Die Falle (1968)

Die Falle: Directed by Giulio Questi. With Gina Lollobrigida, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ewa Aulin, Jean Sobieski. The depraved manager of a high-tech poultry factory – which is genetically engineering boneless chickens – is pulled into a love triangle with his domineering wife and her sexually-liberated cousin, leading to double-crosses and murder.

“Why do I have such a soft spot for this film? There is no story of any significance and there is a disconnect between what people say and do. Or seem to say and appear to do. Additionally, Jean-Louis Trintignant the main male character acts bored throughout. Except for his rather vigorous spats with prostitutes in a certain hotel room. On top of all that there is the setting – an ultra modern (for the time) indoor chicken farm where rather strange and disturbing goings on tend to interrupt the more usual giallo grapplings of the wife (lovely Gina Lollobrigida), the aforementioned husband (Trintignant) and the amazingly doll like and gorgeous Ewa Aulin (secretary would you believe, complete with pool side typewriter). Visually the film constantly stimulates with shape and colour that screams to the viewer that this is 1968. The beauty of the lights, the furnishings and the costumes plus the surreal and worrying hundreds of white chickens and the automated mechanisms all vie for our attention in such a way we barely notice the lack of coherent plot. The end is so sudden, it takes a few seconds to grasp that the action has more or less all taken place in the preceding ten minutes and interrupted our wallowing in the beauty colour and light that represents most of the films running time.”