1962: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (Bava, 1962) 6/10

After the success of 1960 horror classic Black Sunday, Italian director Mario Bava decided to shift tones. Unlike his successor Dario Argento, Bava was far more versatile in his selection of projects, in order if anything to continually put food on his table. In the early Sixties, this led to Bava indulging in two costume adventures in 1961 Erik the Conquerer and Hercules in the Haunted World before later attempts at science fiction and the western.

Bava's most influential case of genre experimentation is 1962's La Ragazza Che Sapeva Troppo or The Girl Who Knew Too Much: the first recognized Italian giallo film. Taking their name from popular lurid, yellow paperbacks, gialli were thrillers that placed ordinary hero(ine)s in the middle of criminal investigation. Often filled with dollops of sex and violence, the cinematic variation of giallo became popular once directors such as Bava, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci added thick layers of colour to the proceedings.

Yet this early entry into giallo is more a loving tribute to Alfred Hitchcock than an exercise in exploitation. Not to be confused with an entirely different film of the same name from 1969 starring Adam West, The Girl Who Knew Too Much infuses the light humour and amateur sleuth sensibilities of Hitchcock's The 39 Steps with the tourist "murder witness" narrative of both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Even Bava's title alludes to Hitchcock's two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much

Beginning aboard a TWA plane high aloft modern Rome, American tourist Nora Davis (Letícia Román) thumbs through her latest giallo. Visiting her sick and eldery aunt Ethel, Nora promises her mother to end this obession with murder mysteries once she has finished with her latest mystery. But when Ethel suddenly dies, a frightened Nora becomes a witness to a murder straight out of one of her favourite gialli.

Shot in harsh black and white The Girl Who Knew Too Much hints at the genre's fleshy future in the film's brazen murder sequence. Draped in a long black plastic raincoat, Nora lies concussed on the wet Roman cobblestones. With her soaked hair sliding upon her brow and the absence of clothing underneath the jacket, the police officer believes her to be an insane, alcoholic prostitute. Nora protests these accusations of drunkeness and insanity: openly telling anybody- including a handsome Dr. Marcello Bassi (John Saxon) and Ethel's friend Linda Craven-Torrani (Valentina Cortese)- willing to listen about the fantastic and frightening crime she has witnessed.

When the inept Italian police are unwilling to investigate the murder, Nora takes action into her own hands: emulating the criminal methodology of her idols found in the works of Chandler, Christie and Mickey Spillane. Bava fashions Nora as an amateur sleuth: an insight into the modus operandi of an adult Nancy Drew. Even the film's storyline featuring the "Alphabet Murders" sounds like a plot lifted directly from a Nancy Drew novel. Sharing the same initials as the young heroine of Carolyn Keene's novels, Nora also hones the spunky charm of Myrna Loy's Nora Charles from The Thin Man films. And thus what appears on the surface to be a Noirish synthesis of horror and thriller contorts into an enjoyable, paranoid thriller infused with uncustomary deft humour.

In The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Bava creates a brilliant dichotomy of Rome. Almost immediately, Nora views Rome as a sinister world of criminality: starkly constrasting the notion of a tourist's paradise promoted by the film's omnipotent narrator. At the airport, Nora is witness to a drug bust and after traumatically fleeing Ethel's house, she soon becomes prey to petty theft. Ironically, the dimly-lit flight of steps she descends at night are a tourist hotspot during the day. The postcard image of Rome with its ancient ruins and modern dolce vita are propogated by Marcello, who whisks Nora to these tourist locales to ease her mind. In his opinion the Via Vento or the Colisseum is the real Rome and that crime is a rarity in the city.

Bava manages to extract subtle ironic humour from this notion, as several of the film's principal settings in which criminal acts are discussed or enacted are tourist venues. Through her perpetual engrossment in gialli, Nora however views every character and venue with suspicion. When Ethel's friend Linda Craven-Torrani offers Nora her home, whilst the former visits her husband in Switzerland, the neophyte gumshoe concocts an array of traps culled from within the yellowed paperback sleeves of her favourite authors in order to protect herself.

This self-referential deconstruction of the codes, imagery and plot narratives of mystery novels is done with playful skill by Bava. By acquiring knowledge of police procedure through fictional circumstances, Nora believes she will not only be able to solve the mystery, but also protect herself. Yet, as Bava acknowledges, Nora's schemes often are at the comic detriment of Marcello, who becomes the accidental victim of abuse. Using low angle shots, shadows and a high contrast key light in the film's initial murder sequences, Bava is able to create a swirling and often nightmarish sense of paranoia withiin the film.

Desperate to convey her story and suspicious of everyone, Bava is able to emphasize the sense of cultural dislocation Nora feels not through language (as her character is fluent in Italian), but through physical discomfort. Not even the most serene quarters of Rome are equated with safety in her eyes. Instead through her tomboy antics and utility, Letícia Román is able to fashion a strong and sympathetic female character, who is resourceful and persistent. Fearing the negative response of others, Nora engages in completely acquiring the truth in all its forms: as her need to find a sense of personal and public closure pushes Nora to find the necessary clues.

Using bubbling camera effects and limited backlight, Bava is able to create a hallucinatory world in which nothing may truly appear as it seems. Here the boundaries of meta-physics are broken as the past and the present coalesce. Through her yearning for the truth, Nora refuses to yield to police pressure. Yet via her foreign identity and concussed memories, Nora's dreamlike struggle to piece together the real events plays upon the audience's conceptions of sanity and reality. Even solid primary sources such as newspaper clippings and professional testimonies from doctors, journalists and police officers are called into question as evidence disappears. Even the finale of the Italian version of the film calls into question Nora's search for the truth under highly dubious and unintentionally amusing circumstances.

The cinematic jigsaw Bava creates often feels too clichéd in its positions. Although this allows the picture to work as a satirization and homage to Hitchcock and gialli, there are moments when the film threatens to lose its temperment. Incidentally, when released in the United States under the absurd title The Evil Eye much of the film's darkness, horrific suspense and parodic gilded linings were eliminated in favour of even further comedy.

Letícia Román's performance in The Girl Who Knew Too Much is crucial to continuing its present dark, schizophrenic convictions and she works in establishing a likeble character who veers between calcuation and irrationality. John Saxon's role as the progenitor to the film's romantic sub-plot is less astute, but still useful as is the work of Valentina Cortese; who although arguably threatening to unbalance this picture does add a further degree of impractical intrigue.

Despite the thin absurd notions of its plot, Mario Bava's 1962 film The Girl Who Knew Too Much is highly likeable and enjoyable Hitchcockian thriller. While not anywhere near a masterpiece, the film is an endearing little gem, whose cryptic visuals separate it from similarly innocuous fare. Via an emphasis on tilted aesthetics and nightmarish perceptions of Rome, Bava continues Federico Fellini's caustic appraisals of Rome as a city of sin and immorality. Although Bava would go onto make other giallo films in his career, none would have the same impact or referential filmic odes as this odd little film which sadly was the least commercially successful of his entire career.

* The Girl Who Knew Too Much is available through Anchor Bay's Mario Bava Collection Vol. 1

Other Mario Bava Films Reviewed:
Black Sunday (1960) 9/10
Black Sabbath (1963) 7/10
Knives of the Avenger (1966) 2/10

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque