I Am What I Am (1967)

Bernard meets Jane in a Night Club, in London, and he likes her. Her father was killed in a car accident, but Jane thinks he has been killed because he was blackmailed for a picture of his ... See full summary »

Director:

Tinto Brass

Writers:

Tinto Brass (story), Sergio Donati (novel)

Stars:

Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ewa Aulin, Roberto Bisacco

1 nomination.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Jean-Louis Trintignant	...	Bernard
Ewa Aulin	...	Jane Burroughs
Roberto Bisacco	...	David
Charles Kohler	...	Jerome Burroughs
Luigi Bellini	...	Jelly-Roll
Monique Scoazec	...	Veronica Yassupova
Enzo Consoli	...	Bartender
Vira Silenti	...	Martha Burroughs

Storyline

Bernard meets Jane in a Night Club, in London, and he likes her. Her father was killed in a car accident, but Jane thinks he has been killed because he was blackmailed for a picture of his second wife, Jane's mother in law. In the same Night Club Bernard finds the blackmailer corpse and Jane near him, but he believes she is innocent. So Bernard and Jane run away followed by a dwarf, the blackmailer's men, who believe Bernard killed their boss and of course, the Police. They believe that Jerome, Jane's brother, can help them to solve the case. But Jane doesn't know where he is, or so she says. Corpse after corpse, Bernard will find out the truth. But will the truth help him?

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Plot Keywords:

adulterer | serial killer | murder investigation | falling in love | blackmail | 

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Taglines:

They're at it again ... and again ... and again ...

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Genres:

Drama | Mystery | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for violence, language, drugs and sexuality

Details

Country:

Italy France

Language:

Italian

Release Date:

19 April 1969 (France)

Also Known As:

I Am What I Am

Filming Locations:

Jermyn Street, St. James's, London, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Les Films Corona, Panda Societa per L'Industria Cinematografica

Technical Specs

Runtime:

104 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Connections

References Blow-Up (1966)

User Reviews

Not a great film, but worth seeing

This pop psychedelic giallo is an early film by the Italian "master of eroticism" (he's definitely "master" of something), Tinto Brass. Unfortunately, it's VERY derivative of Michaelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-up" from the previous year, and while some find that movie borderline pretentious, this movie is well over the borderline. It also compares pretty unfavorably to the OTHER pop psychedelic giallo released in 1967, "Death Laid an Egg", which also features French actor Jean Trintigant and Swedish nymphet Ewe Aulin. But just because it isn't as good as two excellent movies like "Blow-up" and "Death Laid an Egg" doesn't necessarily make it bad. It's well filmed, and it has good acting and good music. I actually liked it better than "Salon Kitty", "Caligula" or any of Brass' other later, more erotic, but much more tedious ventures.

The story is pretty insubstantial. A man spots a a young girl at a disco and is immediately drawn to her. Later he finds the disco owner dead and the young woman standing over his body. Since the disco owner was apparently blackmailing her recently deceased father, the girl suspects that the killer might be a member of her own oddball family--her androgynous twin brother, her grasping mother, or her sinister gangster stepfather. As the couple are chased all over Swinging late 60's London by all kinds of colorful characters, including a hulking black man and a dwarf, they try to piece together the bizarro plot (while the viewers try even less successfully to do the same thing). Brass also throws in a lot of black and white footage--perhaps in an homage to American film noir--however, this style really clashes with the colorful psychedelic pop art and the principal story, which far from being downbeat and noirish, is often as light and airy as a soufflé.

Trintigant was one of the most famous French actors of the period. He was kind of in the same mold as Jean-Paul Belomondo, Jean Sorel, and Alain Delon. But he didn't seem to rely as much on his good looks as some of his fellow French leading men, and he was often in more interesting, offbeat films like Robbe-Grillet's "TransEuropean Express", "The Angry Sheep", and, of course, "Death Laid an Egg". Ewe Aulin, who was only seventeen at the time, did this film as part of a 1967 trifecta which also included "Death Laid an Egg" and the big-budget celebrity-train-wreck sex comedy "Candy". Only one of these was really a good movie, but SHE is definitely very memorable in all three of them. If nothing else, this is certainly a prime example of a European co-production of the era--an Italian film shot in London with a French leading man and a Swedish leading lady.

This is by no means a great film, but it is worth seeing.