Happy Samhain/All Hallow’s Eve/Halloween! Part 3: “The Witch” / “La Strega in Amore”

I was not predisposed to like this film. I am a huge fan of the source material, Carlos Fuentes’ novella “Aura” and I made the mistake of reading reviews that were less than appreciative. To be sure, there are of necessity, differences in the authorial voices.

The plot is easily recounted: Sergio Logan, scholar/lady’s man, is led to accept a position for Consuelo, a wealthy widow, to bring order to her late husband’s library and ready his memoirs for publication. Our scholar demurs and is ready to brush off the old lady, until he meets her daughter Aura. In short order, things get weird. Sergio’s predecessor, Fabrizio, appears on the scene, our scholar is possessed of jealousy and after a while – days – he accidentally kills the librarian. Mother and daughter impress on the scholar to dispose of the body and blackmail him into staying. Beyond this point, it becomes clear that the daughter is not the old woman’s daughter, but an emanation of the old woman’s will, conjured by some manner of sorcery and who has continued to enslave the scholar up to the point where he has outlived his usefulness. At this point, history repeats itself as another handsome, young man appears to take the job and this will eventually result in the scholar’s death. He breaks the pattern, seizes the old woman and after dragging her out into the courtyard of her palazzo, lights her afire. And FIN.

This differs considerably from Fuentes more interior tale, told in the second person as we live with the librarian, Felipe Montero, the events that grow increasingly hallucinatory. In the novella, Aura is Consuelo and Felipe eventually becomes Consuelo’s husband. It is an intimate tale suffused with hot house humidity, eroticism, and different approaches to gender relationships and identity. (1)

It’s often unfair to compare the film to the literature on which it is based, and Damiano Damiani’s “The Witch” is no exception. However, the relation between the two is instructive in terms of where the film succeeds on its own merits (which are considerable).

For starters, both film and book deal with a distinct internal, hermetic environment. In Fuentes, this is present from the outset; Montero does not exist for the outside world, there is little external influence or much in the way of a quotidian reality in his life prior to his meeting Consuelo and Aura. Even then, owing to the narrative choice of the second person, we become his “tú”; we are Felipe Montero and this is not something easily accomplished in cinema, by default.

That said, Sergio’s tale comes to inhabit an insular, closed environment wherein Consuelo’s palazzo is a psychological, as well as architectural, space. We feel with him the magnetic draw into Consuelo and Aura’s circle. Even when Fabrizio arrives on the scene, the latter reads almost as much as a conger or illusion as Aura will soon be revealed to be.

The difference is that there is a greater sense of closeness, of density in Fuentes. In Damiani, the different rooms that comprise the palazzo range from Consuelo’s room which is far more spacious (and well-lit) than what she inhabits in the film, to Aura’s which opens out into other rooms, to the library which comes across as an irregular rectilinear figure broken up by bookshelves that are used almost as lenses that fracture sight lines and vision.

Twice in the film, we see Sergio attempt to navigate a clear view of Aura through spaces between the books and the shelves. This is becomes more critical once his replacement is on the scene, but also, when he and Fabrizio have their fatal battle, the division the shelving presents between Sergio and the others is one of realities splintering.

This is considerably more dynamic than in Fuentes and maintains a distance between the natural and the supernatural, the subjective and objective, and the frail division between Sergio as he was and what he is becoming. Not that what he was was anything laudable.

Early on, it’s established that Sergio has little genuine concern for his lover or anyone outside his immediate desires. Later, he encounters his former girlfriend in the street on his way back to the palazzo, barely recognizing her and then, dismissing her abruptly to return to Aura.

The introduction of Fabrizio into the story is a creation of Damiani’s and it makes sense; we begin to experience a different type of masculinity. Both represent something of a doomed masculinity, a clinging to an old order and incapable of change on the one hand (uncertain of who they are and even of that very masculinity) and doomed because of their very drives to possess Aura. Both seem incapable of maturely approaching the spirit behind Aura (Consuelo). Thus, the only way to get free is to destroy the very source of their ardor and their pain. In this sense, both Sergio and Fabrizio are not unlike mid-twentieth century Werthers.

Interestingly, this sets Aura or rather, Consuelo/Aura up as an expression of fluidity, of mercury in an alchemic sense, more or less the one expressing the other, even though we know Aura is an expression of Consuelo’s will. Of course, a case could be made – and I’m not sure that I want to force this reading – that if the Sergio/Fabrizio dyad are like twin Werthers, then – owing to her physical longevity (because we have learned that Consuelo is far more ancient than her appearance lets on), as well as the mercurial, shape-shifting element, could the Consuelo/Aura dyad be representative of Goethe’s “eternal feminine”? But there’s a Nietzschean “über-mādchen” quality to Consuelo.

