Footprints on the Moon

There's no way of classifying Footprints, I know many have gone for calling it giallo, and perhaps it's best to approach it as that having never seen it, but really it's not genre fare. Much better to compare it to the likes of Solyaris, an art-house movie using genre trappings. However there's a real interbreeding of genres in Footprints, which gives it a feeling of incredible uniqueness. It's about a woman of a certain age, Alice, who is an interpreter for a large multinational governmental body. Her whole life we feel is a masterpiece of repression, a Freudian version of Rococo filigree. A friend tells her that there is something truly inhuman about how she dedicates herself incessantly in the pursuit of perfection at a job she hates. This of course is a sign of someone for who inner dams will eventually burst. One night Alice has a strange sci-fi dream and wakes to discover that she has lost three days of her memory. A clue leads her to an unusual resort, Garma, in a country that's unspecified, but may well be that faraway country, the past. Outside of the diegesis it's actually the ancient town of Phaselis in Turkey. The location is fascinating, there is a graveyard with unusual tombstones, an ancient church with the most magnificent glittering of golden tessera on the ceiling around a large organ. The organist, unusually, faces the audience and is glorified by their location. It's an opulent place that you can imagine was fleetingly glorious in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire as a resort, and Arcadian in the distant past. The state of the location mirrors Alice's state, a faded woman, who has only obscure memories of happiness. The music for the movie is provided by Nicola Piovani (who worked with the Taviani Brothers), and is of the 24 carat variety. The organ and strings piece at the start is punctuated by the beating of what sounds like a heart under a stethoscope. The accompanying shots on the moon, which inevitably remind one of 2001: A Space Odyssey, are appropriately brilliant. The beautiful stained glass peacocks of Alice's confused memory, were of interest to me. In the Western world we see these lovely creatures as ornamental and leave them wandering around the lawns of great estates. They actually come from the jungles of India however, and there's something quite outrageously beautiful present if you see them glide down the jungle valleys. Rather a metaphor for what modernity has done to the human organism. Excellent movie, if somewhat of a diminuendo after the awe-striking first sequence. A classic of cinematic paranoia.

Warning Spoilers! This is my first review on IMDb. I have seen this movie 3 times now. First viewing was 6 months ago. 2nd and 3rd viewing last week. I have read all other reviews. Here is my assessment of the film: Rating: 8 stars, B/B+, 10 stars given to counter-balance the lower ratings of others. Excellent acting, cinematography, music, plot/mystery. See the movie, then see the movie again before reading the rest. Warning Spoilers! Alice, a translator living in Rome, develops paranoia and split personality. During her last translation session she becomes Nicole, caused by the subject matter of the translation, pollution and earth becoming uninhabitable. Alice is a woman with a few friends but no boyfriend/husband or family. She also takes some kind of pills. As Nicole she is paranoid that an organization and Professor Blackmann is after her. She goes to Garma to find her childhood lover, Harry. She changes her looks to disguise herself. There is no organization or Prof. Blackman. This is only in her mind. As Nicole, she must have found Harry and harmed his hand. We only have clues on what happened. At some point she traveled back to Rome and we are introduced to her dreaming about an astronaut being abandoned on the moon, then waking up, and finding out that she has lost 3 days. She tells her friends about the dream, referring to it as a movie she saw as a child. But we do not know if there was ever a movie or her paranoid mind made that up. The torn up post card she finds in her kitchen give a clue to her amnesia and she travels to Garma for the second time that week, this time as Alice. The people in Garma did recognize her. Harry was trying to help her. She reverts to Nicole/paranoia and kills him. She then tried to be Alice again, but finally loses it by imagining that the organization/astronauts are after her.

I consider this a missed opportunity. I have very fond memories of the filmmaker's debut, an interesting psychosexual oddity called La Donna Del Lago, and watching this I'm inclined to think that earlier film worked so well because the giallo had not been mapped down yet; so he was free to travel where it was novel at the time. Polanski got there that same year, but he was already a name and had Deneuve with him and so made the bigger splash. Film history has noted Repulsion. This could have been even better. He has brought ambitious imagination with him, a visual palette of bright golden hues and relaxing blues, a sense of place and folded mysterious time with memory from Marienbad. He has Vittorio Storaro's eye behind the lens. The opening is more than promising. A woman wakes up with no memory of three days past. She has just seen a dream, a feverish vision of astronauts staggering on blasted moonscapes, which she remembers is from a movie called the same as the one we're watching; but a movie she left without watching the ending. She goes to Italy to investigate, in an effort to bring these images into focus. There it falls apart, in Italy incidentally. In the ten years since that first film that was in some ways a giallo ancestor the genre had come and was already on its way out. Between these two films Bazzoni had worked where it was the trend in the Italian industry, making a western and another giallo called The Fifth Chord. So when the more ambitious material for this came together, there were already footsteps he was expected to walk and had been trained to. The circumstances of a commercial movie industry were just so. So for the middle part of the film we get a giallo worked from convention. The convoluted plot where each character withholds crucial information until the time is right, and the protagonist has to cobble together a puzzle from clues and red herrings. Much ado. It comes full circle in the finale; the agents which she has imagined to be controlling her illusion return to pull her back into the fiction of the dream. It happens with extraordinary images of a stretch of empty cosmic beachside. Bazzoni never made another film after this. In the meantime, Polanski had rocketed into Hollywood orbit and was already on his way out. I reckon that Bazzoni was one of our sad losses, but alas he never made it to France where money didn't always expect to fill a double-bill.

