"The Mystery of a Tormented Soul" Did you really have an affair with a sixteen-year-old man?
- No.
I was fifteen.
The Russian translation of the title of this film – “The Mystery of the Illegitimate” – contradicts the truth. What is happening in the picture.
What would be more appropriate here would look like what I met on the expanses of Googl - not literal, but accurate - "The mystery of the tortured soul".
The debut picture of photographer Jerry Schatzberg turned out to be a film about Faye and for Faye: no one shot the actress with such tenderness as Schatzberg. No one so beautifully filled the face of Faye frame, no one so reverently to her sharpened figure zoomed and no one so desperately (photographically (!) building the frame) has not captured – before – the Goddess and the Star. The actress should be in the frame, so that the viewer does not care about anything else.
Nobody.
Redford, Nicholson, Newman... Faye is the Queen of Chinatown of the 70s, one of the last Hollywood stars as he was once known and as he will not be remembered now. Jerry and Faye (director and actress) dated before the filming of "The Riddle of a Tormented Soul"; and before Faye's affair with Mastroianni, a break with which occurred just in the early 70s. Jerry gave Faye this movie. Just like Federico Fellini gave his wife “Juliet and perfume”.
Faye plays model Lou/Emily. A film about emptiness and nothing. Both in unlimited volume and quantity drives crazy.
Heroes talk about how important it is to find in life "grace" - grace, mercy, grace. Beauty, harmony.
Faye plays diligently: the first half looks at the gap, resurrecting Bergman’s “Face to Face” in memory, and then something goes wrong. And then Faye's misdirected out of line. The next hour it was so passionately directed that you continue not without pleasure to absorb. Quote from the Shanghai Express; Faye says that photography takes a part of the soul.
The film moves from the category of “Three Days of the Condor” and “Teleset” to the category of “Eyes of Laura Mars” and “Dear Mommy”. Not a bad thing, anyway.
Faye is drowning in nothing. On the cover of Vogue, someone’s new face with slanting eyes flaunts, and the heroine says to Aaron [the hero symbolizing Jerry himself] into the phone: “They didn’t even notice.”
And then Aaron [Jerry] shows up and Faye has tears in her eyes. Just one question: “Am I good?”
"Yes, you were good."
The picture is of great interest to fans of Faye Dunaway. In 1971, the actress was nominated for a Golden Globe. Forty years later, a restored version of The Riddle of a Tormented Soul was screened as part of the 64th Cannes Film Festival.