Indecipherable
Our second movie for Andressfest’16 was the 1977 Italian comedy drama ‘Doppio Delitto’, or ‘Double Murder’. Continuing Ursula’s modus operandi of only working with the best while simultaneously being the worst, here she was joined by Marcello Mastroianni and Peter Ustinov. She played the Princess Dell’Orso, a beautiful, aristocratic actress who stops at nothing to get what she wants. Up to and including taking all of her clothes off.
As you can imagine, this was a real stretch for Ursula Andress.
Unfortunately, 'Doppio Delitto' doesn’t seem to exist in an English dub or subtitles. And none of the assembled AndressFesters spoke Italian. Still, 'Doppio Delitto' is one of the very few Ursula movies we haven’t seen, so we decided to get plunge in and make up our own dialogue.
Some elderly rich dude is murdered. The local police detective investigates the residents of the palazzo where the crime occurred. He interviews Peter Ustinov. He interviews Ursula Andress. He interviews Agnostina Belli. He interviews Peter Ustinov again. He interviews Ursula Andress again. And on and on it goes. Marcello suspects that Peter Ustinov and Ursula Andress are hiding something, especially after a second man is murdered. However eventually it transpires that an artist living in the palazzo killed both men.
Or at least that’s what I think was going on. It turned out that 'Doppio Delitto' was a very dialogue-intensive film, which is a problem when your audience doesn’t understand the dialogue. Or, indeed, when one of your actresses is famous for her body rather than her nuanced delivery of the spoken word. In its defense, however, it did feature an entirely gratuitous nude scene for Ursula, so it wasn’t a completely baffling experience.
The other minor but intriguing thing I took from this movie was the name of the actress playing the heroine, Agnostina Belli. Her name literally means ‘Unbelief in God War’. One wonders what conversation her parents had before naming her:
Mother: I think we should call her Daisy, after the flower.
Demon Father: I THINK WE SHOULD CALL HER ANTICHRIST BLOOD DEVASTATION!
Mother: Um…
Demon Father: AFTER MY GRANDMOTHER!
Mother: I’m all for tradition, but let’s maybe dial it back a tad.
As you can imagine, this was a real stretch for Ursula Andress.
Unfortunately, 'Doppio Delitto' doesn’t seem to exist in an English dub or subtitles. And none of the assembled AndressFesters spoke Italian. Still, 'Doppio Delitto' is one of the very few Ursula movies we haven’t seen, so we decided to get plunge in and make up our own dialogue.
Some elderly rich dude is murdered. The local police detective investigates the residents of the palazzo where the crime occurred. He interviews Peter Ustinov. He interviews Ursula Andress. He interviews Agnostina Belli. He interviews Peter Ustinov again. He interviews Ursula Andress again. And on and on it goes. Marcello suspects that Peter Ustinov and Ursula Andress are hiding something, especially after a second man is murdered. However eventually it transpires that an artist living in the palazzo killed both men.
Or at least that’s what I think was going on. It turned out that 'Doppio Delitto' was a very dialogue-intensive film, which is a problem when your audience doesn’t understand the dialogue. Or, indeed, when one of your actresses is famous for her body rather than her nuanced delivery of the spoken word. In its defense, however, it did feature an entirely gratuitous nude scene for Ursula, so it wasn’t a completely baffling experience.
The other minor but intriguing thing I took from this movie was the name of the actress playing the heroine, Agnostina Belli. Her name literally means ‘Unbelief in God War’. One wonders what conversation her parents had before naming her:
Mother: I think we should call her Daisy, after the flower.
Demon Father: I THINK WE SHOULD CALL HER ANTICHRIST BLOOD DEVASTATION!
Mother: Um…
Demon Father: AFTER MY GRANDMOTHER!
Mother: I’m all for tradition, but let’s maybe dial it back a tad.
posted by Blandwagon at 10:27 PM
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