Being Film #20 for Hooptober 2025
After seeing Luigi Bazzoni’s debut film The Possessed earlier for this marathon, I was even more eager to check out The Fifth Cord, his second foray into giallo, particularly as that film straddled the line between dreamlike noir and paranoid Lynchian nightmare more than what we would come to define the genre as. But in the wake of Argento’s Bird With the Crystal Plumage Bazzoni adopts some of the same visual cues and geometric framing that would become trademarks of the movement. He also – just as Argento did in his follow-up The Cat o’ Nine Tails – emphasize the mystery and thriller aspects more than the visceral blood and horror, in the process creating a great star vehicle for his lead and capturing an often overlooked essence of the form: the spiraling madness of a situation intent on sucking you into its design.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Agatha Christie by way of Italian giallo? Yes, please! Andrea Bild has it rough: on the outs with one lover, confused with another, and drinking his sorrows as a hard-nosed reporter away at a New Years party with a cast of fanciful characters. One young man, John Lubbock leaves and is found brutally beaten the next morning, a cast off glove left at the scene. Bild investigates, and soon learns another person from the party is brutally killed, and another glove – this time with one of the fingers cut off – is left at the scene. Is it a key that there are four more murders yet to be committed? Bild needs to find out the connection between the victims, narrow down the suspects and fix his love life…all while every sign points to him as the killer…
I think this movie lives or dies on its lead, and Franco Nero is great as Bild – he’s almost stupidly handsome and masculine, but has a piercing intelligence in his eyes and he knows how to do the jaded, weary and wary investigator in a way that lets you sympathize with his woes while never quite forgetting he’s the cause of them. It may not be the star vehicle Django was, but it’s still a great showcase for demonstrating why Nero was and is an international star.
On the other side of the coin, I was hoping for more startling directing choices from Bazzoni, especially after being so impressed with The Possessed. But a lot of the framing and camera work here feels a bit perfunctory: even the overt giallo references like the POV shot of the killer chasing down Bild’s editor in the park feels rote and a touch unimaginative.
But when he’s engaged it’s absolutely thrilling. The climactic chase through an abandoned building where Bild catches up to and exposes the killer’s identity is breathless in its excitement, and the way the camera chases them in turn, the light and shadows moving swiftly is what I want to see from Bazzoni. Maybe he got too bogged down trying to clarify all the twists and turns of the plot, much of which are such obvious red herrings it does drag The Fifth Cord down a bit in my estimation. There’s a loose thread that ends up exposing a weird underage sex ring, and besides showing the depravity of the various suspects I really don’t get what the point was.
Instead just give me Nero simultaneously juggling beautiful women, yelling at his superiors and chasing down thugs. I’m a simple man, with simple tastes.
Cinema Dual 
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