Bertolucci's Shadow Hecate is the most narrative, perhaps because it is based on the novel, and Schmid’s most primitive film. Everything in this picture is one big template: the general and middle plans, completely superseding the large ones, level any claims to psychologism and reduce the picture to the level of television "soap"; mediocre acting, cardboard, falsity of interiors (although the film was shot, apparently, not in the pavilion, the feeling of non-impersonality of what is happening does not let go), the plot, only imitating drama and - all this except for the Baro visual experiments of Renato Bert's camera (which here, in comparison with other films of Schmid, not so much speaks about the stage of evolution, which is very interesting to us).
This time, Schmid is trying to build a style dispute with Bertolucci, although eight years before the appearance of the addressee of the dispute (!), the painting “Under the Cover of Heaven”, also sang colonial novels against the background of the Arab culture of North Africa, but if for the Italian the main topic of research is the inability of Europeans to fit into the idyllic landscape of Africa, the fracture and fragility of consciousness make it impossible harmonious life within traditional culture, until for Schmid the main conflict unfolds between Europeans because of their unwillingness to understand each other.
The story told in the film is very reminiscent of the collision of George Orwell's novel Days in Burma, only the gender roles are changed. There, the main character, a British officer, reveres the culture of the Burmese, while in his beloved she causes nothing but disgust. In Hecate, Clotilda is interested in local culture, while the main character is sick of it, perhaps here lies the reason for their quarrel: the inability of the hero-diplomat to overcome the Eurocentrism of his worldview, leading him to arrogance and conceit, fixates on himself and repels Clotilde, looking for everything new.
“Hecate” is a poor film conceptually and substantively, so it has to speculate, look for additional meanings, justify the secondary message, however, this is the most audience, the most accessible picture of Schmid, in respect of which there are no difficulties in interpretation. Once again, we have the story of passion, told for the millionth time, and shown in a banal and stereotypical way. Why watch it? Except that in order to see how the Swiss director argues with Bertolucci on the level of form, but he does not criticize his aesthetics, as Schmid and Schreter did in Dove or with Fassbinder in Shadow of Angels, there is no irony at all, Hecate is not a postmodern pastish, for this it is too trivial, it does not have the sophistication of intellectual and stylistic games of other films of Schmid.
Schmid argues with Bertolucci about how to tell the story of passion, the reference point for him (after all, the film “Under the Cover of Heaven” has not yet been shot) is, of course, “The Last Tango in Paris”. From the point of view of Schmid, now in the early 80s, when the tape came out on the screens, it is impossible to tell the story of a stormy relationship between a man and a woman without TV stamps, you just need to take these stamps in brackets, make them obvious to the viewer. Again, like his past paintings, Schmid argues that life has gone banal and it is impossible to tell about it without clichés. The lack of irony that could blossom even the most kitschy narrative makes Hecate a flat artistic statement, hopelessly outdated and useless to anyone, except for housewives and fans of television soap.