A young pianist, Giorgio, has kept his highly delicate happiness only by having his girl friend, Francoise, and therefore when someone stabs her to death at a park everything is badly changed. Although the police arrests a middle-aged man named Alessandro as the primal suspect of the murder case, Giorgio isn't and can't be satisfied with the judicial system itself any longer. But the whole situation becomes more complex when he meets a girl, Sarah, who is a daughter of Alessandro... This Italian film begins not only with the highly impressive music by Gianni Ferrio but also with the unusual visual introduction of its eight major characters, namely, Marta, Francoise, Sarah, Maria(mother of Sarah), Alessandro(husband of Maria), Giulio(lawyer), Giorgio, and Eriprando(father of Giorgio). Needless to say, Mario Bava did same kind of thing in his 1964 classic SEI DONNE PER L'ASSASINO, but in contrast to its expandability the introduction part of this film limits its own story and therefore one can easily expect the self-limited story is ongoing almost exclusively among the eight characters. Indeed one can even say every part of this film is trying to almost minimalistically exclude any kind of cinematic unexpectablity. And this seems to be one of the reasons why this film is not always loved by so-called Giallo lovers. Leaving from that question, this film is definitely not so-called Gestalt psychological and therefore one can and should realise that, at least in this film, not only music and/or musical event per se isn't and can't be emotion(s) but also music and/or musical event per se doesn't and can't have emotion(s); it merely indicates emotion(s). And this is the very reason why Giorgio chooses the unfamiliar gun instead of the familiar piano. Indeed I believe this anti-Gestalt-psychology, which does not allow for various players and/or listeners to have different emotional interpretations of the same music and/or musical event, is the most unique and powerful side this film has. And regarding the film's tile, THE BLOODSTAINED BUTTERFLY, has its own importance. Giorgio had given Francoise the present of a blue-butterfly-figured pendant. And when Francoise was murdered the butterfly was, at least symbolically, stained with her blood. And latter when Giorgio begins to take the law into his own hands the now-invisible-butterfly becomes to be stained not only with the problematic murderer's blood but also with Giorgio's own blood. I think this film as a whole is an almost unusually serious and realistically-oriented film with its own high-quality, whether it per se is Giallo or not.
Review of The Bloodstained Butterfly
