THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
(1962; d. Mario Bava, w. MB, Ennio de Concini, Sergio Corbucci, Mino Guerrini, Franco Prosperi, Eliana DeSabata)

Plane departs (psychic material en route to "the dream destination" – Rome – and personality in transit btwn developmental stages) w/ 20-yr-old Nora Davis (title fem, journey tongue-in-cheek misogynist one from sagacity to marriage), whom narrator explains (male: story also men’s transformation thru fem agent, giving way at end to her voice) reads too many mystery novels (sez mom: too curious, intellectual habit she must shirk if to land a man/become her mother), staying in Italy (her age roughly span since War, she also bridging heroic American + notorious Itln past) w/ family friend Mrs Widnall (not-the-mother – psychological construct child uses to mirror self into grownup i.d.); accepts cigarette pack from stranger (xchg of icon of maturity) who is subsequently "arrested" at airport (as development at similarly transitional time/place, she in snakeskin not seen in again [shed]) for suitcase full of "Kents" (actually pot – "enough to intoxicate ½ of Rome" – he agent of sleep + laurel-like drm-vision), she then meeting-cute by bonking heads w/ Dr Marcello Bassi (not-smuggler, he [similar] healing agent à la Black Sunday’s traveling doctors), her self-appointed guide thru "dream".

Finds aged Mrs Widnall unwell (old self not long for world) + dying overnight (dissolving back into Unconscious so to germinate maturity, cat jumping off bed her departed soul), Nora getting mugged on going for help (something in ego tripping self up en route to development) + coming-to to witness wmn knifed in back (reiterating own self-defeating mechanism, repeated assaults on/ill befalling wmn distress to anima mundi) + dragged away (disappearance of own barely perceived otherself), only to pass out again (fragmentary conscious narrative dream-images arising from similarly cloudy, foreign Unconscious); man gives her liquor (à la pot, followed by parade of others telling her to "forget it": conscious mind ritually losing sway to sleep) before cop arrives (returning moral + consc "authority") to find her "drunk + naked" beneath coat (not to mention wet, she reborn into romanticized violent [+ violent romantic] world) + no trace of other wmn (potential self w/w she will come to identify).

Wakes in hospital (nurses’ headgear unfolding like petals: her blossoming/deflowering after previous night’s projected penetration) to detective’s accusations of delusion ("Don’t read anymore" à la "forget it," film lightweight retread of similar intercontinental romance Hiroshima Mon Amour w/ Itln Leticia Roman playing American + Am John Saxon playing Itln) + team of psychiatrists dispensing cod diagnosis ("mythomania caused by alcoholism" – whose truth broached in ending w/ her paranoid rejection of pot-pack), sitting up (independent gesture: breaking pattern of omniscient head shots of her vs passive upwd angles on her interrogators [cf similarly low-angle perspectives on intimidating architecture w/o, resolved by final omniscient POV of last few shots]) when Bassi arrives (her – reluctant – link to insight + consciousness); he reassures her outside (Mr Brightside objectivity in city/country of contrasting hues) + shows her "the real Rome" (still urging her to forget: trying to quell own nation’s memories of murder + insanity) as she recreates crime scene (her task to show him dark/"unreal" side of own home, typical role for creative anima-unconscious), leaping into his arms on shots from nearby apartment (romance born of alarm, her ritual/pantomime generating report from adjacent quarters of mind): kids playing Cowboys + Indians (fantasy violence is real), couple shadowed by unseen presence (pathology attending their romance).

