801 I Knew Her Well

Discuss releases by Criterion and the films on them. Threads may contain spoilers!
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Cold Bishop
Joined: Tue May 30, 2006 9:45 pm
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Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#26 Post by Cold Bishop » Mon Mar 07, 2016 8:23 pm

The ending is also crucial to the design of the film. It is meant to be jarring and unexpected, ironically reflected in the title,

With that said, I'm still not sure that means it's successful.

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#27 Post by knives » Thu Mar 31, 2016 2:18 pm

This is one of the best surprises, and films, to come out of the collection in a while.I think the La dolce vita comparisons are really missing the mark and if there is a comparison to be made to Fellini I think The White Sheik or Nights of Cabiria is more apt considering the milieu that the film centers on. This feeds really well into an impossible tone which Pietrangelli captures perfectly. It's sort of a fleeting working class escapism as if the high parties towards the end or the dancing by moonlight at the beginning is this slight barrier against remembering the embarrassments those very things lead into.
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As for the ending everyone is pondering over it makes sense to me as connected to what I said before. The acting, modeling, and all the rest throughout the film seems to have been motivated by a mixture of flightiness and discomfort with her past, which I suppose connects with the agrarian argument posed earlier. Even as early as the opening scenes her movements away from her past are connected to the image of the man in the stairway provoked by a messy accident. It makes me wonder, running with the metaphor conception, if the film is arguing any connection between the strive toward modernity and trying to put the fascist past out of memory. I haven't really seen any Italian film that discusses any sort of collective guilt with regards to WWII before with most depictions being based in the past and literal as compared with the the Germans who do more of what I'm talking about.

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Lemmy Caution
Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2006 3:26 am
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Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#28 Post by Lemmy Caution » Sun Oct 13, 2019 1:45 am

I was kind of divided on this film.
On one hand it looks great, the dresses and hairstyles are quite fashionable. But our heroine really is vapid and drifting. Which is interesting for a while, but then for me skipped over frustrating and went right into boring.

As for the ending,
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its abruptness makes it shocking and feel unearned. But it has been prepared for. Earlier we see her spraying water and the drop below to the entranceway. She has had an abortion, actually more than one it seems, yet she really likes the neighbors infant. She offers to watch the neighbor's baby to comfort her blues, but the woman and child are off to see relatives. I think in the context of the film, the lack of a viable family -- her visit home adds more distance -- and the abortion induce suicidal thoughts.

Stefan Andersson
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:02 am

Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#29 Post by Stefan Andersson » Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:35 am

A comparison between German theatrical version and Italian version:
https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=507388

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ellipsis7
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 1:56 pm
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Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#30 Post by ellipsis7 » Wed Jul 29, 2020 10:27 am

Fascinating - I'm assuming the Criterion is equivalent to the 'long version' mentioned here...

Looking a little further into this, there is a file in the Archivio Centrale dello Stato @ Roma on IO LA CONOSCEVO BENE, which I haven't had a chance to consult, but the inventory listing mentions the following..
Casa di produzione: Zebra film spa poi Ultra film/Sicilia cinematografica, Pathé consortium e Roxy film

Note: Coproduzione italo franco tedesca
So it is a three way coproduction with the German Co-Producer being Roxy Film GmbH, a German film production company established in 1951 by Luggi Waldleitner.

The German version is thus a true alternative cut, using at the various stages identified different shots, spare takes & out takes, probably supervised by Roxy & Waldleitner. To construct the title sequence at the head a separate set of shots are selected from the parts of the negative unused in the Italian version to marry with the German captions in the laboratory process.

I'm guessing also that the France release JE LA CONNAISSAIS BIEN with French Co-Producer Pathé consortium/Les Films du Siècle forms a third version - Amazon lists the German version on Pal DVD as 93 minutes while the French version clocks in at 97 minutes also on Pal DVD (with inherent Pal speedup on both)...

The Criterion Blu Ray runs 115 minutes (at true speed) representing I guess the Italian version, which was restored on film from the original negative by Giuseppe Rotunno as part of the Associazione Philip Morris Progetto Cinema in the late 90s, subsequently there being a 4K digital restoration following up on this...

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ellipsis7
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Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#31 Post by ellipsis7 » Fri Jul 31, 2020 3:09 am

Interesting Cine Censura Italian censorship documents for IO LA CONOSCEVO BENE , from initial release to later incarnations...

