TRAGIC CEREMONY (1972)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

TRAGIC CEREMONY is like a lot of other films directed by Riccardo Freda, one of the crucial names in Italian horror cinema-- that is, most of them just miss tapping the deep well of mythic discourse. That CEREMONY comes closer than many others may be attributable to the three scriptwriters. I can't speak to the strengths of these writers, though, as I'm not familiar with most of their other works, except that one fellow made an uncredited contribution to the 1966 western classic DJANGO. Reportedly Freda didn't like working on this film, though it's one of the best-photographed works in his repertoire.

The actual plot-action is simple enough to reduce to a paragraph. Four twenty-somethings are touring the coast of what is supposedly England. One of the youths, Bill (Tony Isbert), is the son of wealthy parents, and his three friends-- Fred, Joe, and Joe's girlfriend Jane (Camille Keaton) -- are to some extent bumming off him. Night is falling when their dune buggy runs out of gas, so they take shelter at a ritzy estate owned by Lord and Lady Alexander (Luigi Pistilli, Lucianna Paluzzi). Unfortunately for the young people, the two nobles are holding a Satanic ritual with their acolytes that very night, and they also decide to use Jane as a human sacrifice. The three guys free their female friend and run for it, while, for no apparent reason, the cultists all start killing one another. Though the four friends escape for a little while, the ghost of the slain Lady Alexander possesses Jane. She uses magical powers to slay all three men and later the ghost leaves Jane dead as well.

CEREMONY lends itself to such a summary because there's almost no characterization of the four viewpoint characters or their supernatural adversaries. Bill comes close to having a sort of character-arc but only in being at the center of a horrific situation over which he has no control. In fact, in the script's most confusing subplot, Bill exposes his friends to an occult influence even before they come across the Satanists' home. I feel here as if one or more of the writers had the germ of a good idea but ended up shoehorning it into the main plotline as a flashy leitmotif. But that germ is the film's sole claim to mythopoesis.

A flashback reveals that Bill, prior to taking his trip with his buddies, stopped at the house of his mother and father (maybe his house too, not sure). The father's gone but Bill butters up his mother (Irina Demick) with flattery (calling her the most beautiful woman in the world) and giving her a gift. No Oedipal issues are signaled, though, for the mother is the only one who can make deposits to Bill's bank account-- and the gift, a necklace of pearls, is highly ambivalent as well. Bill tells his mom that the pearls had various supernatural legends of possession and death attached to them. He apparently imagined that she would dismiss superstitious legends, as he does, but she refuses the gift and asks for something else. At the same time, this scene is undercut by two later occurrences. First, Bill takes the pearls from his mother's dresser-- which seems logical at the time, since she refused them-- but a much later scene has the mother express concern about the pearls' absence, and Bill declines to admit he took them. Some of his reason for so doing is glossed by his accidental discovery that his maternal unit is sleeping with her business manager.

And yet, when the pearls are first seen, before the flashback, Bill gives them to Jane as a gift, just before trying to make a little time with Joe's girl. The audience doesn't see the pearls do anything spooky, and in fact, they're finally torn asunder while the young people are at the estate. But Freda works in a handful of visual references to the pearls as if they symbolize the pervasive evil better than the vague menace of the Satanists. That said, structurally speaking, Lady Alexander is the movie's focal character, as her possessing spirit takes over from the implied menace of the cursed necklace. She seems to be the only one of the Satanists to survive in any form, even though she's the first killed in the melee. 

As noted earlier, the fact that the Satanists kill one another goes unexplained, though I suppose one can claim that the botched sacrifice causes some occult power to rebound upon the cultists. But that scene is of a piece with another head-scratcher. When the foursome first run out of gas, they manage to find an isolated gas-station run by an eccentric old guy named Sam (Jose Calvo), but he only gives them enough gas to get them to the Satanists' estate. Later a couple of English cops remark that Sam died 15 years ago and was renowned for being "devilish." Sorry, but as far as being a nasty Renfield-like Opener of the Way, Sam is no Torgo.

To compensate for a dodgy script and flat characters, CEREMONY offers pleasing visuals-- not just in the form of three sexy actresses, but also some interesting compositions, like a shot showing Jane "imprisoned" by the candles she holds, not long after we've seen Lady Alexander lighting several candles (seen above). The film also boasts a good score and gore-effects by Carlo Rambaldi. So as long as one doesn't take it in with the expectation that it will make sense-- even in the rarified domain of myth-discourse-- CEREMONY should not make that viewer feel like he/she has "tragically" wasted time.