This is actually a very good surreal mystery movie, despite the description that tries to sell it as a Sci-Fi movie. Balkan stars as a woman haunted by mysterious visions and lost memories that she is trying to piece together. She spends the majority of the movie trying to make sense of her visions. Very atmospheric and effective. It is true that Kinski does not appear very much in this film, but the staring actors are very good. There is only an English dubbed version available in the US, and the dubbing leaves something to be desired, but the actors do a very good job. The cinematography, by Academy Award winner Vittorio Storaro is excellent. An earlier Giallo by director Bazzoni, THE FIFTH CORD, is also excellent, and also lensed by Storarro.

This film is known under several different titles like "Footprints" and "Footprints On The Moon" but I saw it as "Primal Impulse" and if you can get by the awful dubbing than you might see this as a not-so-bad mystery. Story is about a woman named Alice (Florinda Bolkan) and her last name is either Cespi or Campos (Depending on your source) and she wakes up without any knowledge of what has happened to her in the last three days. She remembers a dream involving science experiments on the moon with a mad doctor named Blackmann (Klaus Kinski) and she also finds a postcard and a torn photo from a resort on a Turkish isle called Garma. She travels there to try and find out what has happened and she first meets a man named Harry (Peter McEnery). *****SPOILER ALERT***** Alice checks into the hotel and meets a young girl named Paula (Nicoletta Elmi) who tells her that she looks like another person named Nicole but she was a bad person. Others also mistake Alice for Nicole and she finally figures out that it was indeed her that was there a few days ago but she cannot figure out why she can't remember it. Alice finally comes to the conclusion that her dream is real and that agents from space are going to come and get her. Or are they? This film was directed by Luigi Bazzoni and someone named Mario Fanelli is credited as co-director but together they have made a very slow moving but a fairly interesting film. The concept of the story (I think) is that we at first think she might be the victim of a strange experiment but as the film progresses it seems that poor Alice is probably suffering from amnesia and schizophrenia. I certainly hope that this is what this is about because if it isn't than this is an incredibly disjointed film. Bolkan who plays the lead is very good and a solid actress and I think her performance is enhanced by the excellent cinematography by Academy Award winner Vittorio Storaro who helps create these scenes of incredible spaciousness and loneliness. The production values are low and of course the dubbing is terrible but this is not just a low grade Euro-shocker. Kinski is barely in the film and this is one of many small roles he took just for the money and he has no scenes with Bolkan. This film may be a tad confusing for some but the slowness in the way it tells it's story is it's biggest handicap. Not bad but it will test your patience.

I saw this movie many years ago, have tried to locate it but perhaps understandably it is nowhere to be found. It was so esoteric, & yet one of a handful of movies that remains with you for a long time. I am still not sure what the reality of the movie is, and perhaps, like the Uncertainty Principle, the obscurity is the definite thing. Acting is superb, the atmosphere is always filled with a sense of foreboding, an overall melancholiness permeates, & yet, it is hard not to be absorbed in the story. I rented it thinking it was science fiction (it was in the sci-fi section with some totally misleading blurb), but quite clearly it is not. Or horror, or even suspense. In fact, one feels thankful the director took the courage to make a movie like this, for which obviously there is no solid audience. I know some people have complained about Klaus Kinski's short role, but I think it is very appropriate - his limited exposure is critical to the formation of the mystery of this movie.

In a bizarre experiment, an astronaut is abandoned on the moon as Alice (Florinda Bolkan), a troubled translator living in Italy, wakes from a nightmare about a lunar mission mixed with an old movie that frightened her as a child. She also has no recollection of the last three days except for a torn photo of the Garma hotel she finds in her apartment. Fired from her job, Alice heads to that resort island to try and piece together the mystery... Considered by many to be a psychological (or "bloodless") giallo of the kind made popular by Umberto Lenzi in the late 1960s, FOOTPRINTS is actually a deliberately paced psycho-thriller with sci-fi overtones. Blurring the distinction between dream, reality, memory and movies, the disturbing story is beautifully photographed by Oscar-winner Vittorio Storaro with a pensive score by Nicola Piovani. It also combines elements of such diverse films as Armando Crispino's MACCHE SOLARI and Lucino Visconti's DEATH IN VENICE in it's depiction of alienation, isolation, hallucination, and maybe madness. Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan, on screen all the time, does a redux of her Carol Hammond in Lucio Fulci's A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN as Alice, a young woman thrust into a mystery that makes her question her sanity. The locations mirror Alice's unstable state of mind; the island of Garma, off-season, with it's Arabic influence and ancient ruins, is a lonely, almost mystical place unwilling to give up its secrets. Evelyn Stewart has a bit in the beginning as a concerned friend, Nicoletta Elmi and Oscar-winner Lila Kedrova are hotel guests, Peter McEnery plays a handsome biologist trying to help Bolkan, and the ever-intense Klaus Kinski is "Blackmann" in the film-within-a-film, "Footprints On The Moon". FOOTPRINTS is a classy case of "Guaranteed 100% Euro-weird" but not for everyone. There's only one murder toward the end but you won't see it coming as the film starts to come together.

