Senso '45 (2002)

Trapped in an unhappy marriage, the wife of a high ranking Fascist official starts a dangerous, self-destructive relationship with a duplicitous S.S. Officer.

Director:

Tinto Brass

Writers:

Camillo Boito (novel), Tinto Brass

Stars:

Anna Galiena, Gabriel Garko, Franco Branciaroli

1 win.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Anna Galiena	...	Livia Mazzoni
Gabriel Garko	...	Helmut Schultz
Franco Branciaroli	...	Ugo Oggiano
Antonio Salines	...	Carlo
Simona Borioni	...	Elsa
Loredana Cannata	...	Ninetta
Erika Savastani	...	Emilietta
Sabrina Colle
Agostino Nani
Giulia De Gresy
Franco Barbero
Eleonora Mazzoni
Ciro Scalera
Maria Pia Colonnello
Hermann Weiskopf

Storyline

March 1945 Asolo, Italy. Livia Mazzion, the attractive wife of a top ministry official, slips into the car of lawyer Ugo Oggiano, Livia's admirer and her husband's informer. Livia must reach Venice and her lover Helmut Schultz, a Wermacht lieutenant, as beautiful and accursed as a pagan god, with whom she is having a burning love affair. During the trip she relives the high points of her devastating sexual abandonment gone adrift, one that has shattered her life and her destiny, swallowing her up in the ruinous vortex of a sybaritic and bituminous Venice. The city, in the throes of the final months of the war, is rife with traffickers, officials, nabobs, military brass, sharks and adventurers of every kind. Yet a surprise awaits Livia upon her arrival in Venice, a surprise in which the heroes' own personal defeats interweave with those public, as historical and political events now seek to settle accounts.

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Plot Keywords:

unhappy marriage | female masturbation | full frontal female nudity | sex from behind | strap on dildo | 

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Taglines:

Soredemo hoshii [Japan]

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Genres:

Drama | Romance | Thriller

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Release Date:

12 April 2002 (Italy)

Also Known As:

Black Angel

Company Credits

Production Co:

Cine 2000

Technical Specs

Runtime:

128 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Black and White Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The Italian ministry of the arts and culture deemed the production culturally significant and donated 1.6 million Euros to the film's overall budget.

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Goofs

In the beach hut scene the woman who takes her clothes off in front of Helmut and encourages him to follow her into the sea is a poorly chosen body double, with over-large breasts and neat sparse pubic hair, whereas the woman in the underwater scenes appears to be the real Livia with luxuriant pubic hair, neater breasts and a different pattern of moles on her left side.

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Quotes

Livia Mazzoni: My head felt light and free sounds and colours were magnified... everything came into my brain without filters or obstacles... everything seemed imaginary and real at the same time. I didn't care about anything. I would have done anything to please Helmut... I was his woman. he was my man. Elsa was just a dildo for our passion. My conscience dissolved into pleasure.

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Connections

Spoofed in Christmas Eve '45 (2012)

User Reviews

BLACK ANGEL (Tinto Brass, 2002) **1/2

This is my fifth excursion in Tinto Brass territory but only the third from his (mostly) softcore entries for which he became notorious. Having seen the man in the flesh at the midnight screening of his rare pop-art thriller DEADLY SWEET (1967) during the 61st Venice Film Festival in 2004, he seemed more like a reasonably literate and genuinely larger-than-life character perennially chomping on his cigar than a dirty old man who occasionally realizes his erotic fantasies on film.

Although the majority of his later films were modest exploitation stuff at best, sometimes he did seek to be taken more seriously by breaking into the mainstream and even art-house circles. The Nazisploitation epic SALON KITTY (1975) was the first of such attempts, the misconceived debacle CALIGULA (1979) was the most infamous with THE KEY (1983) being perhaps the most successful of the lot. Unfortunately, Blue Underground's 2-Disc Set of SALON KITTY has been out-of-print for some time but I do have THE KEY on VHS recorded off Italian TV.

BLACK ANGEL, then, is Tinto Brass' latest bid for respectability. Based on the same source novel from which Luchino Visconti made an acclaimed movie in 1954, Brass transposes the action to the last days of WWII and, true to his nature, has the promiscuous characters indulge wholeheartedly (and explicitly, including some hardcore footage) in every sin of the flesh he can point his camera at for two hours. The major set-piece of the film is a marathon 10-minute orgy sequence which includes most of the offending footage but also quaint, risible stuff like a group of revelers marching in tow through the rooms of a château led by a naked woman proudly holding onto a huge, gold-plated phallus!

For what it's worth, the plot deals with a young, blond, womanizing Nazi officer (Gabriel Garko) who sets his sights on a much older Italian aristocrat (Anna Galiena) who is only to keen to satisfy his every whim. Naturally, he is reluctant to cut down on his vices (which also include gambling) and far from happy with her overly jealous demeanor; after surprising him in bed with a much younger girl, the Italian woman eventually takes belated revenge by betraying him to his commanding officers regarding his plans for desertion.

While the film as a whole is not too badly done in itself and features an Ennio Morricone score to boot, nothing especially memorable happens in it and one is hard pressed to feel sympathy for these lewd, unlikable and opportunistic characters and, consequently, the viewer's interest in the proceedings rises and sags accordingly.