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“I am always displeased by circumstances for which I cannot
account. Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his
health.”–Edgar Allan Poe, “Never Bet the Devil Your Head”
DIRECTED BY: Federico Fellini
FEATURING: Terence Stamp
PLOT: Toby Dammit, a once famous actor whose career is in jeopardy because of alcoholism, accepts a role in a “Catholic Western” to be shot in Italy, on condition that he be given a Ferrari. Drinking throughout the evening of his arrival in Rome and increasingly incoherent, Dammit bumbles his way through a television interview and an appearance as guest speaker at an awards ceremony. Finally, he jumps into the sports car and races through the deserted streets of Rome, but becomes lost in an increasingly unreal city.
BACKGROUND:
- “Toby Dammit” was originally filmed as an entry in Spirits of the Dead, an anthology based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. Louis Malle‘s version of “William Wilson” and Roger Vadim‘s “Metzengerstein” were the other entries. “Dammit” is inspired by Poe’s “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” an unusually comic outing for the macabre author, but takes almost nothing from the short story’s plot.
- Terence Stamp traveled to Italy to make this film with Fellini, and stayed for several years afterwards. His very next film project was the lead role as the mysterious seductive stranger in Pasolini‘s Teorema.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: In Poe’s story, the Devil was an old man, but Fellini chose to recast Old Scratch as a young girl (the actress was actually 22, but appears much younger). Fellini said he felt that Toby’s personal devil should represent his own immaturity. Fellini again demonstrates his genius with faces, as the pallid, mysteriously grinning girl is as devilish and chilling as waifs come.
TWO WEIRD THINGS: Bouncy-ball escalator game; waxwork chef run down by sports car
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Fellini and Poe are an unexpected combination, but the Italian director takes to the American writer’s gloominess like a libertine takes to laudanum. Fellini’s carnivalesque portraiture easily bends towards the ghastly. The director never tried his hand at another outright horror movie, but “Dammit” makes you wonder what might have been.
Trailer for Spirits of the Dead (1968) with “Toby Dammit” clips
COMMENTS: “Toby Dammit” is an interstitial work which Fellini Continue reading 50*. TOBY DAMMIT (1968)