Il profumo della signora in nero 1974

Horror Mystery Thriller. Sylvia, an industrial scientist, is troubled by strange hallucinations related to the tragic suicide of her mother. Director Francesco Barilli. Top credits Director Francesco Barilli.

See more at IMDbPro. Photos Top cast Edit. Maurizio Bonuglia Roberto as Roberto. Jho Jhenkins Andy as Andy. Nike Arrighi Orchidea as Orchidea. Sergio Forcina. Carla Mancini Elisabetta as Elisabetta. Orazio Orlando Nicola as Nicola.

Giuseppe Ravenna Gallant old man in the park as Gallant old man in the park uncredited. Francesco Barilli. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. Did you know Edit. Trivia Mimsy Farmer was the only choice to play the lead.

Goofs Signor Rossetti moving after being killed. Connections Featured in Poltrone rosse - Parma e il cinema User reviews 39 Review. Top review. A forgotten absurdity Admittedly a very hard to find forgotten Italian film, this may very well rank among the weirdest movies Europe has produced. I went into this one expecting a giallo, but instead of black gloved killers and endless red herrings I got psychological horror in the vein of Roman Polanski's Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby.

Although it does have affinities with the giallo genre. A psychologically scarred heroine with a tormented childhood, very good photography with bright colours, smooth camera-work and subtle frames that most of the time work on two levels. The story revolves around Silvia played by non other than Mimsi Farmer , an industrial scientist, with a troubled childhood who gradually loses her grip and starts having visions of a little girl, relives traumatizing events of the past in broad daylight, and soon begins to off those close to her.

It's good material that is worth a look for adventurous fans of Italian cinema. Seven out of When it comes to rare cult gems, The Perfume of the Lady in Black is a finely cut diamond!

Many rare Italian films have received wide releases recently, meaning that it's a tragedy that this film hasn't. While this film isn't the best to come from Italy, it's certainly well worth seeing for fans of the Italian thriller, and its cult value is immense! The film is often mistaken for a Giallo; but this seems to be more because of the fact that it's from the Giallo homeland than any affiliation with the sub-genre. The Perfume of the Lady in Black is more of a psychological thriller, although it does benefit from a colour scheme typical of Italy's most famous cult films.

The plot follows the story of Silvia Hacherman. We see her in a photograph over the title sequence, and it quickly becomes apparent that all is not right with her and her family. The film starts years later; Silvia is grown up and her parents are dead. However, their memory is not, and the beautiful young woman finds herself haunted by their memory.

Carrying on with the diamond idea The vibrant colour scheme which mainly consists of yellow ensures this and every scene is beautifully photographed by director Francesco Barilli. Barilli directs the film with care, and every vista is dripping with a double meaning bubbling below the surface. Mimsy Farmer who has worked with Italian legends Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci takes the lead role, and only adds to the aesthetic value. This beautiful actress is a delight to look at, and her image always suits the film.

The plot is character based, and the plot points are few. Because of this, several points will be lost on the casual viewer, and The Perfume of the Lady in Black is a film that needs to be viewed carefully in order for it to be fully appreciated. The film benefits from a foreboding atmosphere, which is perfectly backed up by the music score; and the way that it climaxes in bloody and brutal fashion brilliantly offsets the pace of what has gone before.

The Perfume of the Lady in Black is not an easy film to track down; but if you get the chance to see it, I definitely recommend taking it! I really enjoyed this and revelled in the wonderful way it was so beautifully shot.

With regard to Mimsy farmer, my feeling are somewhat ambivalent. She is far better in this than she was in Argento's Four Flies, but there is still something.

She is at once fragile and child like but also sexy and ruthless. By no means a natural beauty, she does make herself attractive and not with her clothes, her costumes here seem particularly unattractive, but she wears them well. As for the tale, it is rather gentle and varied for the most part with the gory violence reserved for the final section.

Comparisons have been made with work of Roman Polanski and certainly Repulsion comes to mind with the main protagonist either mad or being driven mad. Then there is Rosemary's Baby and yes, that wonderful apartment block in Rome reminds one of that in the earlier film and those strange looking co-tenants, not to mention the elements of witchcraft and worse.

