Fantasma d'amore (1981)
Directed by Dino Risi

Film Review

Dino Risi was perhaps not the obvious filmmaker to direct this dark fantasy, an unsettling melange of romance and ghost story, but, with the support of a stunning pair of lead actors, he manages to come to grips with an unfamiliar genre and delivers the most haunting and poetic evocation of a romantic passion that refuses to die.   Fantasma d'amore (a.k.a. Fantôme d'amour or Ghost of Love) is a far cry from Risi's better known Italian comedies, one of his more sombre and introspective works which, despite being pretty joyless, somehow cannot fail to be both riveting and poignant.  For anyone who has had to bear the loss of a treasured love the film is particularly potent and brings some measure of consolation with its central message that true love is eternal and, unlike the stuff we are made of, will not be devoured and destroyed by time.  Love is perhaps the only thing in creation that is spared by Chronos.

It hard to imagine a better choice of actors for the two lead roles in this film than Marcello Mastroianni and Romy Schneider, two of the most charismatic performers of their time, both gifted with an extraordinary talent for expressing their characters' inner feelings and motivations with the subtlest of external gestures.  When we first see Romy Schenider at the start of the film she is virtually unrecognisable, so effectively have the make-up team destroyed her stunning good looks to age her by about twenty or so years.  It is a shock and a relief when we next see her, not as a bent and withered old crone, but as a woman in the flush of youth, the fulsome expression of the male protagonist's most ardent desires.

Extraordinary to think that within two years of making this film Romy Schneider would be dead, having endured a series of extreme personal tragedies.  Unlike the old woman she plays in the film, Romy would not be devoured by time - her charm and her beauty would be preserved in aspic, through her films and her photographs.  Fantasma d'amore almost deserves to be retitled Fantasma de Romy, so powerfully does it arouse our fondest feelings for an actress who, during her brief life, appeared to have been blessed and cursed by divine powers and who now, thirty years after her death, haunts our consciousness like no other.  In the film, Marcello Mastroianni expresses exactly what we feel when his character is confronted with the spectre of his old love and experiences a fierce rekindling of an amour fou.  Once you fall in love with Romy it is impossible to get her out of your mind.

Film Synopsis

Whilst travelling in a bus in his home town of Pavia, Nino Monti, a successful lawyer, encounters an old woman who bears a striking resemblance to Anna Brigatti, a woman he was once madly in love with.  That evening, Nino meets the old woman a second time and she reveals that she is indeed Anna and that her love for him has not dwindled.  Shortly afterwards, the lawyer witness a horrific murder.  Puzzled by these events, Nino recounts them to an old friend, a doctor who reveals that Anna died three years ago whilst under his care.  A short while later, Nino receives a telephone call from a woman claiming to be his former lover.  They arrange to meet up at Anna's luxury villa.  When Nino next sees Anna she is exactly as he remembers her, his one true love...