She is beyond Sergio’s norms and his inability to grasp the whole. That might well be the issue with all the men that we can assume she has dispensed with over time. Additionally, and it may not need to be said, but Consuelo’s fatal flaw is her vanity and her desire to continue her life through Aura as her agent and as a manifestation of her will.

There are additional thematic points that criss-cross, overlap and circle back on themselves over the course of the film. There is obviously the cyclical nature of the replacement of male librarians that reminds one of Frazer’s account of how kings were replaced in earlier or traditional societies; the line of succession was decided by the death of the old king by his replacement. Damiani’s film traffics in the archetypal as thematic currency and does so convincingly.

The masculine drive for dominance by force, or as force, returns throughout. Sergio kills Fabrizio, and slaps Aura around (not quite beating her, though it appears a possibility), and eventually sets Consuelo on fire. One wonders if Consuelo’s immolation is also a metaphor for the lack of understanding of the greater forces of nature? Or – given Damiani’s political pedigree – the imposition of the clerical on the pagan or the suppression of liberal elements by the orthodoxy?

We also see Consuelo enacting a ritual using a cross which seems to serve as a reminder that old pagan magic never really died under the Church; the crucifix was repurposed for a different set of values. This may also be imposing a reading that is unwarranted, but the idea of the survival of pagan magic under the very nose of the Church and its administration, right in plain sight of the prelates, as it were, is a reminder that humanity is more a part of nature than above it. Magic and sorcery are based on the desire to manipulate energies and elements of the natural world for specific purposes and ends, but there is little sense of going against a patriarchal god in doing so.

I don’t want to neglect Consuelo’s agency, either. She evoked Aura to remain young, and experience at least vicariously (in the film) ardor and romance. This is more pronounced in the film and is more tangential than subtextual: one senses that Consuelo knows full well what she’s doing and she carries out her successive conquests as much as acts of asserting her will as by base desire.

Her palazzo is herself. Therefore, Sergio (and Fabrizio) fear the loss of self with its confines and the relationships that cannot grow or become richer because this space is not theirs. In fact, are they really ever intended to grow or demonstrate self-knowledge as playthings of Consuelo/Aura?

It would not be a stretch to say that Consuelo and Sergio share a similar willfulness and are equally selfish. Obviously, Consuelo bends him to her will to fight Fabrizio; however, once Fabrizio is vanquished, crucified (somewhat literally – Sergio lays his body out on train tracks to be disfigured in with the corpses arms outstretched, the hands duct-taped to the rails), Sergio is both Judas as well as usurper and the heir to the crown for however short a time that might be.

If there is a kind of character development for Sergio, it is that he fights for his life, if not his freedom. One suspects that having grown accustomed to the days in the palazzo, increasingly more with Consuelo than with Aura, he had forgotten about the outside world. Indeed, we see him barely acknowledge his ex, as mentioned above. The palazzo has become womb and tomb, and it is by this point that Sergio must realize he has nothing of his own; perhaps not even – or barely – a self.

His last remaining, threadbare sense of that self comes out in an act of self-preservation. Would his replacement have actually killed him? We are led to think so, but in this type of scenario, the inevitability is subverted both for dramatic ends (literally, the film needs an ending) but also, because this is a loop that needs to be broken, narratively, if not thematically.

I prefer Fuentes’ ending in which Felipe Montero’s identity is subsumed by Consuelo’s dead husband’s and it appears the two will continue through time together. The ending of the film is too abrupt, too definitive, if understandable. But it also removes the queasy, seductive poetry that much of the movie builds up to. So much had gone into sheer atmosphere. From the cinematography, to the editing, to the score, “The Witch” rather vanishes into the flames with Consuelo. (2)

Having said all this, I get why Fuentes was not happy with the adaptation, but Damiani made no bones about simply using the novella as a point of departure. The film was not highly regarded and was the only horror movie Damiani directed. Much of his work is politically infused crime/espionage work well worth exploring.