HumanoidOfFlesh 8 March This film influenced the works of Dario Argento-there are themes and set-pieces that would re-appear,virtually unchanged,in Argento's "Deep Red","Suspiria" and "Inferno".

The cinematography is simply astounding and the score by Nicola Piovani is genuinely creepy. Mimsy Farmer plays an industrial scientist named Silvia who is troubled by strange hallucinations. These images that seem so real point to a tragic event from her childhood:the suicide of her mother. Overall,this Italian baffling psycho-shocker is a suitably unsettling exercise in psychological horror with incredibly beautiful Mimsy Farmer. A must-see for anyone interested in Italian horror. Reading some rave reviews l really thought had missing something on the movie, but on the bottom has a reviewer who gave 1 out 10, well it's explains all my early feelings after watching this psychological thriller, too haunting, threatening and so inconclusive, Giallo isn't, Minsy Farmer has a convincing acting, pretty lonely woman who has been scarring to see a little girl at his house, all key elements doesn't find grounds to support such bizarre ending, a lack of reliability, could her had killed his mother to commit adultery?

Red-Barracuda 6 April The Perfume of the Lady in Black is a distinctive Italian thriller from the less obvious end of the giallo spectrum. It brought me to mind of other more psychologically focused gialli such as Footprints on the Moon with its dreamlike feel and mentally fragile female protagonist who finds herself in the midst of mysterious events that connect with something strange in her past.

Its story centres on a woman who starts to experience strange hallucinations that include visions of a mysterious black-clad woman who applies perfume and a ghostly little girl. Director Francesco Barilli helms this one and, on the strength of this film, he is a director who definitely didn't get a chance to make enough movies.

This is a very odd giallo which mixes unusual elements together such as Alice in Wonderland and the African occult. It's presented in a visual style that is often breathtakingly beautiful; one scene involving a medium particularly stands out, where the use of colour and mirrors is quite wonderful. On the whole, it's a very classy production that begins like it means to go on with a fantastic extended opening crane shot that takes us from a child's toy boat in a fountain way up to the high balconies where a couple of the key characters are introduced.

This visual elegance in some ways can throw the viewer off-guard however as there are some proper visceral shocks to come in this one, as anybody who has seen it can attest. On the basis of that movie I wasn't too impressed with her, seeing as she over-acted excessively; which is why I was so pleasantly surprised with her work here, where she is in practically every scene and does pretty convincing work in a role that requires a decent amount of range.

This is certainly a high quality giallo, although it will no doubt not have universal appeal to all seasoned fans of the sub-genre given it travels down a less hysterical path to its conclusion.

It does venture into some very unusual territory for these kinds of films, however, and certainly is a very fine example of the genre. Cineanalyst 25 August This giallo, "The Perfume of the Lady in Black," gets off to a meandering start only to conclude in an amusingly bonkers final act.

The protagonist, Sylvia, and her boyfriend are supposedly scientists, to the interest of nobody, but for which the film wastes time early on mentioning. This segues into an awkward and irrelevant conversation between the white couple and an African over witchcraft. We never see the two doing any science-y stuff, either, with the boyfriend coming and going on the pretext of expeditions, while Sylvia calls in sick to wander about irrationally to play the part of a damsel in distress increasingly untethered to reality as she delves into delusions of her past, including interactions with herself as a little girl.

Her constant whimpering tends to be annoying and most of the picture relies heavily for suspense upon the score that elicits an atmosphere ripped off from somewhere between "Psycho" and "Rosemary's Baby" But, then, things seem to turn around during the rape scene--a laughably bad sequence where Sylvia throws herself on the floor in another fit of hysteria, to only next struggle to get a grip on any of the conspicuously placed and foreshadowed bricks on the floor.

Gee, I wonder whether she'll hit him in the head with one. Subsequent shots and scenes tend to be bewilderingly disjointed, and references to Lewis Carroll's Alice books come pouring in during these later scenes.

Sylvia played by an actress with the apt name of "Mimsy" smiles at a White Rabbit display at a taxidermy shop, and what is done to a feline relative here of the Cheshire Cat, Dinah and Kitty is disturbing. There's a bit of a mirror motif, including at least three instances of characters first appearing in shots through their reflections. The two Sylvias also read "Alice in Wonderland" and set up a slasher-film-style mad tea party.

