At the Quad cinema I saw Spirits of the Dead, a 1968 anthology film of Edgar Allan Poe stories directed in segments by Roger Vadim, Federico Fellini, and Louis Malle. It was interesting to watch, I loved how colorful and gothic the stories were. The Vadim one had Jane Fonda looking like a cross between a Middle Ages princess and a 1960s fashion model whose cruelty to villagers is cured when she falls in love with a wild horse. This was my favorite because of Fonda’s mixed performance of being cruel at first, and then learning compassion through the influence of her cousin (Peter Fonda) and having a connection with the horse. And I really liked her outfits and how anachronistic they were with the time period.
The Malle one had Alain Delon as a sadist fighting with his doppelgänger and being psychologically tortured, that ended up being the least interesting segment for me because I didn’t care what happened to the characters, and there was an interminably long poker scene in it that dragged on for some time.
The last segment was by Fellini, where Terence Stamp played a debauched actor who gets wrapped up in this twisted world that feels like a mix of the movie world of 8 1/2 with the surrealism of Juliet of the Spirits. I liked the darkness of it, but was tired by that point and kept nodding in and out, so I didn’t follow the whole story, but luckily was awake for its finale.
So while I didn’t think this movie was great, it was a fun experiment to watch 1960s auteurs try their hands at Poe stories.
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