Review of Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971) by Michael T — 25 Aug 2009

This Italian thriller often gets lumped in with the giallo films of the period, but it?s really more of a political allegory with some occult elements. Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel) is an American journalist in Prague who is found in a park, seemingly dead, and is taken off to the morgue.

His mind, however, is still working; but he is unable to move and cannot communicate to the people around him. He maintains consciousness by trying to remember how he got to where he is. The narrative of his memories plays out with the kind of fatalism that you find in the best films noir, and there is a hauntingly ethereal quality that hangs over the entire film -- perched, like its protagonist, somewhere between life and death.

It is not insignificant that writer-director Aldo Lado should have chosen Prague as the setting: the Prague Spring had happened only three years earlier. It was Lado?s first film as a director, but he had been Bertolucci?s assistant on The Conformist (1970) and he surrounded himself here with some of the top talent of the European film scene, such as Giuseppe Ruzzolini (Pasolini?s cinematographer), Ingrid Thulin (one of Bergman?s actresses), and maestro Ennio Morricone, whose chilling score is one of his best.