Giorni d'amore sul filo di una lama (1973)

Stefano, the son of a wealthy businessman, meets a beautiful woman named Lidia while accompanying his father to a meeting with a cardinal. He pursues her through the streets of Venice and a... See full summary »

Director:

Giuseppe Pellegrini

Writers:

Dante Cesaretti, Camillo Fantacci

Stars:

Peter Lee Lawrence, Erika Blanc, Ivana Novak

Cast

Cast overview:
Peter Lee Lawrence	...	Stefano Bruni
Erika Blanc	...	Lidia Caselli / Renata Pavanne
Ivana Novak	...	Giovanna
Enzo Loglisci
Fausto Del Chicca
Ubaldo Pasqualetti
Silvano Tranquilli	...	Police Inspector
Pietro Torrisi	...	Turi
Carlo Papi
Orazio Stracuzzi	...	Don Celso
Fabio Garriba
Giorgio De Lullo

Storyline

Stefano, the son of a wealthy businessman, meets a beautiful woman named Lidia while accompanying his father to a meeting with a cardinal. He pursues her through the streets of Venice and a romance develops. Upon returning from an overseas business trip, he is informed that Lidia has been killed in an accident. Soon afterwards, he thinks he recognizes her at a building site, but the woman claims to be a reporter who is obviously involved with gangsters. Furthermore, all evidence of Lidia's death has now been obliterated. Stefano continues to investigate the mystery, uncovering family intrigues.

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Plot Keywords:

giallo | 

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Genres:

Crime | Romance | Thriller

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Details

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Release Date:

24 March 1973 (Italy)

Also Known As:

Love and Death on the Edge of a Razor

Company Credits

Production Co:

Attias

User Reviews

Good title; too bad about the movie

I generally love gialli, and the co-star of this one, Italian actress Erika Blanc ("The Devil's Nightmare", "Kill,Baby, Kill"), was probably one of the sexiest actresses of her era. It is amazing therefore just how bad this movie is. A young business executive (Peter Lee Lawrence) falls in love with a young woman (Erica Blanc) with whom he has a "meet-cute" encounter and whirlwind romance that I think even an ardent fan of "rom-com" "chick flicks" would find nauseating and implausible. After he returns from a trip, his shady father, who owns the company, shows him a news article reporting that his true love has apparently died in an accident. His terrible grieving is only interrupted by him bedding and subsequently wedding his father's sexy secretary (Ivana Novak). Then he sees a girl who looks just like his dead love and the movie basically turns into "Vertigo"--that is if "Vertigo" made no sense whatsoever and pretty much sucked.

Peter Lee Lawrence, an ill-fated German actor (who was romantically linked to Blanc in real-life, as well as to Spanish beauty Cristina Galbo, but ended up taking his own life) appeared mostly in spaghetti Westerns and crime thrillers where he was always best as a villain or anti-hero. He is pretty good, for instance, in "Long Arm of the Godfather" (also with Blanc) as a vicious gangster taking on his mob bosses. He's not nearly as good as a sappy hero (but then who is?). Blanc is wasted as an actress (and is absent half the movie). She also has only one shadowy nude scene (along with several cliché shots of Lawrence picking her up and spinning her around in her impossibly short mini-skirts while horrible romantic "music" swells). Most of the nudity quotient is left to Novak, who also appeared with Blanc in "The Devil's Nightmare" (she is the other girl in the lesbian scene with Shirley Corrigan).

I know nothing about the director Pelligrini, but if this boring nonsense is any indication of his work, I hope he didn't go on to direct too many more movies. I do actually really like the title, but too bad about the movie they made to go along with it.