Reflections on ... Death Laid an Egg (1968)

Recently watched: Death Laid an Egg (1968). Original Italian title: La morte ha fatto l'uovo. Alternate titles: A Curious Way to Love. Death Trap. Plucked. Tagline: “See them tear each other apart. Then see what they do with the pieces!” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend Pal is accompanying me only semi-willingly). 

Adultery. Murder. Jealousy. Paranoia. Corporate intrigue. Industrial poultry farming! Berserk Italian film Death Laid an Egg crams-in all these aspects and more! But is it social satire? Horror movie? Thriller? Melodrama? Failed art movie (one of John Water’s favourite genres)? An example of the Italian genre giallo? Death may defy categorization, but it’s indisputably a trippy, idiosyncratic and visually ravishing oddity (director Giulio Questo knows a thing or two about jarring fragmentary editing and beautifully composing a shot).

/ Jean-Louis Trintignant as Marco /

/ Gina Lollobrigida as Anna /

The action unfolds amidst a moneyed Campari-drinking realm of chic Eurotrash alienation and jaded ennui where everyone is inscrutable and unsympathetic. (The stilted dialogue and English dubbing contribute to the artificiality and detachment, but the characters all behave as if zonked-out on tranquilizers throughout). Jean-Louis Trintignant (icon of mid-century European art cinema, who adds a sense of gravity) and Italian glamourpuss Gina Lollobrigida star as Marco and Anna, the rich proprietors of a cutting-edge intensive futuristic corporate chicken-processing factory. Their company has recently gone fully automated and laid-off all their blue-collar laborers, who continue to loiter menacingly outside in protest. Meanwhile, Marco is conducting an affair with his blonde nymphette secretary Gabri (Ewa Aulin, a pouting Bardot type, winner of Miss Teen Sweden 1965). Even more worryingly, Marco is a secret serial killer who’s been murdering prostitutes at a concrete brutalism-style motorway motel! (The unsuspecting prostitutes seem remarkably blasé when Marco dons little black leather “strangler’s gloves” and starts pulling knives out of his briefcase).

/ "Lingerie is important too. Your bra and panties are almost as important as what's under them." /

/ Jean Sobieski as the enigmatic Mondaini. Just what does he know about Marco’s activities? And what’s his connection to Gabri? All due regards to Paul Newman, but did anyone have more piercing blue eyes in cinema history than Sobieski? I previously only knew the strikingly handsome French actor from the 1963 film Strip-tease /

This premise barely hints at the wayward and disorienting charms of Death Laid an Egg. It’s also a great showcase for gloriously wooden leading lady Gina Lollobrigida. Bewigged, stately and expressionless, frequently stripped to lingerie, she resembles a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue illustration come to life. Modern actresses achieve that “blank-faced” look via Botox. Lollobrigida came to it naturally.

Watch Death Laid an Egg here: