La corta notte delle bambole di vetro (1971)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Aldo Lado

Writers:

Ernesto Gastaldi (screenwriter)
Aldo Lado (writer)

Release Date:

28 October 1971 (Italy)

Genre:

Horror | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

An American journalist in Prague searches for his girlfriend who has suddenly disappeared. |

Plot Keywords:

Prague | Journalist | Giallo | Satanist | American Abroad

Cast

Ingrid Thulin	...	Jessica
Jean Sorel	...	Gregory Moore
Mario Adorf	...	Jacques Versain
Barbara Bach	...	Mira Svoboda
Fabijan Sovagovic	...	Professor Karting
José Quaglio	...	Valinski
Relja Basic	...	Ivan
Piero Vida	...	Kommissar Kierkoff
Daniele Dublino
Sven Lasta
Luciano Catenacci
Michaela Martin
Vjenceslav Kapural
Jürgen Drews	...	Street Singer
Semka Sokolovic-Bertok		(as Semka Sokolovic)

Also Known As:

Malastrana (Italy) (pre-release title) (West Germany)
Das Todessyndrom (Germany) (TV title)
Kratka noc leptira
Paralyzed (USA) (video title)
Short Night of the Glass Dolls (USA) (dubbed version)
Unter dem Skalpell des Teufels (West Germany) (reissue title)

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

Italy | West Germany | Yugoslavia

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

West Germany:16 | USA:Not Rated

Filming Locations:

Incir De Paolis Studios, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Company:

Dieter Geissler Filmproduktion

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Spaghetti West (2005) (V)

Czech It Out!

As far as I know, there exist only two films that are narrated by corpses telling their story from "the other side": the 1947 Bela Lugosi vehicle "Scared to Death," one of the world's worst, and Billy Wilder's 1950 offering, "Sunset Blvd.," one of the world's best. And then there's Aldo Lado's meaninglessly titled "Short Night of Glass Dolls" (1971), in which a man, only supposedly dead, lies in a morgue and thinks back on how he came to be there. It turns out that the semistiff is an American journalist named Greg Moore (sympathetically played by Jean Sorel), who had been working in Prague and dating a beautiful young local named Mira. When Mira mysteriously disappeared, Moore had entered into an investigation that soon broadened into an attempt to learn why so many other young women had recently vanished.... Featuring as it does only a small handful of virtually bloodless killings, "Short Night" hardly qualifies as a giallo--a mystery thriller would be a more apt description--but still has much to offer. Lado, in this, his first film, does a fine job (I much prefer this one over Lado's "Who Saw Her Die?" from 1972), and Ennio Morricone's waltzlike score for the film is at once somber, atmospheric and dreamlike. Prague itself is shown to be as gorgeous a city as you may have heard, and speaking of gorgeous, Barbara Bach, in her small role as Mira, is very appealing and not a little sexy. Ingrid Thulin, here playing a fellow journalist of Sorel, looks much less severe than I am used to seeing her in Bergman pictures; a pleasant surprise. The film ends very strangely, and its decidedly downbeat suggestion of evil triumphant should linger long in the memory. In truth, this is not a bad little picture at all, and beautifully captured on the Anchor Bay DVD that I just watched.