Black Angel (Senso 45)

Lust or Love?

Originally filmed by Luchino Visconti in 1954 Senso 45 has been remade as Black Angel (2002) by the infamous director of European erotica Tinto Brass, best known for Caligula (1979) a film he later disowned and a film I remember seeing in a sleazy cinema in the back streets of London’s Soho shortly after its minimal released! Brass remade Senso 45 after reading Carmillo Boito’s novella and found himself unsatisfied with Visconti’s version.

The Hammersmith Palais was never like this.

The film stars Anna Galiena (The Hairdressers Husband 1990) as Livia the wife of a high ranking Fascist official trapped in an unhappy marriage and Gabriel Garko the Italian former fashion model as a German SS Officer. In this version the story is set against a background of political treachery towards the very end of World War 2. The plot concerns the aristocratic Livia on her way back to Venice to indulge in a dangerous self destructive relationship with a SS Lieutenant Helmut Schultz with whom she is having an affair unknown to her husband.

Filmed in black and white as well as colour the art-deco sets are a joy to look at and with Ennio Morricone score enforces the decadence of the era. A movie more about vanity and lust than love which went on to win Italian cinema’s Silver Ribbon award for best costume design.

The Hairdresser’s Husband

Like Jean Rochefort’s character Antoine in The Hairdresser’s Husband (1990) I to fell in love with a hairdresser, but unlike Antoine it was not with the profession but with the person. Although the smell of a barbers back in the day of ‘anything for the weekend sir’ did have a particular allure! Directed and written by Patrice Leconte (responsible for directing L’homme du Train 2002 which also starred Jean Rochefort) the film stars the beautiful Italian actress Anna Galiena as the hairdresser of the title.

When Antoine was a wee boy he was obsessed with the voluptuous beautician who regularly cut his hair. He decides his life’s ambition is to marry a hairdresser. Middle-aged Antoine meets Mathilde (Galiena), a young women with her own hairdressing establishment. Marrying her he can now spend all his waking hours sitting in her shop watching her every movement. The shop, his fantasies, his gorgeous wife and the eastern music he dances to on occasions become his entire world, who can blame him? Obviously this funny and erotic movie is not to be taken to seriously, one to sit back and enjoy and one that gives Rochefort another opportunity to stretch his acting talents.