, upon first viewing, may appear as an incongruous and never wholly satisfactory union of Silvia’s mental decline plotline with the comparatively underdeveloped cannibal conspiracy one at the film’s conclusion. But it doesn’t make sense because it is simply not meant to: it merely exemplifies another in Barilli’s ceaseless procession of formal and narrative splinters. Its thematic significance is essential to the film as a whole. Just as Silvia’s adult self fractures into Big Silvia, Little Silvia and her mother; the act of reproduction that dominates all of these aforementioned motifs (the division of the image, the synthetic replication of natural environments, the fracturing of the individual into separate entities), the cannibalism motif itself is a deliberate reversal. Cannibalism here not only provides a polarized opposite to these processes of reproduction (a “birthing” of sorts), but—by deliberately emphasising the broad community involvement of this act, but then removing any ritualistic aspects from the act of the actual devouring of flesh—the film demonstrates the most forceful of all its central conceit. Both aesthetically, ethically and psychologically, the world is not a looking-glass, but rather a chaotic and infinitely horrific kaleidoscope.
* The title “The Perfume of the Lady in Black” is a clear reference to the 1911 novel by Gaston Leroux (of “Phantom of the Opera” fame) of the same name. Perhaps not surprisingly for a giallo, however, it is my belief that it is the long, evocative “giallo-esque” title that appeared to Baralli, rather than a specific engagement with Leroux’s original novel.
