A Quiet Place in the Country

Featuring art by Jim Dine and music by Ennio Morricone and the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Elio Petri’s Giallo ghost story situates a struggling artist, Leonardo (Franco Nero), between the demands of a successful career and relationship with his gallerist (Vanessa Redgrave) and the haunted villa in the country to which he decamps to focus on his work, only to be seduced by the villa’s otherworldly inhabitant. A Quiet Place in the Country scrapes a key across the high-gloss, pop aesthetic of Italy’s postwar economic miracle to reveal the undertow of the country’s unresolved fascist past.