Action (1980)

Director:

Tinto Brass

Writers:

Tinto Brass (screenplay)
Tinto Brass (story)

Release Date:

4 January 1980 (Italy)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Bruno is an idealistic hero who questions the meaning of life in this confusing and sometimes hallucinatory erotic drama...

Plot Keywords:

Garibaldi | Surrealism | Cult Favorite | Absurd Humor | Prison

Cast

Luc Merenda	...	Bruno Martel
Adriana Asti	...	Florence
Susanna Javicoli	...	Doris / Ofelia
Paola Senatore	...	Ann Shimpton
Alberto Sorrentino	...	Garibaldi
John Steiner	...	The Manager
Alberto Lupo	...	Joe
Franco Fabrizi	...	The Producer
Gianfranco Bullo	...	Woody Vanderberg Scott
Luigi D'Ecclesia
Giancarlo Badessi	...	Gay man in the sauna
Edoardo Florio
Alina De Simone
Eolo Capritti	...	King Kong
Beatrice Brass

Runtime:

121 min

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Telecolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Attori Registi Solidali (A.R.S.)

Trivia:

Listed among "The worst Movies of all Times" by Giesen/Hahn (Giesen, Rolf / Hahn, Ronald M.; Die schlechtesten Filme aller Zeiten ; BVA, Berlin, 2002)

Tinto goes crazy

Wow, I'm the first to comment on this title, what an honour. I suspect others haven't bothered because the film is so incredibly, unbelievably, jaw-droppingly awful.

Now, I love Tinto Brass (kind of - I love the way he shoots women in movies like Cheeky, Miranda, The Voyeur etc) but this is his worst film by far, even worse than Snack Bar Budapest and Caligula. It is desperate. It's incoherent, pretentious, stupid, impenetrable and intolerable. Even the music is dire and often hilariously inappropriate.

Set and seemingly part-shot in London, it offers not one iota of English culture. It's very much Italian - lots of noisy jabbering and angry gesticulating. The 'story' follows an idealistic actor who goes on a strange odyssey in which he meets various bizarre types. That's pretty much it.

Some of the weird and ludicrous scenes: an actress is forced to defecate on set or be thrown off, so men cajole her into doing so; half naked mental patients sing a song with the staff; men with penises for noses and women with cooches for mouths dance in a field. And it's all so utterly meaningless!

This being Tinto Brass there is nudity but the ladies are not shot in his usual loving fashion and there are no lingering vulva shots or upskirt shots. For those interested, here are the sexy scenes available: a woman climbs out of a bath slowly (breasts and bush), a woman pulls her skirt up and panties down (bush) to sit on the loo; a woman dances around wearing only hold ups (boobs, fur); a woman climbs out of a taxi in just hold ups (again boobs and fur); a woman dances completely naked in a field; a couple dance naked in a field.

You may have to see this to realise how bad it is. The dialogue is bathetic, cod philosophical nonsense, and the director displays zero skill in keeping a narrative together. The actors are bad and unattractive.

Quite a mess indeed, and not yet available on R2 DVD. It might struggle to get approval from the BBFC (partly because of the unpleasant and misogynistic toilet scene) but might sneak an 18.