'The Driver's Seat'

 

     I think it impossible not to be intrigued by the cast list at least: Elizabeth Taylor, Mona Washbourne, Ian Bannen and Andy Warhol. Such a frankly bizarre mixture excites speculation, surely.  It promises so much, but whether this film, based on a novella by Muriel Spark, produced by Franco Rossellini and directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, lives up to the expectation is another matter.  I think, on balance, it does not.  Which doesn't mean that it is without merit.  I'm not sure whether it was intentional or not but 'The Driver's Seat' is a sort of mirror of 'Death in Venice': northern European heads south, to Italy, and in the fragmentary remains of a past civilisation encounters death. To put it simply.

     Its main fault is the sense of longuer. At times, also, it is quite impenetrable, and it has that odd quality of detachment, of anomie perhaps, that is a hallmark of Italian cinema. All that said the cast is excellent. Warhol's two short appearances on the screen are, as can be imagined, enigmatic.  His acting may best be described as 'intriguing'.  Taylor and Bannen make for an interesting double act - sparring, sinister and ultimately menacing.  There is a persistent and deep undertow of violence in this film; the mere threat of it stalks virtually every frame. It poisons every interaction. Taylor's character, Lise, could be described as a fount of violence; there is a scene towards the end of the film in which she seduces a rather naive young man, played by Maxence Mailfort, thereby initiating him into manhood, that is also, by necessity, a seduction into the world of violence.  Indeed, perhaps it is her that is the driving seat all along.  One may suppose that Griffi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Raffaele La Capria, was making some political point here, say, about the state of Europe in the early 1970s. But the problem is with such an idea is the manner in which Griffi, or Cavani, or for that matter in a different context Kurosawa, choreograph violence. It is ambiguous, for instance in an attempted seduction (or is it rape?) where the camera lingers long on the eroticised torso of the assailant as his hand descends to his unseen penis. There is even a flash of homo-erotica in the scene where the same male character is given a good going-over by the police.

     I think it is this aestheticism of violence, this ambiguity, that makes 'The Drivers Seat' a passable example of the decadence of early 70s Italian, and more broadly European, cinema - which means, amongst other more indigestible things, it is beautiful to behold.  The cinematography is indeed excellent, the work of Vittorio Storaro, and some of the Italian actors, particularly Guido Mannari, easy on the eye.

The Driver's Seat

1974

Director                 Giuseppe Patroni Griffi
Cinematogrpahy  Vittorio Storaro
Producer               Franco Rossellini