Dark Purpose (1964)

Great Film overall

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

How do I dislike thee, Dark Purpose? Let me count the ways. Start with the horrible print utilized by TCM for the film's recent airing. It's horribly pan and scanned, with scratches and splotches throughout, and really ugly faded colour that looks more like Eastmancolor than Technicolor. Move on to the wretched sound recording, with the dialogue seemingly recorded by having the cast post-synch their lines whilst enclosed within a burlap sack. Then there's the deeply disappointing music from normally reliable composer Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, a florid and overly dramatic score that does the thin and unoriginal plot line no favours. I'd also love to know exactly how co-directors George Marshall and Vittorio Sala collaborated on this film: Dark Purpose displays absolutely nothing in the way of artistry; surprising considering Marshall was a Hollywood pro and that Sala's next film was the far superior Spy In Your Eye (1965). Of course it's cause for celebration when obscure films like this pop up on TCM--more, please!--but sometimes they're obscure for a reason. At least George Sanders is good.

**MAJOR SPOILERS** Traveling to Naples Italy to appraise Count Paolo Barbarnelli's, Rossano Brazzi, vast and very expensive art collection the appraiser world renowned museum curator Raymond Fontaine's, George Sanders, secretary Karen Williams, Shirley Jones, is taken under the spell of the dashing and handsome, as well as a bit mysterious, Italian nobleman.In fact the first meeting between Karen and Paolo wasn't exactly that romantic with him having to call off his German Shepard guard and attack dog Gallo from tearing a terrified Karen to pieces. It later turned that the vicious Gallo wasn't the only one who was a bit overprotective of his master Count Paolo. Paolo's somewhat mentally unstable 19 year-old daughter Cora, Giorgia Moll, also had a strange and unnatural attraction towards him. So strange that she was capable of murdering anyone, like Karen, who tried to take Paolo away from her.Were, as well as Karen, are later informed by Paolo that Cora has suffered a serious head injury while skying in Switzerland two years ago. That accident, skiing head first into a tree, has caused Cora to lose her memory of everything that happened in her life up to that time!Paolo for his part wasn't really interested in starting up a love affair with Karen who was young enough to be his, like Cora, daughter. He was already involved with local boutique owner Monique Bouier, Micheline Presle,who in fact he set up, by financing, in the clothing business. It soon turns out that Karen whom the Count fell heads over heels for has two, not one, persons in his life who are out to get her for trying to take Paolo away from them: His daughter Cora and lover Monique.***SPOILER*** We first get an inkling of just what Paolo is really up to when he's spotted at a swanky Naples restaurant, that he took Karen out to dinner, by American tourists Midge and Marvin Thompson, Matailda Calnan & Charles Fawcett. Even though Paolo told Keren that his wife died on him some fifteen years ago Midge insisted that she, together with Marvin, had met him and his old lady just two years ago While they were vacationing at St. Moritz! In fact the two couples, the Thompsons and Barbrelli's, spent the entire time at St. Moritz dancing dinning and conversing with each other! So it just couldn't have been a case of mistaken identity on Midge's part in her and Marvin knowing Paolo and his late wife some 13 years after she supposedly died!Very upset Paolo, in an uncontrollable rage in his secret being discovered, rushed out of the restaurant with Karen, who's now a bit confused about his intentions with her, tagging along. It's later when, with the help of Cora, Karen discovers the Count's deep and deadly secret that he then plans to do her in! This before the truth about Paolo's secret life becomes public with him ending up being arrested for grand larceny and murder! And with his secret being exposed everything that Paolo worked connived and killed for, like his multi-million dollar art collection, is in danger of going together with him down in flames or up the river.Alone and locked in Paolo's villa with nowhere to go in order to get away from the crazed Count Karen is now not only under attack by her former lover but his vicious attack dog Gallo as well. ****ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT**** It turns out that Gallo in trying to get to Karen, as she and Count Paolo were struggling at the foot of of a water fountain, miscalculated and missed his mark! This mistake on Gallo's part turned out to be a very very lucky break for Karen but not for his master the the maniacal Count Paolo Barbarelli.

Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting this bizarrely loopy international production as "Dark Purpose." It is full of secret passages, loonies in the attic, marital deceptions, fits of hysteria and mysterious deaths -- plus some slavering dogs. The TCM print is gorgeous-looking, but, alas, the soundtrack is horrendous, rendering a good half of the film unintelligible. Wonderful locales and interiors, but abysmally ham-fisted direction by George Marshall and Vittorio Sala. Doris Hume Kilburn wrote the novel that has lifted elements of women in domestic peril from most of the genre from "Jane Eyre" through "Midnight Lace." A very nice performance by Shirley Jones is sadly undone by an over-the-top George Sanders, a poorly scripted Giorgia Moll and a lazy Rossano Brazzi.

International mishmash from a novel by Doris Hume Kilburn involving American secretary Shirley Jones with handsome, mysterious count Rossano Brazzi in Naples. Shirley's abroad doing research with her boss, an urbane art curator; Brazzi is their host who resides in a cliffside Italian villa. Their rocky first meeting quickly turns to romance, despite an ex-lady friend hanging about, as well as Rossano's unstable daughter, a shut-in who insists to Jones that she's Mrs. Brazzi. French-Italian co-production, distributed Stateside by Universal under the title "Dark Purpose", has enough red herrings and suspenseful clinches to make it mildly enjoyable. Jones gets to be a bit sexier here than in previous films (with the exception of a matronly hairdo); matching up well with Brazzi, Shirley has some sass at the beginning, though her character's declaration of love comes too soon, after which she becomes a simp heroine. Brazzi, who must have been tired of playing Euro-cads by this time, is alternately fatherly and patronizing--to everyone!--but the dark streak in his character suits him well this time. George Sanders is typically pithy as Shirley's boss, and the editing and music score are both up to par. **1/2 from ****