The Grim Reaper Review

• 13th Apr 2011

The corpse of a murdered prostitute on the banks of the Tiber provides the bold opening image of Bernado Bertolucci’s debut film – essentially a collection of shorts following the loosely-linked testimonies of an assortment of suspects in the case, told in flashback via the framing device of a police interrogation.

Though the murder mystery element is an intriguing enough hook, the real substance of the film comes from the way the varying suspects’ diverse stories provide a patchwork portrait of a day in the life of Betrolucci’s city. It’s a captivating place, where petty crooks trade insults with sassy women, young men look for employment and adventure respectively (with varying success) and shady down-and-outs tread the streets alone. Very little of each suspect’s story is pertinent to the murder investigation but it’s all pertinent to the picture the director paints of his city. It’s easy to forget about the framing device and become immersed in each story.

Highlights include the misadventures of a happy-go-lucky soldier on leave, who incorrigibly harasses every pretty young woman he comes across in the street, with predictable fruitlessness, before horsing around at tourist spots and crashing on a park bench. Then there are the two teenage chancers trying to scrape some money together to take a pair of girls to dinner. These light-hearted and inconsequential tales are dealt with with panache by Bertolucci, who uses snappy camerawork and a vibrant soundtrack to keep things light in spite of the darker bigger picture. When dealing with darker episodes though, like the murder itself, the director shows himself to be equally stylish in murkier shades.

The climactic scene is not a disappointment. The culprit is a psychotic outsider akin to Peter Lorre’s chilling child killer in Fritz Lang’s M, which is a good reference point for this part of the film – the horrible feeling of inevitability from the outset of the pivotal scene, the heart-breaking unawareness and innocence of the victim right up to the act, and the creepy audible eccentricity of the killer; marked in M by Lorre’s whistling of Grieg, and here by the clip-clop of the murderer’s clogs.

The Grim Reaper would be a notable entry at any chronological point in Bertolucci’s impressive body of work, but, as a debut feature made when the director was just 21, it’s nothing short of remarkable.

Adam Richardson