Word: countess
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...artist (Franco Nero). Tortured by paranoiac and frequently brutal sexual fantasies, the artist persuades his patron and mistress (Vanessa Redgrave) to rent him a long-deserted villa outside Milan-"a quiet place in the country." The villa turns out to have been the trysting place of a nymphomaniacal adolescent countess who was killed during the second World War. While his mistress stays m town, the artist settles down in the villa, only to become haunted, then possessed by the phantom presence of the dead girl...
...olden days, after the end of World War II, there dwelt in the Bavarian Alps a countess of extreme pique and doleful countenance (Angela Lansbury). Or so the celluloid scribes of Something for Everyone inform us. Looming up in the mists was her former abode, a massive castle that would have excited the imagination of a Winston cigarette ad campaigner. The countess's present quarters were on the castle grounds in a palatial lean-to that the countess shared with her gay son and a daughter who had once been voted the Ugliest Duckling beyond the Valley...
...countess jaunted about in her sole remaining Horch-Pullman, her feudal subjects tried to gladden her heart by tugging their forelocks and putting on displays of their simple country pastimes, such as munching sausages, guzzling beer and blowing flugelhorns. To no avail. The countess subliminally yearned for some wunder-myth of a man who would kiss the castle back to life-with money-so that she could re-enter it in grand style and give way to those mad, scandalous fantasies that constantly invaded her mind, such as gorging on imported strawberries...
...into an acceptably wooden snot of a boy (Michael York). He announces that he is a murderer and a pervert, thus letting the other characters know that they are under almost as deep a curse as the audience. He casts some pretty savage spells. Rubbing out two of the countess's loyal stalwarts, he becomes her majordomo. He entices the daughter of a pair of rich social climbers into his amorous clutches while simultaneously achieving equal intimacy with the countess's son. He then ingeniously proposes that his duo of lovers plight their troth to each other...
...interconnections between layers rather than their contribution to an overall theme. The politicial layer lies nearest the surface, but it is little more than a hand-puppet to the film's sexual politics. It is oddly believable when Vittorio's aide Carlo, caught in the arms of a Countess by his lover, warns her that if she too wants to make it she must behave more coyly...