Paula Hammond - Features EditorOut now on DVD and blu-ray, Luigi Bazzoni’s (The Fifth Cord) Footprints is the most visually stunning Giallo you will ever see.
Originally released in 1975, Footprints is a film you won’t easily forget. Whether you like it, really depends on how much patience you have. There’s a mystery at the heart of this mesmerising movie — and neither Bazzoni nor Mario Fanelli (who wrote the book that the screenplay is based on) are in a hurry to give viewers the big reveal.
But then this was the ‘70s when a Russian film could deliver a ten-minute opening shot in complete silence and still have audiences queuing round the block at the cinema to see it.
Florinda Bolkan (Flavia The Heretic) delivers a masterful, nuanced performance bringing captivating depth to the character of Alice — a young translator grappling with memory loss and struggling to recall three missing days. Tormented by nightmare visions of a sinister scientist (Klaus Kinski, Nosferatu the Vampyre) deliberately abandoning astronauts to die on the Moon, Alice embarks on a quest to unravel the mystery shrouding her identity and the events of those missing days — a pursuit which culminates in [SPOILERS] murder.
Bazzoni’s surrealist vision is brought to life by three-time Oscar winner Vittorio Storaro’s (Apocalypse Now, The Last Emperor) striking cinematography, which delivers haunting, dream-like visuals. When Alice begins to question her concept of where reality stops, and memory and dreams begin, then we’re really down the rabbit hole.
If you’re used to your films big and bold, with broad-brushstroke themes and characters, then Footsteps may be a shock to the system. But this is the sort of slow-burn thriller that was once ubiquitous.
Love it or hate it, this a film that reminds you reminds that, once, films weren’t simply money-making franchises. They were brimming with ideas, challenging and emotionally charged.
Footprints is presented here restored from 4K scans of the original camera negative, finally doing justice to the exquisite unearthly visions of its creators.
Available in DVD, on blu-ray, and as a digital download from Shameless Films now.
Special features include:
- Three cuts of the film: Director’s integral Cut (96 mins), Director’s integral Cut with Italian Credits (96 mins) and USA Version (94 mins).
- Remembering the Moon, introduction by star Florinda Bolkan.
- Master of Light ,interview with Vittorio Storaro.
- To the Moon, interview with Ida Galli aka Evelyn Stewart.
- Audio commentary by Film-Critic Genre-Expert Rachael Nisbet.
- Original Italian theatrical trailer.
- New English Subtitles over the Optional Original Italian + switchable SDH over the English language version.
- Full HD 1080P encode from restored 4K scans of the original camera negative in 1.85:1 widescreen.
