•
Rating: Marcello Aliprandi - The Tin Girl (1970)
How many of us have felt at least once like Mr. Rossi, the protagonist of this film so ancient, so faded, yet real, current... And yet it moves! There are science fiction films so well shot that they gain merits over time, becoming meta-historical, and their real futuristic scope becomes palpable only many years later; this is the case with Aliprandi's debut work, starring the beautiful Sydne Rome, a film that occasionally appears on private TV channels, like a dead satellite still sending out messages, once cryptic now sadly modern. Osvaldo Rossi, an employee of a large corporation, the all-powerful "Smack O-Mat Corporation", lives a routine life in a ghostly, surreal Ravenna, married to a greedy and cold fashion designer, Teodora - a clear reference to the Byzantine empress who reigned in these parts- ; in the overall flatness of this future society, he resists with eccentric behavior, refusing to dress like everyone else, to not have sideburns, and not use the standard type of car (naturally produced by Smack), preferring to move around on roller skates. One day a bolt of lightning strikes: he falls in love with a young woman who seems different from all the others,
with a magnetic and mysterious personality, unreal-there's the right term, and who seems to share dreams and ideals with him.
But soon he will be disappointed by her conformism, as she just wants to secure herself. Now our hero feels even more urged in his fight against the system, to the point of rejecting an offer for co-management of power made to him by the super mega boss of Smack, in a beautiful climax scene like you are face to face with the man who sold the world.. The ethereal and lunar girl strikes Osvaldo's heart, awakening like a petrified warrior from a secular sleep, sparked by a novo amor like a novo Marte...But at a masquerade party, he meets a gay filmmaker fortune teller - a barely concealed reference to Fellini-who reveals an exceptional future to him. The girl, however, seems strange to him, as if she has a double life, and at certain moments she shuts down, or responds with stereotyped, loveless phrases. What's happening in this X files love affair? Osvaldo, in a hallucinatory climactic scene, discovers that the girl is made of tin, a high-end robot-escort "produced" by "Smack Corporation", with various clones. When he realizes it, he is seized by frantic fury, dresses as a warrior and with a iron brand strikes the woman and breaks the toy. Deathly disappointed in his ideals, he then accepts the offer from Mr. Smack. But...he cannot forget her, wants to relive his love story, even if it is mere fiction, and full of money, returns to the robot women laboratory, asks for her, wants her, only her: he has her repaired and takes her away, embracing the narcissistic illusion of a perfect love, beside a mysterious robot woman alive only with batteries, driving the company car towards a monotonous and programmed future, perhaps more reassuring.
I SWEAR: I too had a blonde girl with green eyes and pale lunar-white skin; she both intrigued and bewitched me with her ways, sometimes she spoke as if she had a radio in her mind or suddenly became emotionally cold, then heard voices and occasionally froze with absurd paranoia...and the more I screamed and demanded the TRUTH, if she loved me, if she had a double life, the more she went catatonic. I checked her back looking for duracells or Furga doll discs, only found an MP3 player, and lots, lots of psychotropic drugs in her bag...
ps. I'm looking for the 45 record "La ragazza di latta" by Nicola Piovani, soundtrack of the film.
Loading comments slowly
