Francesco Barilli, the young protagonist of Prima della rivoluzione, made his directorial debut ten years after Bernardo Bertolucci’s film with a giallo in the vein of Dario Argento’s early successes. A young chemist (Mimsy Farmer), disturbed by a conversation with friends about black magic, is visited by strange omens and images from the past – above all the death of her mother, for which she holds herself responsible. Meanwhile, amid apparitions, accidents and séances, the people around her grow increasingly frightening. “One of the most disturbing Italian horror-thrillers of the era, which deftly blends the Polanski-esque atmosphere of conspiracy, a fairytale dimension –
with echoes of Alice in Wonderland – and Grand Guignol, and which explodes into one of the most chilling endings in the genre” (Paolo Mereghetti). The film is extremely elegant in style, with occasional hyper-realistic bursts of colour reminiscent of Mario Bava in the 1960s, sometimes shifting toward ironic pastel tones, while the plot hints at supernatural undercurrents and the Roman locations take on an unexpectedly gothic quality. The building where the protagonist lives is in Piazza Mincio, in the Coppedè neighbourhood: its entrance portal is, according to legend, inspired by the sets of Pastrone’s Cabiria, but horror enthusiasts will recognise it as the residence of Gregory Peck in Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976) and the library in Dario Argento’s Inferno (1979).

Emiliano Morreale