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FrauBlucher
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2013 8:28 pm
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Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#32 Post by FrauBlucher » Thu Dec 30, 2021 5:55 pm

I'm bumping this up... I want to see this again. I would like to hear some perspectives about the ending from the folks here. I watched it several years ago and liked it but the ending made me go WTF why? It came out of nowhere, much like I felt the first time I watched The Red Shoes although after repeated viewings of The Red Shoes it wasn't as abrupt but became more operatic to me and fitting. Thinking back to I Knew Her Well just seemed disturbing

Jack Phillips
Joined: Mon Jun 25, 2007 2:33 am

Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#33 Post by Jack Phillips » Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:28 pm

FrauBlucher wrote:
Thu Dec 30, 2021 5:55 pm
I'm bumping this up... I want to see this again. I would like to hear some perspectives about the ending from the folks here. I watched it several years ago and liked it but the ending made me go WTF why?
A possible gloss: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”

britcom68

Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#34 Post by britcom68 » Fri Dec 31, 2021 9:02 am

My own summary on the film and its ending:
I would say that the ending does not come entirely as a surprise, if one scene in particular can be read as a foreshadow. Starting at chapter8 in the Criterion edition (the scene immediately following the "Safari" boot-shoot for those not watching this on the Criterion dvd or blu) the cameras starts low, a shot focusing on garbage in the river and then pans up to see the balcony and Adriana is looking out forlornly as yet another song plays on her record-player. The song's lyrics are not entirely prophetic- she never actually is shown to have a friend that is honest- but otherwise add to the moribund atmosphere, so does her hair being down and unattended to. Perhaps I read into this scene as a foreshadow when it was not intended to be, but I have never heard anything specifically in interviews that it was not intended as such. Another scene which plays into a possible foreshadow is when Adriana is rinsing off her balcony with a hose while listening to "More," and we are treated to another shot of the camera moving back and forth from the ground to her balcony in a tight angle which is after all, the same path her body will take ultimately.

Also, psychologically, Adriana's character really only comes alive when around other people and when she is not the center of attention or at least encircling the person who is the center of attention, one can sense she is self-aware of having a void in her life and I personally buy into the idea that she is capable of her fate since without popularity and attention she has nothing to come home to and nothing to do when alone, a classic extrovert entrapment, compounded by either her immaturity or misreading of social cues amongst the people she encounters.

Personally, I would say Adriana's fate is not shocking for the sake of merely being shocking, since she had already committed so many various sins throughout the film in the eyes of the Catholic Church ala 1965, it would almost seem a shame to leave this one out (heck, the last guy she is seen together with before her demise is a man not of her own race, yet another transgression for her in that era). In that sense the film is a product of its era and country of origin, but still worth seeing even because of that context. Perhaps that is, for me, a major difference between this and a similar character ten years later, that of Karen Black's character Faye in Day of the Locust: Adriana- as a product of her time and geography- is intertwined with religion off and on throughout the film whereas Karen Black's character is able to walk away from it after Burgess Meredith is gone. Perhaps that is for the ultimate good of Day of the Locust, Schlesinger is not a moralist generally speaking and not especially religious, whereas the opposite effect circles around I Knew Her Well and actually makes it feel more dated (at least for me). Schlesinger's film Darling had the good sense to leave religion almost entirely out of it so any shame and guilt we sense from the characters are truly of their own making, rather than of the Church intruding upon them. Adriana and the character Diana Scot from Schlesinger's "Darling" coexisted in films during the same year (released only a few weeks apart) and were similar in tone but differ in their fates radically. Personally, it is Schlesinger's film Darling which has a far better fate in store for Julie Christie's character, an almost British version of Adriana: had Diana succeeded in throwing herself out of the car when Bogarte was driving her to the airport it would have been the quick way out and no one would have really suffered much (Bogarte's character could even have written about it in his expose and it would have even helped his sales, and Diana's husband would not have to sneak out to his mistress anymore). It is therefore sadly ironic in the last analysis that no one we see in In Knew Her Well is likely to mourn Adriana after her suicide (maybe only the neighbor with the baby that Adriana watches), but in Darling no matter what actions Christie's character takes (ultimately a suicide or survivor) she has managed to alienate everyone that her fate is almost an afterthought to those around her, ie- Bogarte's character articulates this in the aforementioned car-ride to the airport where he makes it clear he doesn't care if Diana jumps out of his car so long as he doesn't have an accident in the process.

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Mr Sheldrake
Joined: Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:09 pm
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Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#35 Post by Mr Sheldrake » Sat Jan 01, 2022 12:15 pm

I would like to add having seen seven or eight other Pietrangeli movies that he had a penchant for abrupt endings, often upending audience expectations. The tone can change from somewhat comic to darkly ironic or even tragic in an instant.

_shadow_
Joined: Tue Nov 22, 2011 1:48 am

Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#36 Post by _shadow_ » Sat Jan 01, 2022 3:38 pm

I appreciated that even the actress was like "yeah, I don't think my character would really do that".

It seemed like a cheap attempt to add weight as well as structure - the film would have been vastly more interesting if it hadn't taken such an easy route to wrap things up.

To be fair, I was worried in the earlier apartment scenes that somebody was going to slip off - the balconies seem quite precarious and a bad place to live for anyone with a toddler.

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ellipsis7
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Re: 801 I Knew Her Well

#37 Post by ellipsis7 » Sat Jan 01, 2022 3:42 pm

Pietrangeli died young in a swimming accident... He was known for foregrounding women in his films... Check out this excellent bilingual publication...

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Also, mind you OOP, is this from Lino Micciche in Italian only, the script and supporting materials and essays...

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