“The Witch” had been developed as a vehicle for Rosanna Schiaffino, wife of the producer of the film, Afredo Bini. Schiaffino’s portrayal of Aura as a dark, inviting seductress has considerably more depth than one would expect from phantom or a daemon called forth to serve another’s will. In some reviews, her presence is contrasted unfavorably with Barbara Steele’s which misses the point. Damiani is not out to be another Bava; he has other, I would argue, more subversive goals in sight, and this is not giallo film. Schiaffino had a formidable filmography and a range that covered more than mere sex appeal.

In fact, it could be argued that everyone in the film brings more to their roles than any simple genre exercise requires. Richard Johnson is a surprise as Sergio; he skirts going full-bore boor and transitions from heady confidence to lost soul gradually and convincingly over the movie’s run time. He has a no small amount of “genre cred”, if you will, for having appeared in “The Haunting” some years before.

Gian Maria Volontè as Fabrizio is a pleasant surprise, as well, navigating uneasy and shifting waters as Sergio’s predecessor. One minute he’s confident and assured of Aura’s love and the next, he’s a paranoid child. He and Sergio want to understand each other, need to, to be sure, but it does fall to shit. Volontè’s filmography includes “For a Few Dollars More” and “A Fistful of Dollars” for Sergio Leone, the title roles of both Caravaggio and Michelangelo in television series dedicated to them, and a fine turn in “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” (which truly deserves to be seen.)

Lastly, Sarah Ferrati as Consuelo is a remarkable performance, serving as both anchor and driver of the plot. Also, she’s not quite the crone the movie would like to make her out to be. At 57, she was hardly aged and she attacks the role with gusto. Her Consuelo is far removed from the frail and physically fragile Consuelo of Fuentes. I gather she was equally a force in theater and left behind a small but vital filmography as actor and director.

Damiani and Ugo Libertore crafted a supremely literate script (if the dubbed version is any indication) and it’s impressive in its pacing and how – even if the ending isn’t as ambiguous as I might have preferred – it does reflect Liberatore’s observation that they couldn’t make up their minds “whether this was a book on the supernatural or a psychopathological condition of the male character.” (3)

Much needs to be said about Leonida Barboni’s cinematography. There are subtle tracking shots that keep a quiet forward motion in play and a richness of values throughout. The palazzo comes to life and acts as its own character. It provides connections as well as barriers between the characters and there is a richness of contrasts, particularly when Aura appears with Consuelo. Barboni also lensed “El Greco” with Rosanna Schiaffino and quite a number of other films. In many ways, her approach is not so very different from Gregg Toland’s (though I am thinking of “Rebecca” more than “Mad Love”.)

The great Luis Bacalov’s score unobtrusive but never merely ambient. When Aura appears, a guitar pluck sounds and there are other figures that are as much a part of the characters (especially Aura) as the actors.

The film was not well-received upon release, critically or in box office terms. However, beginning in the 1980s, it has gained respectable ground.

Notes

1. Roberto Curti in his entry in Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1957-1962 stresses the Mother/Whore dichotomy where Consuela/Aura is concerned as somewhat more integral to the book than the film. I tend to agree, but I don’t know that I want to press much more of an overtly Freudian reading onto either.

2. "The film ends—rather abruptly, it must be said—with a fire, less purifying than punishing: Logan escapes the spell and burns Consuelo/Aura alive on an improvised stake. Damiani chose not to keep Fuentes’ open ending, in which the librarian—who has discovered that he himself is the double and the reincarnation of the woman’s deceased husband—will remain forever linked to Consuelo, awaiting for Aura’s “eternal return.” In doing so, The Witch returns with a critical eye to the ambivalent attitude towards the feminine which is typical of Catholic culture, and an integral part of Italian Gothic: Consuelo is destroyed because she escapes the ideal image of a passionate and exclusive lover—a whore, yet a devout one—in which Logan had deluded himself to imprison her." Curti, p. 175

3. Quoted in Curti, p. 174.

Bibliography

Curti, Roberto. Entry for "The Witch"/"La strega in amore" pp. 171-176 Italian Gothic Horror Films,1957–1969. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Jefferson, North Carolina. 2015

Lindbergs, Kimberly. “The Enchantress and the Hag”. Cinebeats. October 3, 2010. https://cinebeats.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/the-enchantress-and-the-hag/

White, John. “The Witch” (DVD review). 10, 000 Bullets. February 15, 2006. https://10kbullets.com/reviews/witch-the/

Paunero, Pedro. “Tres visiones de 'Aura', de Carlos Fuentes”. CorreCamara.com. July 2, 2013. http://www.correcamara.com.mx/inicio/int.php?mod=noticias_detalle&id_noticia=4296

The Cast: