La ragazza che sapeva troppo (1963)

	Also Known As: La muchacha que sabía demasiado, La fille qui en savait trop
	Year of first release: 1963
	Director: Mario Bava
	Actors: Letícia Román, John Saxon, Valentina Cortese
	Country: I
	Genre: Polar
	Conditions of visioning: 23.08.2015, DVD, Italian version with Spanish subtitles
Synopsis: Nora (Román) is a young tourist visiting her dying aunt in Rome which takes a sudden turn when she witnesses a murder by a serial killer that the police have sought for years for the so-called Alphabet Killings, and Nora soon finds herself in way-over-her-head trouble when the police want her cooperation to catch the killer while the mystery killer soon targets her for his next victim. In her quest she will be helped by a young doctor friend of her aunt, Marcello Bassi (Saxon).
Review: After a series of very bad movies in the movie theater, I wanted to select a movie by myself. As Amer impressed me, I wanted to watch some Giallo and I read that this one is supposed to be the first one. I spend a long time to find the original version with subtitles in a language I can understand. The story is what we know from an Italian Giallo or a German Krimi: a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, an almost invisible criminal, a few mysterious characters looking suspicious. The recipe is created and it works. A few scenes are exagerated because the woman has to look like at the edge. And suddenly I recognized some dialogues and a part of the music. The music band MicroFilm used it to produce a great LP I have in my collection for years! The dialogues are really good. Sometimes strange but this enhances the mysterious atmosphere.  The actors follow very good their role as in the scheme settled for the Giallo. And this works. This style might not be authentic but it is captivating.  The directing is really good for that. The creation of a recipe as Alfred Hitchcock created his recipe. The style might look misogyn but it depicts both genders as at the edge of the nervous breakdown, so that no one is inferior. The long close-up on the Nora who cannot move in the hospital and has to listen to what the people say around her, the doctors, the policemen. This enhances the oppression on her. I was even happier of having discovered the origin of a new style that I like and determined to dig further in the Giallo world.  One big deception was the DVD itself. I tried first the Italian version with Spanish subtitles. The half of the dialogues had no subtitle. Then I tried the Spanish version with Spanish subtitles. The half of the dialogues are not dubbed and are still in Italian, but at least the subtitles covered the remainings. On top of it, I have the impression that the movie is not in Italian, because the mouths of the actors did not match the text. Well, it does not matter much, but it means, the effect of the movie is independent from the version. Maybe a French version, the one used by MicroFilm, could be a good catch...
Rating: 8 /10