Blu

The Possessed of the Lake

Italy: 1965
Original title: La Donna del lago
Directed by: Luigi Bazzoni, Franco Rossellini
Screenplay: Luigi Bazzoni, Franco Rossellini, Giulio Questi
Actors: Peter Baldwin, Salvo Randone, Valentina Cortese
Publisher: Artus Films
Duration: 1h25
Genre: Fantasy
Cinema release date: November 25, 1966
BR/DVD Release Date: September 20, 2022

The film

[3,5/5]

The Possessed of the Lake is an unclassifiable film. It is a sophisticated film, shot in a very evocative and contrasting black and white, which evokes a kind of long morbid, philosophical and poetic stroll, gently flirting with the fantastic. The fact that it borrows some of its codes from the mystery film – and more precisely from the Whodunit – and that it is two years later than The Girl Who Knew Too Much (Mario Bava, 1963) has also maintained over the years a kind of spiritual filiation between The Possessed of the Lake and the kind Giallo. However, it seems a little difficult to compare the film by Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini to the cinema of Dario Argento for example, who develops in his work a phantasmagorical side to almost psychedelic proportions next to which the film which interests us today will appear as far too classic and wise, ultimately cultivating as many points in common with the Giallo as with Antonioni’s cinema.

However, The Possessed of the Lake is not so far from a certain fantastic atmosphere either: the film indeed cultivates the mystery around the disappearance of a young woman, emitting the possibility of a murder. The appearances of the said young woman with the hero clearly flirt with the story of ghosts, and the whole often takes on aspects of a waking dream, or even a real nightmare, interspersed with bizarre events and characters. Strangely little known in France, The Possessed of the Lake is therefore a film co-directed by Luigi Bazzoni, known for Black day for an Aries, and Franco Rossellini, nephew of Roberto and son of the composer Renzo, who also signed the soundtrack. The director’s cousin, Pia Lindström (Ingrid Bergman’s daughter), also stars in the film, which ultimately makes The Possessed of the Lake kind of a family affair.

Ostensibly, The Possessed of the Lake offers us a fairly simple plot, but the almost hallucinatory atmosphere that bathes a large part of the film clearly has its effect. And while the spectator will follow Mr Bernard, a writer by trade (Peter Baldwin), in his desperate search for a lost love (Tilde, played on screen by Virna Lisi), all the spatio-temporal landmarks usually in place will see turned upside down, to the point that we are never really sure when things are happening, or even if things are really happening, or if the various twists and turns of the story are not simply imagined by the main character.

The secondary characters also bring their share of questions, and in particular Mr Enrico (Salvo Randone), the owner of the hotel where the hero is staying, and his daughter Irma (Valentina Cortese). However, it is really through its atmosphere that The Possessed of the Lake stands out the most. As in the case of other atmospheric films such as The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973), the film by Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini plays a lot on the fear and isolation of the “foreigner” finding himself in a remote place in the world where all the inhabitants seem a bit strange. The contrast between what is shown to us and what we feel is absolutely remarkable, and contributes to making The Possessed of the Lake an often disturbing feature film, even if it is never truly frightening in the traditional sense of the term.

The Blu-ray + DVD Combo

[5/5]

It’s because of Artus Films that the French cinephile will have the pleasure of discovering The Possessed of the Lake in Blu-ray format, and the publisher is offering the film by Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini a very exciting Blu-ray disc. Definition, sharpness, level of detail, depth of field, everything is very satisfactory, the black and white is impressive, the film is well encoded in 1080p and the cinema grain has been scrupulously respected: it’s very good technical work. On the sound side, the soundtrack is available in Italian LPCM Audio 2.0, in mono of course, and the whole thing turns out to be well balanced and free of all the slag that one might have feared. A beautiful technical presentation, for a Blu-ray arriving to us as usual in a pretty Combo presented in a two-fold digipack, the whole being surmounted by a cardboard sleeve.

On the side of supplements, the publisher Artus Films will first offer us an interesting presentation of the film by Emmanuel Le Gagne (31 minutes). He will first return to the career of Luigi Bazzoni, then the importance of the screenwriters (including Giulio Questi), the actors and the novel from which the film is taken. He will then discuss the film itself, as well as its most remarkable aesthetic biases, which make The Possessed of the Lake the meeting point between the cinemas of Dario Argento and Michelangelo Antonioni. We will then continue with a making of retrospective (35 minutes), which will take the form of interviews with Fabio Melelli (film historian), Giulio Questi (screenwriter) and Giannetto de Rossi (make-up artist). The memories of Giulio Questi (1924-2014) and Gianneto de Rossi (1942-2021) will therefore be interspersed with passages during which Fabio Melelli will analyze the context, the shooting conditions and the most formal aspects of the film. We will also be entitled to a friendly short film entitled Surface (27 minutes), maintaining a distant relationship with The Possessed of the Lake. Produced by the IUT of Béziers, and co-directed by Léo Colomina and Gabriel Cocus, this short film features an old fisherman and his grandchildren confronted with a horrible mermaid. Finally, we will end with a Photo gallery as well as with the traditional trailer. To purchase this Blu-ray + DVD edition, go to on the publisher’s website Artus Films !