Buries Mrs Widnall + meets Laura (cf Nora: her rhyming Other, replacing Mrs W à la risen soul) Torrani while talking to priest ("forget it," LT "religious" soul-memory which won't rest): woman in apartment (kids her nephews: she [new] not-the-mother replacing just-planted Old), who asks her to housesit (her flat a former sculptor’s studio, LT "model" whose space N will inhabit while developing "knowledge"/i.d.) while husband in Switzerland (neutral territory: penultimate i.d. her investigations to uncover before final revelation: not-the-father substitute for own never-mentioned dad, romantic piece of erotic equation she must place before fully forming picture/self-img), his study off-limits (impenetrable male psyche, in which resides/plays out answer to mystery); next a.m., maid (keeper of dayworld facts/rationality) discloses decade-old tragedy (midpoint of heroine’s life: central issue of story), when Laura’s American sister (not-Nora: archaic part of self split off, now 2B re-collected) stabbed in courtyard (as subconscious stage), Nora then stumbling on clippings (in box in wardrobe: in chamber of chamber of chamber of mind, archetypal information now 3 generations from reality): 3rd MURDER IN PIAZZA DI SPAGNA (sense of Nora having witnessed own death La Jetée style) following alphabet (she 4th-in-line Davis: teen self set to expire, killer’s alphabetical method deist fantasy of meaningful death).

Paranoid that night (disconnected phone mind removed from exterior, rational world in dry run for "Telephone" episode of Bava’s Black Sabbath), Nora sets trap of talcum + tripwire (network a web, likened by Narrator to ARIADNE’S TERRIBLE THREAD: apartment labyrinth w/ Minotaur behind study door) to snare – Bassi! (whole episode canard to break his finger: comical castration at hands of spiderwoman whose literal complex less effective than anti-Nora’s figurative, Bassi failed Theseus himself) – after which she gives up criminology ("just want 2B a tourist" while B shows her day-sights: apparently won over to his superficiality); or so it seems: Marcello follows her to abandoned bldg (supposedly disavowed Mystery, he now pulled into unseen world instead) where she led by omnipresent voice (as of bldg itself – similarly vacated mind/social structure in which drama unravels, its many chambers à la 6 credited writers) to room at end of corridor (another, even more literal labyrinth, sequence à la Sunday similar right up to extinguishing light at climax) where she to find "truth" (Bassi, again, + reel2reel deck: faceless [universal], "programmed" male mystique, "truth" in its vacancy [enigma Bassi’s own bafflement on 1st investigation into self]; another puzzle piece à la photo in similarly remote, empty Torrani study, now putting voice to img).

Couple’s search for flat-owner Landini (mystery now encompassing both the problem of modern romance, taking intuitive fem voice seriously yielding payoff for both sexes) leads nowhere (outside world become labyrinth, from flat to trattoria to printers’ where they continually just miss him), rest stop at beach, hwvr, resulting in 1st kiss ("Haven’t you figured it out?": mystery = love, eros missing element in investigation) dissolving to doorway smooch (taking them to threshold Narrator later sez she must cross, ie virginity), whereupon they find inside – Landini! (enigma finally acquiring physical form, he Inside all this time); 10 yrs ago he was influential reporter (inquisitive aspect of Bassi split off at traumatic point, L also that mystery-reading aspect of Nora incarnate + come to explain self) covering 1st murders (origin of complex [cf Bava’s ’70 Hatchet f/t Honeymoon]), when he befriended psychiatrist Professor Torrani (investigation inwd, dialog occurring in his house/mind), who fingered vagrant Straccianeve (à la similarly transient Nora; rootless psychic material surfaced in dream) whose guilt Landini came to question (scapegoat à la similarly disbelieved N [his name roughly Torn/Defiled Snow, unseen face all men, or the dreaming Self mirrored by various other characters/facets]), his doubt driving L out of job (factual consciousness going underground, + point at which Bacci submerged own inquisitive [diagnostic] faculty), his liquor on Nora’s breath when cops found her (meant to revive, as intoxicating drm to awaken understanding).