Alice (Florinda Bolkan), a translator living in Italy, discovers that she has a memory loss and can't recall the last couple of days. She starts to follow a trace of memory fragments, which leads her to the small town of Garma. People in the town seem to recognize her and she's beginning to suspect that the re-occurring nightmares of astronauts conducting horrible experiments has something to do with her own amnesia. The movie is interesting and the plot is good, but it's a bit to slow moving and arty for my taste. The plot takes some nice twists and it's really hard to figure out where it's heading. Florinda Bolkan is good in her role (but even better in "Flavia the Heretic") and it's always nice to see "star" child actor Nocoletta Elmi. Klaus Kinski's role is too small though. This is not a movie for the die-hard gore hound or exploitation addict, but still a very nice hour-and-a-half mystery.

A slim but occasionally thrilling giallo yarn with an offbeat plot that might be of interest to cult fans: the inclusion of a bizarre and spooky black and white science fiction film that makes repeated appearances throughout the movie, concerning an astronaut who finds himself abandoned on the lunar landscape after being deserted by his crew mates. What this has to do with the rest of the movie is unclear but it certainly makes things more interesting. Otherwise this is a character-focused mystery that falls under the definition of being a "giallo", although the main elements of the giallo - ie. the murders - are missing here, replaced by subtlety, atmosphere, and tons of mystery. FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON is a rather slow-going experience, tough to sit through due to the fact that absolutely nothing happens in the movie until the last ten minutes. Sure, lots of different characters are introduced and segments of the puzzle unearthed or remembered, but nothing in the way of action actually happens to further the plot in anyway. In fact, aside from the ending, the rest of the film chronicles Bolkan's attempt to discover what has happened in her past, events which are gradually uncovered in flashback. Despite being an uncomfortable viewing experience, there are numerous factors in this film's favour, not least the engaging turn from lead Florinda Bolkan, never better as the woman frustrated by her own identity. Although her amnesia is a done-to-the-death plot device, the formula still works in places and the heavy air of mystery and suspense makes things more bearable. Numerous familiar faces pop up in the cast, including fellow giallo veteran Evelyn Stewart (aka Ida Galli), wasted in a nothing role. Annoying redhead child Nicoletta Elmi (who later grew up in DEMONS) proves pivotal in helping Bolkan uncover some of her secrets, whilst veteran performer John Carlsen (THE SHE BEAST) makes an almost cameo appearance. But it's Klaus Kinski who is the most memorable, in an extremely small but important part as another kooky weirdo, and the film makes excellent use of his presence. Another memorable factor is the strong score by Nicola Piovani, which helps add to the experience. The ending, which I refer to repeatedly throughout this review, is unsettling and deeply horrifying stuff, best resembling a nightmare from which the protagonist cannot awake, definitely the strongest moment the film has to offer. Sadly the rest of the movie just can't match it.

Footprints certainly isn't your average run of the mill Giallo, and that's no bad thing. Unlike his previous effort, The Fifth Cord (which was your 'classic' Giallo) Luigi Bazzoni's film forsakes almost all of the Giallo trademarks and instead of murder; the focus is very on psychological mystery. It's obvious from the outset that this is going to be an entirely bizarre film as the film opens up with a scene set on the moon. Things don't get any clearer after that as the lunar sequence turns out to be the dream of Alice, a troubled woman. Alice is tormented by dreams of an astronaut stranded on the moon, which have apparently come from a viewing of a film called 'Footprints on the Moon'. After several things go wrong for her, Alice decides to go to a mostly deserted former tourist spot named Garma. Upon her arrival, she is surprised as the people she meets seem to already know her. Alice also meets a young red headed girl who also seems to already know her; the girl tells Alice she looks exactly like Nicole, except nicer and with shorter hair... The fact that Footprints doesn't feature much in the way of sex, murder and other Giallo trademarks puts it somewhat on the back foot with it's primary audience from the beginning as most people going into this film aren't going to get what they were expecting (or, probably, wanted). But on the other hand, Footprints commands respect for the fact that it doesn't just follow on from what went before it. By 1975, the Giallo had started to lose it's popularity and many of the films coming out around this period (with a few very notable exceptions) were merely retreads of what came before, so Luigi Bazzoni would have been taking a big chance on this film. Florinda Bolkan gives a strong performance in the lead role; and the fact that she's not the prettiest Giallo heroine isn't really important. The mystery builds nicely throughout, and while it can become a little turgid at times; Footprints is, generally speaking, intriguing for the duration. It probably won't come as a surprise to many once they get there that the ending doesn't make much sense, and doesn't really clear anything up; but it nicely adds to the bizarre cult value of the film, and all in all; I give Footprints a thumbs up!