Venice Film Festival sets restored 1967 thriller Deadly Sweet as pre-opening tribute to Tinto Brass

Tribute to Tinto Brass

The Venice Film Festival will pay homage to Italian director Tinto Brass, 93, with a pre-opening screening of his 1967 pop thriller Deadly Sweet (original Italian title Col cuore in gola). Brass, a non-conformist figure of Italian cinema, had the film presented out of competition at the 1967 edition of the festival. The restored digital 4K version will now open the festival's Venice Classics programme.

The restored film

Deadly Sweet was shot in London and stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as Bernard, a man who meets Jane (Ewa Aulin) at the scene of a murder and becomes entangled in a series of killings. The restoration was carried out by Rome's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia with support from Netflix, using materials provided by rights holder Compass Film. The film features graphic contributions by comic artist Guido Crepax, who illustrated action sequences used as storyboards.

Festival details

The pre-opening event is scheduled for September 1 at the Lido. While most Italian sources refer to the 83rd edition of the festival, Variety describes it as the 84th. The discrepancy may stem from different historical counting methods, as the first festival was held in 1932. Regardless, the full programme will be announced on July 23.

What the director said

“The character I present in the film is a man who falls in love with a girl even when he meets her in front of a corpse. He foregoes any attitude of caution, of expediency and dives headlong into this adventure that totally compromises him. The film is also the story of a disillusionment, given that the character imagines the woman for something she is not.”

Legacy of the film

The film is part of Brass's London period, alongside Attraction (1969) and Dropout (1970), all filled with pop-art and comic-book references. Deadly Sweet was produced by Ermanno Donati and Luigi Carpentieri, loosely based on Sergio Donati's novel Il sepolcro di carta. The screenplay was by Brass, Francesco Longo and Pierre Lévy-Corti, with music by Armando Trovajoli and cinematography by Silvano Ippoliti.