A Quiet Place in the Country Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

A Quiet Place in the Country Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson June 19, 2018

Italian auteur Elio Petri’s sixth feature A Quiet Place in the Country (Un Tranquillo Posto di Campagna) is a highly original and surreal trip inside the mind of an abstract artist and his neurosis. It reunited stars Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave who collaborated on the previous year’s big screen version of Camelot. Nero and Redgrave play vastly dissimilar roles in a film that oscillates between reality, fantasy, and hallucination. Following Petri’s credit sequence depicting nude paintings, we are introduced to Leonardo Ferri (Nero) who is almost completely nude and sits tied with thick straps to a chair. Leonardo’s agent/mistress Flavia (Redgrave) has returned from a shopping excursion and as she approaches her client, we aren’t sure if she will engage in S&M or some sexual foreplay. They tangle with each other and as Flavia attempts to stab him with a knife in the bathtub, Leonardo wakes up from an apparent nightmare. Is this just a dream or does it contain some pattern of behavior that’s happening to Ferri in reality?

Flavia wants to exploit the commercial potential of Leonardo’s paintings so she brings him to an old villa in Milan along with the local press corps. Leonardo is described by one film critic as an “action painter.” He paints large brushstrokes on wall-like canvasses. Flavia seems to think that the beautiful yet antiquated villa in the countryside (the film was shot in Padova near Venice) may be the ideal (and most picturesque) site for Leonardo to create some great works and sell a lot of paintings. However, the place turns out to be a money pit, even to rent. Part of the roof collapses and a cascade of bricks nearly falls on Flavia. The villa also may be haunted by ghosts. One night Leonardo hears noises in a room and opens to find an eighteen-year-old lady (Gabriella Grimaldi) in bed and her companion trying to duck under. What is she really doing there? Leonardo converses with the property's caretaker, Attilio (Georges Geret), and learns that a countess named Wanda Valier was once a co-owner there before being killed during the war from the bullets of a British fighter plane. Leonard also speaks to the villagers who inform him that Wanda was castigated due to her rampant promiscuity. Is this teenager Wanda’s apparition and does her spirit still haunt the villa?

A Quiet Place in the Country is based on Oliver Onions’s short story “The Beckoning Fair One” (1911) which is also a ghost tale. It was transformed to the screen by Petri, Luciano Vincenzoni, and primary scenarist Tonino Guerra, who also scripted pictures for Antonioni, Tarkovsky, and Angelopoulos. The writers have crafted a schizophrenic portrait of an artist obsessed with pornography, painting, and photography. Leonardo Ferri’s madness appears to undo him. He’s blind to the beauty of the sexily dressed Flavia and looks more turned on to the porn magazines he studies.

Because it shifts so often between Leonardo’s dreams, fantasies, and the lived-in reality that he inhabits, A Quiet Place in the Country’s narrative can sometimes be difficult to follow and I’d advise watching it again after you first see it. The movie received very mixed reviews in the United States where it was shown probably only due to the success of Camelot and the presence of Redgrave and Nero. Newspaper correspondence indicates that filming took place in Italy for twelve weeks. It was later awarded a Special Jury Prize at the 1969 Berlin film festival.

A Quiet Place in the Country Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shout! Factory has brought A Quiet Place in the Country to Blu-ray for the first time anywhere on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. The film has also been released on DVD in the US, Italy, Spain, and Germany. The American MOD DVD-r, released through MGM and 20th Century-Fox, was a bare bones disc save for the trailer. I haven't seen the transfer but the MGM/Fox reportedly had (at least in its source materials) as good if not better an image than what's on display here. For example, Paul Mavis of DVD Talk praised the 2011 SD disc for its "beautiful widescreen transfer…. solid color, a sharpish image, and only minor dirt and scratches." In his blog, film editor and critic Kenneth George Godwin considers it at least acceptable: "a reasonably solid visual presentation, with bright colours and a fair amount of detail." According to Shout!: "This new HD master was created from the best surviving film elements in the vault." Eric Cotenas has noted that the source for the anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer on the 2011 disc "is not spotless (especially at the reel changes)." On the Blu-ray, there are at least four series of shots that show significant print damage. You'll notice the emulsion and a few large scratches in Screenshot #18, thin tree-like hairs (looking almost like vessel growth in the eye) creeping from the frame top in #19, and another scratch to the right of the frame in #20. The same type of scratches reappears in a very dark scene inside the villa late into the film. White specks frequently pop up in the image (almost in every other shot from extended sequences). They come light night critters in the nearly pitch-black séance scene. On the positive side, primary colors look warm and vibrant. Red paint, wine, and blood are recurring hues. The verdant countryside looks well-defined during daytime scenes. Please note that the splices, scratches, and film leader tags that flicker during the main titles are deliberately placed there by the filmmakers.

A Quiet Place in the Country Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Like the lossy Dolby tracks on the 2011 MGM/Fox disc, Shout! has included both the original Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Dual Mono (1565 kbps, 24-bit) and the English dubbed DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Dual Mono (1692 kbps, 24-bit). I listened to both mixes and ultimately prefer the Italian as delivery seems the more authentic. Nero dubbed himself on the English sound track while Redgrave's lines were dubbed by another actress on the Italian (you can find who while listening to the commentary). There is some hiss on these tracks but they both in the very solid shape. The most prolific composer of our times, Ennio Morricone, composed a bouncy and rather dissonant score in collaboration with the improvisational group, Nuova Consonanza. Pitch levels are sometimes high. Music is the most satisfying audio element in spite of the discordant strains which suit Nero's character and the film's mood.

Optional English subtitles are available for the Italian sound track. There are few spelling or grammatical mistakes.

A Quiet Place in the Country Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historian/Author Troy Howarth - this is generally a very good track but Howarth admits that he hadn't seen the film in a while before recording his audio essay so he gets some things mixed up. He still delivers some informative biographical sketches about several members of the cast and crew. He's a big admirer of Petri's work. In English, not subtitled.

• NEW Interview with Actor Franco Nero (32:07, 1080p) - the warm, amiable, and sometime feisty acting legend recalls his first and only collaboration with Elio Petri, interpretative insights into his character, and his love and affection for wife Vanessa Redgrave. In Italian with English subtitles.

• Theatrical Trailer (2:09, 480i) - this is very likely the same trailer for A Quiet Place in the Country that MGM/Fox put on its disc.

A Quiet Place in the Country Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A Quiet Place in the Country is a picture that I more appreciated and admired than did I openly embrace. However, Petri's narrative ingenuity and Luigi Kuveiller's resplendent cinematography are undeniably masterful. I can't speak for my colleagues but for an introduction to Petri's oeuvre, I'd probably go with the filmmaker's debut, The Assassin (1961), or the Oscar-winning Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970). Shout! Factory's transfer shows bright reds and greens but a lot of source-related flaws that need to be eliminated. It sometimes looks like a recycled theatrical print that's been kicked around. Hopefully, Arrow or another label will undertake a full restoration. For lovers of sixties European art cinema, the film definitely comes RECOMMENDED.