Electric Trio Vol. 4
'From Morn to Midnight' (1920), 'The Demon' (1963), and 'Women of the Night' (2001)
Electric Trio is a column where I look at some of cinema history’s countless underseen, underappreciated, and largely forgotten works. The format (or gimmick, if you prefer) is simple: three films, three paragraphs each. Hopefully these posts will, on occasion, move a few of my readers to seek out a film they were previously unfamiliar with. If not, I hope that reading about them proves a worthwhile experience, at least.
From Morn to Midnight (1920)
A gaunt bank teller (Ernst Deutsch) falls for a beautiful, wealthy Italian woman (Erna Morena) who comes to the bank to withdraw money. Not only dazzled by her looks but also envious of her glamorous, want-for-nothing lifestyle, he tries to win her favor by embezzling 60,000 marks and offering it to her in return for her running away and starting a new life with him. The woman responds to the proposition by laughing the teller out of her hotel room. Meanwhile, his crime is discovered by his employers so the heartbroken man leaves for the big city (implied to be Berlin) in hopes of finding fulfillment in a decadent lifestyle filled with luxury, entertainment, and sexual pleasure.
A century after its heyday, German Expressionism has become most associated with Robert Wiene’s 1920 classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi milestone Metropolis (though there is some debate regarding how well the latter two represent the movement as a whole). Such a status has eluded Karlheinz Martin’s 1920 film From Morn to Midnight, his only surviving work. A shame, since the film’s avant-garde form and warped set designs, courtesy of Robert Neppach, refuse even the small diegetic comforts of Caligari. Martin’s vision is indebted to the film’s origins as a play — written by Georg Kaiser, the play was first performed in 1917 and was a considerable influence on Ernst Toller and Bertolt Brecht — as well as his own background as a theater director, and his radical aesthetics exemplify the post-WWI break with tradition which was sweeping the arts at the time.
After its completion, From Morn to Midnight failed to find a distributor and was only shown in its native Germany once. It did, however, garner acclaim from Japanese critics after a few screenings in Tokyo in 1922–23. The film would fade into obscurity in the following years and was considered lost until 1959, when a copy turned up at the National Film Center (now the National Film Archive of Japan) in Tokyo. It was subsequently shown in East Berlin in 1963 where its critique of bourgeois excess and greed resonated with audiences and, presumably, the socialist government. Indeed, its visual sophistication belies a somewhat simplistic moralism that undergirds the narrative. (Midnight wasn’t the only offender in this regard, as Metropolis’ final appeal for harmony between classes scans as rather naive, especially from our historical vantage point.) Like Metropolis, Midnight’s real strength, then, lies in its images and that nutso final shot of the bank teller crucified on a crooked cross with the words “ECCE HOMO” emblazoned above him, should be reason enough to begin discussing this film alongside its more famous contemporaries.
The Demon (1963)
Filmmaker Brunello Rondi is perhaps best known for his collaborations with the likes of Roberto Rossellini, Alessandro Blasetti, and Federico Fellini, amongst others. But aside from having co-written classics of Italian cinema such as Europa ‘51 (1952), La Dolce Vita (1960), and, most famously, 8½ (1963), he also eked out a career as a director, beginning with his 1961 film Violent Life, an adaptation of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s — yet another cinematic giant — novel of the same name, which he co-directed with Paolo Heusch. His second film, and first solo directorial effort, The Demon (1963), marked his first foray into something resembling genre filmmaking, a realm he would revisit in earnest with the 1970 giallo Your Hands on my Body and the 1976 sexploitation film Smooth Velvet, Raw Silk.
Set in the small village of Lucania, The Demon focuses on Purificata (Daliah Lavi), whom everyone refers to as “Purif,” an eccentric woman distraught over her lover Antonio’s (Frank Wolff) engagement to another woman. Desperate to win him back, she resorts to witchcraft, at one point tricking her former beau into drinking her blood. But as her behavior grows more erratic, the villagers, already suspicious of her disregard for social convention, respond in increasingly violent ways. Although the film resists simple classification as a horror film — contrary to what the synopsis might suggest — it’s possible to trace a surprising number of genre favorites back to Rondi’s sophomore work: its themes of rural superstition anticipated folk horror like Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973), while its possession scenes and stark imagery served as inspiration for The Exorcist (1973) — Lavi’s eerie spider walk predates Linda Blair’s by a decade — and Alucarda (1977).
Further, Lavi’s portrayal of the film’s crazed main character invites comparisons to Isabelle Adjani’s iconic turn as Anna in 1981’s Possession (Adjani’s deranged contortions during the infamous subway scene feel like a purposeful escalation of the reckless physicality Lavi brings to the role), while Lavi herself channels the primality that made Harriet Andersson’s descent into madness in Through a Glass Darkly (1961) so haunting. Supposedly based on true events, The Demon also has some value as an ethnographic study but even when considered simply as a portrait of a lady losing her mind, Rondi’s film stands as a work of extraordinary raw cinematic power.
Women of the Night (2001)
“You up? Of course you are,” begins Samantha’s (Shawnee Free Jones) pirate radio broadcast, her voice whispery and seductive. The sultry monologue is intercut with shots of an 18-wheeler pulling out of a warehouse, gliding through the night over rain-slicked streets. Sitting in a makeshift studio in the truck’s trailer, Samantha, accompanied by sensuous trip hop provided by an in-studio two-piece, relays erotically charged stories of love, lust, regret, and revenge to her audience of fellow night owls. With every broadcast, the seemingly disparate narrative strands coalesce, painting a picture of not only Samantha’s desires but also of her past, as well as outlining her quest to liberate herself from a tyrannical figure that still looms over her life.
Though he isn’t exactly a household name, Zalman King has had quite the career: starting out as an actor in 1964 — his role in the incredible, though sadly forgotten, 1973 romantic mystery drama Some Call It Loving earned him some of the best reviews of his career — he eventually moved behind the camera, making his screenwriting debut with 1986’s 9½ Weeks (which he co-wrote with his wife, Patricia Louisianna Knop, with whom he would go on to collaborate on a number of projects), followed by his 1988 directorial debut, Two Moon Junction, starring a pre-Twin Peaks Sherilyn Fenn. Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, King found his niche as a director of steamy, dramatically exerting erotica and worked with many (future) big names, including David Duchovny, Mickey Rourke, Milla Jovovich, and Linda Fiorentino.
His 2001 film Women of the Night is a slightly different deal, as it was made during what could be considered his late period, one that began with Shame, Shame, Shame (1999). After the comparatively generous budgets began withering away — much of his work up until the mid ‘90s has a distinct prestige sheen — King’s sensual fantasias grew more insular and elliptical, giving the increasingly frank sexuality an ethereal quality that the filmmaker would expand upon until his death in 2012. Women of the Night, which shares its name with a Kenji Mizoguchi drama from 1948, was his first to truly tap into the loose dream logic that makes his 21st-century films so compelling and following its dissolve-heavy editing, multilayered narrative, and sudden genre detours — there are multiple out-of-nowhere fight scenes — can feel a bit like dozing off with the TV on. This may not sound alluring to some but those in the tank for this kind of soft-focus, softcore hallucination will find exactly what they’re looking for.