Too bad the majority of the film's runtime is tedious, because this last act is of interest and amusement. Bezenby 28 February It's hard to review gialli that deviate from the normal formula, because if you compare that film to a similar film, you're revealing some of the surprises of the plot. It's okay to compare, say, Strip Nude For Your Killer with Blood and Black Lace, because most people go into these film expecting a gloved or masked mysterious killer and plenty of suspects, but when that's all thrown out of the window, things become difficult.

I'd recommend doing the same with this film. The Perfume of the Lady In Black is a strong contender for best looking Giallo ever, as the characters inhabit a world not only of strong primary colours blue being a prominent colour in everyone's apartments , but also a world where various hues and shades of purple and pink are in abundance. There's also a strong floral theme to both the decoration of apartments and people clothes, with at least one of the characters also having a floral name.

Stuffed animals and taxidermy also feature everywhere, and a lot of the time the shots are invaded by outside light sources, like lightening, or a flashing sign. Silvia, seemingly, has had a pretty rough childhood, with her Naval father often away for months at a time, and her mother having an affair with a nasty looking man who also tries to it on with her.

We learn this not so much as flashbacks, but as real physical things happening right in front of Silvia's eyes. Something strange is happening to Silvia, but what could it be? What doesn't help is when her neighbours talk her into having her palm read by a blind medium in a scene that uses mirrors to great effect. Silvia's troubled childhood comes to light and things start to spiral out of control when she's apparently visited by herself as a child!

Things get stranger and stranger, and reality becomes questionable, and I'm only skirting around a lot of the stuff that goes on here to avoid ruining it for the three or so people who'll read this on the IMDB over the next sixty years. One thing I will say is that not every question is answered by the end of the film, but I think that might have been deliberate.

The end of this one makes you question everything that's gone before it, and even question reality in itself. That's not to say it's not without scares either. Or gore. So stick around for that too. Stevieboy 8 October This odd piece is often touted as a giallo movie but there's no police investigation, no unknown black glove wearing killer.

Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion spring to mind. As is typical of Italian movies of this time it's brutal, looks beautiful and comes with a great soundtrack. This film is notorious for having an ending that is as bizarre as it is gruesome.

I'll certainly be watching this again. A few months ago I wrote a little review for "Le orme" The footsteps. I'm surprised how much of that review could be re-used, almost word for word, for "Il profumo". I suppose that both belong to the same Italian sub-genre or trend Anyhow, here it comes for "Il profumo" : it's a superbly beautiful, wonderfully shot movie with an exquisite colour palette and an eerie, almost surreal atmosphere.

It makes a lot of sense in an emotional, dream-like way, although I wouldn't like to bet a large sum of money on it making entire sense in a chrono- logical way. I've watched the movie twice now and I remain convinced, rightly or wrongly, that some pieces do not fit entirely into the puzzle.

Still, it casts quite a spell - this is not the kind of movie one forgets easily, or at all. Many of the moments or episodes are hair-raising in their simplicity : just watch the scene, at the beginning, where the heroine visits the grave of her mother, in an act of filial piety. It's a normal little grave in a normal little Roman-Catholic graveyard.

Suddenly a strong wind blows - and there's an overwhelming sense of some ancient mischief or forgotten sorrow raising its head. As in "Le orme", the movie contains beautiful and evocative imagery. For instance there is the motif related to taxidermy and to the collection of rare butterflies. Beware, o women and girls, beware the men who cannot see beauty without wanting to kill and immobilise it Last but not least there is a masterful music score to enjoy.

Witchfinder-General 9 December When I finally saw it recently, the film was not quite what I expected, but not in a negative sense, as it certainly didn't disappoint me.

Having deliberately read no reviews before watching it, I was probably most surprised by the film since I had been mislead to believe that "The Perfume Of The Lady In Black" is a typical Giallo, whereas it is much rather an occult psychological Horror film. The fact that this beautifully filmed cult-gem is often named a Giallo is probably the stunning visual style, which reminds of many early 70s Gialli, such as some of the films by Sergio Martino, or Dario Argento's earlier work.