Nora + Landini (not-Bacci, latter taking backseat to own reacquainted investigator-self) pursue Straccianeve’s daughter (not-Nora, mental offspring of originating trauma), lately a statue cleaner married rich (preserving the ideal rewarded in end, as Nora will do for Bacci by finale), as recounted by former boss (who "really opened my eyes," sez telephone-Landini later: dtr element of self similarly seeking to cleanse snow-white icon); on 2nd rendezvous, Nora again finds no L (having served purpose, to connect her w/ myth of pre/serving iconic masculin/ity), typewriter confession (remote message à la reel2reel reappeared there: i.d. dissolving, from voice to abstracted words)/suicide note discovered before his corpse (wind blowing papers soul flying away à la dead Mrs W/cat: separation 1st from not-the-mother, now not-the-father, L her investigative/documentary consciousness made flesh + similarly scapegoated, making way for her independent inquiry).

Mrs T comforts Nora (as after Mrs W’s death; "forget it" mind’s repetitive desire to bury trauma, Bassi’s insistence on Rome’s bright side attempt to disremember painful history), Dr B similarly ("Think only of me, our future" wmn’s feared loss of agency + i.d. on marriage), Laura anticipating husband’s return that night (compensation for Landini’s departure, he psych-dr to complement B-physician); at morgue (deepest unconscious warehouse of "retired" imgs/concepts) to i.d. fem corpse (lost part of [or feared future-]self arisen to consc’ss + in need of resolution: embodiment at last of own intuited loss), takes button found in hand (icon which will "tie together" complex issues) she remembers from T house ("she felt as if a sinister light were beginning to dawn inside her" realization that home-away-from-home-away-from-home not so hospitable), Narrator promising revelation behind Bluebeard door (Dr T’s "study" secret he brooding over, across "threshold" to womb from which she 2B reborn à la Katia/Sunday crypt), now unlocked (button a skeleton key), behind which backstabbed Dr T (own aborted masculine potential: "truth" at center of mystery) urges her to "Run!"

Locked in (forced to confront further truths, contra everyone’s urging: in compulsive power o/t irrational now), confronts Laura! (not-the-mother having killed spectral masculinity à la real mom trying to kill her inquisitive nature, + not-self offing sequestered consciousness at anarchic height of dream), who eagerly tells all (now keeper-of-secret ego [censor keeping peaceful sleep going by stifling troubling info] gone): sister A-B-"C" (likened to Nora, latter closing gap on mother-img; no explanation for previous 2 murders where rationale falls apart, whole construct subterfuge à la blaming female) "wanted to think me mad, to get Father’s $" (Electric rivalry played out in mythic past for apparently fatherless Nora), her killing + coverup (by Mr T: consc’ss also trying to keep lid on irrational unconsc as sleep deepens) what N saw that night (img of cloaked figure dragging dead fem off taken to obsession in ’65 MB Blood + Black Lace: trauma of seeing beloved country hijacked by Fascists in hazy past); before Laura can shoot Nora (completely obliviate Self), dying Mr shoots her thru door (violent sex, fulfilling "deflowering" hospital imgry + Narrator’s insistence Nora cross "threshold"), light streaming thru holes "truth" Nora sez she was after (reason + rationale behind madness + mystery, beaming à la daybreak or sun thru clouds).

Cut to bright day (Italy’s dark night/past dispelled, guilt successfully transferred from average guy to avaricious [fem] Other [via – male – institutional enabler]) + Marcello showing Nora overview of St Peter’s (omniscient shot vs previous low-angles objectivity [+ superiority: mastery over mystery] achieved, central obelisk not needing comment) + again urging "Don’t think about it – we’ll be married soon" (utopian union of un/consciousness; marriage amnesia for Ariadne left to discover Minotaur on own for bumbling Theseus); realizing she smoked smuggled joint on plane (!: whole thing pot-dream, nation’s murderous past truly wiped; voiceover now hers, she acquiring agency but also appropriating mystery – further projection onto other à la ending's blaming twist), she tosses pack over wall (blame finally falling on shunted weed) to be picked up by punchline priest (opiate o/t masses: and where was he during War?).