© Euro International Film
Lino Capolicchio in The House with Laughing Windows (1976)
Lino Capolicchio in The House with Laughing Windows (1976)
The House with Laughing Windows
(Arrow Video 4K UltraHD)
Giallo was an Italian film genre that injected crime mysteries with derangement and a dose of the uncanny. In director Pupi Avati’s The House with Laughing Windows (1976), an art restorer is hired by business leaders in a remote village to repair a church fresco. “Without tourism around here, it’s all over,” the businessman declares. The restored fresco of a martyred saint was supposed to draw visitors, but for the restorer, it draws only trouble.
The village is an unquiet place. The young leave for lack of jobs and opportunities. The schoolteacher is a loose woman; the priest is cynical on human nature and the restorer’s strange friend (who knows more than he’s saying) falls to his death from a window. The police call it suicide, but who can be sure? And there is something disturbingly hyper-real about that fresco. Is the village haunted by “remains of the war,” including the Nazi occupation? The new release includes a booklet of essays, a mini-documentary and more. (David Luhrssen)
