Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

Appassionata Blu-ray Movie Review

Italian Beauty.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 2, 2016

If you’re looking for some quick and easy film based amusement, enter the term “weird movie credits” in your personal Google machine and then peruse the results. There are a number of delightful offerings in store, but unfortunately one of them is not “finger sync specialist”, a “below the line” credit which I am increasingly convinced needs to become part of the cinematic landscape. As I’ve mentioned now in two relatively recent previous reviews (Remember , Heartless), there is an almost shocking display of carelessness on the part of some actors when they’re called upon to pretend to play the piano, with their hand movements having absolutely nothing to do with the music supposedly being created by them. It can be positively humorous for those who do play the piano, or at least have enough musicality to realize something is a bit off when the soundtrack is full of rapid arpeggiated high frequencies and the actor’s hands plod up and down as near solid units, with absolutely no finger movement, in the piano’s lower ranges, no less. The fact that some curmudgeons (ahem) have the time to think about issues like this is perhaps indicative of certain narrative deficits in Appassionata, a film which features a once celebrated concert pianist now on the verge of a nervous breakdown (if not there already), and a film which (not to state the obvious) takes its title from one of the most famous pieces in piano literature, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57. The whole piano subtext (or perhaps more appropriately, counterpoint) plays out against a fairly lurid story of a dentist named Emilio Rutelli (Gabriele Ferzetti) whose supposed mid-life crisis is either exacerbated, perpetuated or outright caused by the sexual aggression of one of the comely friends of his teenaged daughter. It’s a patently uncomfortable premise, one which co-writer and director Gian Luigi Calderone makes even more uncomfortable by introducing elements of incest, not to mention the psychological unraveling of Emilio’s wife Elisa (Valentina Cortese), the aforementioned erstwhile concert pianist. Appassionata is in some ways the very definition of a European Art Film, but it has a rather tawdry and even smarmy aspect that will make it an acquired taste for many.

Years before American Beauty shocked the delicate sensibilities of the suburban class with its tale of a middle aged man seemingly controlled by near feral impulses which he himself probably didn’t fully understand, Appassionata had already perused much the same landscape, albeit in a more appropriately Italian, and therefore perhaps less emotionally tamped down, manner. The baroque (no pun intended) proclivities of Appassionata are firmly on display virtually from the get go, when a little spontaneous “performance” by Elisa ends in near hysteria. Perhaps surprisingly, Elisa and Emilio’s daughter Eugenia (Ornella Muti) doesn’t seem overly concerned about the obvious psychological trauma her mother is experiencing, and in fact it takes the urging of Eugenia’s friend Nicola (Eleonora Giorgi) to get Eugenia to even attend to her mother.

Unlike American Beauty, however, there’s not an element of (more or less) unrequited love leading to tragedy. And in fact one of Appassionata’s rather shocking conceits is that there really isn’t a tragedy involved in terms of the unsettling sexual dalliances portrayed within its story, at least not tragedy in the traditional sense. And actually the love (or lust) depicted in the film is not unrequited at all, and is generated, at least initially, by Nicola. This part of the film may make it a personal favorite of middle aged dentists everywhere, but it begs a question (one which the film asks in other, potentially even more disturbing ways, with regard to Eugenia) about what exactly these young women see in the bland and frankly pretty unappealing Emilio.

Despite the film’s title, there’s a curiously dispassionate, almost clinical, approach that Calderone takes with this inherently disquieting content. The movie almost plays like a telenovela squeezed through the unlikely prism of a documentarian, with hyperbolically soap operatic elements depicted without much flourish. Weirdly, then, there are stylistic embellishments when the film focuses more on the increasingly fractured world of Elisa. The whole Elisa sidebar does little to advance the salacious aspects of Emilio’s forbidden love, other than to perhaps point out what a duplicitous heel the guy is. He’s a supposedly concerned and attendant husband at one moment, and then a philandering hounddog the next. It may actually be “realistic” in a certain kind of way, but the manner in which Appassionata lines up these plot points feels poorly motivated and therefore ultimately not very resonant.

Appassionata Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Appassionata is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1 (though a glance at the screenshots will show this is a somewhat "unusual" 1.85:1 in that it's slightly windowboxed). There's a bit of image instability on display during the opening credits, an affliction which recurs a few times later in the presentation. The overall appearance of this transfer is on the soft side, and there are a certain moments where things get even softer for a while, leading at times to an almost Impressionistic ambience (see screenshot 13). The palette looks very healthy, though, and the general saturation of the transfer is one of its strongest assets. That said, there are a couple of isolated scenes, especially one with Emilio in a bright red sweater on a couch, where things look a bit pushed and/or oversaturated. In fact, there are some kind of odd issues with that sweater and other very colorful elements where edges of objects seem to bleed into the surrounding backgrounds. Watch, for example, the neckline or cuffs of the sweater as the camera pans around Emilio as he lies on the couch. This is part of what seems to be a somewhat digital look to this transfer, where it seems like some kind of filtering may have been applied, something that adds to the overall softness. While there is grain in this presentation, it's relatively light looking. Some of the lighting choices tend to limit detail and fine detail, but in the bright environment of the dental office, detail pops more convincingly, especially in some of the extreme close-ups. There's very little of any age related damage.

Appassionata Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Appassionata features DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono tracks in both the original Italian and an English dub. As is my tradition, I'm recommending the original language track, though it, like the English, has occasional sync issues due to the fact that like most Italian films of its era it was post-looped. There's a boxiness to both language presentations here, something that especially noticeable when underscore appears. In fact, toggling between the two spoken language tracks and the isolated score track is an eye (and/or ear) opener, with the isolated track offering a much more full sounding accounting of the music.

Appassionata Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This is the rare Twilight Time release without at least a few bonus features. The only supplement is:

• Isolated Score Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.

Appassionata Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm tempted to describe Appassionata as Lolita had it been directed by someone like Erroll Morris (with maybe someone like Douglas Sirk stepping in to handle the wife material), but that doesn't adequately account for the film's weird "combo platter" of unsettling sexual content and roiling psychological dysfunctions. While performances are very good, the film's sanguine approach toward such provocative material is odd, to say the least. Technical merits are good to very good for those considering a purchase.