What?

Released by: Severin Films
Released on: April 26^th, 2016.
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Sydne Rome, Hugh Griffith
Year: 1972
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The Movies:

One of Roman Polanksi's lesser known films, 1972's What? stars the lovely Sydne Rome as Nancy, a beautiful American woman doing the tourist thing in Rome, Italy. While out strolling about one night, a carload of men accost her and attempt to rape her but she makes her escape, eventually winding up at the shore where he takes shelter in a massive (and very picturesque) old villa.

As she becomes quickly acclimated to her new surroundings, she finds herself not only very naked very often, but in the midst of some very strange characters indeed. A pimp named Alex (Marcello Mastroianni) may or may not run the show but in addition to him poor Nancy has to contend with a harpoon wielding nutjob named Mosquito (played by the director himself), a strange priest (Guido Alberti) and a man named Joseph Noblart (Hugh Griffith).

If Luis Bunuel had directed a sexed up version of Alice In Wonderland, it might have turned out like this film. It's not so much plot based as it is a strange series of barely connected events. Why does Alex crush ping pong balls with his feet? Why do some of the inhabitants indulge in odd cosplay? What is with Mosquito's obsession with Nancy's jeans? These are all these weird little touches in the film that flirt pretty heavily with surrealism, but at the same time, it's all quite comedic, even breezy despite the fact that it opens with an attempted rape. The more Nancy tries to figure out what's happening and why, the stranger all of this gets…

Possibly a cinematic representation of the sexual mores of the day, What? casts the fetching Ms. Rome as the catalyst for all of this. Or does it? She doesn't necessarily cause the events that occur by her actions, but she might simply by having a presence in the villa in the first place. She carries with her a diary in which she jots down various details regarding the carnal encounters that occur - it's all very strange, but so too is it quite funny. The humor is a mix of sexy, preposterous nonsense, witty dialogue and fish out of water situations but more often than not it does work quite well.

The performances here are a mixed bag. There are a lot of quirky Italian character actors cast in small supporting parts that are fun to watch but Sydne Rome is far and away the character with the most screen time. She's got a very endearing naturalness about her, particularly in terms of how she presents herself so comfortably during the film's many nude scenes, but her acting is inconsistent. She looks great but occasionally falls flat with her lines. Not always, mind you, and it actually sort of fits given the absurdity of the film as a hole, but her inexperience at this point in her career would seem to show in spots. Polanksi's supporting part is fun, while Hugh Griffith steals pretty much every scene he appears in. Marcello Mastroianni, however, is the one to watch. He's perfect as the pimp, delivering some genuinely bizarre dialogue with nothing less than complete conviction and handling the film's bizarre comedy with ease.

Polanski made this film shortly after Macbeth, which is interesting - despite the fact that Macbeth is a fantastic film, it did quite poorly at the box office. A sex comedy probably seemed like a much easier genre to get a hit in than Shakespearean drama did, yet What? had a much poorer showing in theaters (it had a brief theatrical run in the United States under the alternate title of The Diary Of Forbidden Dreams) than Macbeth did by a huge margin and then went on to become one of the director's less talked about picture. To its credit, the movie is beautifully shot (Marcello Gatti and Giuseppe Ruzzolini do exceptional work behind the camera on this feature) and it makes excellent use of the beautiful Mediterranean locations. The fact that it's all set to a score from Claudio Gizzi (who works in a lot of instantly recognizable classical music selections), the same man who scored the beautiful music used in Blood For Dracula and Flesh For Frankenstein, doesn't hurt things either. Regardless, this is all very fun, entertaining stuff. This may be lesser Polanski in terms of weight and substance but it's still an interesting and worthwhile entry in the first half of his filmography.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Severin debuts Polanksi's What? on Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 2.35.1 widescreen on a 25GB disc. There's some occasional minor wear and tear present throughout the film but we get a reasonable amount of depth out of the presentation alongside some pretty strong color reproduction. Skin tones look good, black levels are fine and for the most part the image is quite clean and stable. There aren't any problems with crazy, overblown noise reduction, though some scenes do look just a tad more smooth than maybe they should, nor are there obvious edge enhancement problems. This is a pretty solid effort, the movie looks good.

Audio options are presented in English and Italian LPCM Mono, but there are no subtitles provided. Clarity of the English track is fine. It's properly balanced and the dialogue is clean, crisp and clear. The score sounds good and there are no problems with any hiss or distortion worth noting.

The first of the three featurettes on the Blu-ray disc is Sydne In Wonderland, a seventeen minute long video interview With actress Sydne Rome. This is a pretty interesting piece in which Ms. Rome talks about how she wound up playing the lead in this oddball pseudo-sex comedy, what it was like working with the cast and crew and more. Up next is Memories Of A Young Pianist, twenty-two minute piece in which composer Claudio Gizzi discusses working on this film, what he tried to bring to his work on the picture, his thoughts on the film, his work on the two Paul Morrisey films mentioned earlier in this review and more. The third and final featurette on the disc is A Surreal Pop Movie, a piece that spends sixteen minutes talking to the film's cinematographer, Marcello Gatti. He discusses where he was at, career wise, when he came on board to shoot this picture, the locations, working with Polanski and a few other related topics. While it's a shame, if not a surprise, that Polasnki himself didn't contribute to the supplements here, these three featurettes are interesting enough and do a fine job of detailing the film's history.

A theatrical trailer, menus and chapter selection round out the extra features on the disc.

The Final Word:

What? is wacky, breezy, sexy fun. It doesn't always make sense or really follow conventional logic, but then, it doesn't have to. Sydne Rome is charming enough to carry it and the supporting cast is clearly all having a lot of fun here. Severin's Blu-ray release looks and sounds pretty good and it's got a few solid bonus interviews too. All in all, a fine package for an enjoyably goofy and distinctly European sex comedy.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!