The early films of Roman Polanski especially "Repulsion" clearly served as an influence to this film. If there is one Giallo that "The Perfume Of The Lady In Black" is comparable to, it is probably Sergio Martino's "Tutti I Colori Del Buio" "All The Colors Of The Dark", , but the similarity also lies in the nightmarish atmosphere of upcoming insanity rather than in the Giallo-esquire elements such as the typical depiction of murders, the mystery about the killer's identity etc.

What one will find, however, is cinematic beauty, genuine creepiness, a nightmarish atmosphere and utter insanity in equal doses in this bizarre, sometimes confusing, sometimes spine-chilling gem. The beautiful Mimsy Farmer stars as Silvya Hachermann, a chemist tormented by nightmarish visions related to her own childhood I don't want do give too much of the storyline away, since it is unforeseeable and often bizarre, but I am sure it will appeal to most of my fellow Italian Horror fans.

If the film has one weakness, it is that it is sometimes a bit too confusing, and does not always make perfect sense, but then, the film's obscure, sometimes surreal nature mostly makes up for this. Mimsy Farmer is once again wonderful in her role. Farmer is known to Italian Horror fans for her roles in films like "Macchie Solari" aka. Beautiful as she is, Farmer also has a great talent to play women on the cusp of mental instability, and she once again delivers an outstanding performance here.

The other performances are all very good, especially memorable are Mario Scaccia as a friendly elderly neighbor, and Orazio Orlando as a truly sleazy scumbag. The photography is as impressive as the settings, and the many occult elements only make the film more effective. The score by Nicola Piovani is also great and contributes a lot to the film's creepy atmosphere.

Beautiful and terrifying in equal measures, this stylish and obscure cult-gem is highly recommended to all my fellow fans of Italian Horror. She did, however, have a long career in the US, starting with Gidget Goes Hawaiian to a few biker movies. She remained in Italy making films until her divorce, and then moved to France where she continued acting.

This is more a psychological horror film that a true giallo. It was a tale of a woman going mad over unresolved traumas from her childhood. Or, maybe it was a tale of a woman being driven mad for nefarious purposes. It was not totally clear, but there were little clues throughout.

Whatever the case, the ending was a total surprise and nothing led you to expect it. Alongside Bazzoni's wonderfully oblique 'Footprints on the Moon' and Avati's macabre 'The House of the laughing Windows' unconventional genre mastermind Francesco Barilli takes a similarly skewed, surrealistic view of genre, taking all the expected Giallo tropes of fragile, tormented heroine, dark family histories, furtive neighbours, rapidly spiralling madness and histrionic violence and twisting them into divinely hellish, warped vistas and febrile visions of nerve-shredding mania in order to turn the base mettle of Giallo into burnished carat cinematic gold!

Ostensibly a darkly provocative off-beat thriller concerning a somewhat fragile young woman Silvia Hacherman Mimsy Farmer the increasingly restless ghosts of her past, some especially violent matriarchal conflict and a healthy Hitchcockian dollop of 'BBS' Bonkers Blond Syndrome and mood maestro Barilli takes all these tantalizing terror tropes and expertly weaves a delirious, phantasmagorical descent into the malevolent twilight world of febrile fever dreams, outright madness and the vilest practices of a black magic cult.

Is Silvia succumbing to a schizophrenic episode or is she simply the oblivious sacrificial lamb in some horribly debased ancient rite? In this fascinatingly hallucinatory hybrid of Gothic Giallo and psychedelic pagan nightmare Barilli's majestic muse Mimsy Farmer is a constant delight to behold, a uniquely quixotic protagonist whose lustrous beauty obfuscates the blackest ferment within. Mimsy delivers a truly mesmerizing performance in maestro Franco Barilli's wickedly subversive Grand Guignol Giallo which offers more adventurous horror fans a jarring, jaw-droppingly feral finale, this heady feast for the senses might just prove to be a little too raw for some viewers to digest!

And no discussion of 'The Perfume of the Lady in Black' would be in any way comprehensive without complimenting the lustrous, profoundly evocative score by the enormously talented Nicola Piovani, who has arguably composed one of the most sublime, doomily effective themes of its kind.

Bababooe 18 February Crappy story, nothing makes sense, decent sets music and cinematography, that's it. OK, my vote is 3, but a 1 given to balance the incredible praise for this garbage movie.