To Bathe in Filmic Waters

The Empty Canvas | Damiano Damiani, 1963

Rome-born Alberto Moravia is a largely unmentioned novelist who was responsible for much of the narrative content seen towards the end of Italian cinema’s golden era. Moravia wrote a number of popular books that were picked up for adaptation during the sixties and seventies, including: the aforementioned Two Women (La Ciociara), The Conformist (Il Conformista) and the 1963 film The Empty Canvas (La Noia) by Damiano Damiani. “La Noia” , literally translating into “Boredom” in Italian, follows a wealthy Roman bachelor named Dino as he falls for young local girl Cecilia. Their attraction is born in an unconventional fashion, for they furst encounter one another as Dino is snooping around the house of a recently deceased neighbour and renowned womanizer. Cecilia was clearly the muse that sent this artist over the edge, in turn sparking the initial curiosity that draws Dino towards her – perhaps hoping that his own uninspired painting will benefit from her appearance. Cecilia becomes his drug of sorts, but such affectionate feelings aren’t reciprocated by the leggy seventeen year-old blonde. Her indifference to their “love” and admittance of seeing another man pushes Dino into a downward spiral of obsession and self-loathing, until he eventually breaks down entirely. The Empty Canvas is the perfect example of the kind of racy, romantic films that littered the sixties: involving an extremely unlikeable male protagonist that questions life through his various woman-shaped crusade, somehow eventually ending up on the wrong side of love. As with most of these films, romance is over-dramatised to a fault and the actors appear selected for their looks rather than anything else. Thanks to an unrelenting focus upon Dino and his obsession the plot moves sideways rather than forwards, but – thanks to some strong direction from Damiani – never stagnates.

Despite its clear flaws, The Empty Canvas is certainly one of the sexiest, steamiest pictures I’ve seen from this period. The performances aren’t stellar by any stretch of the romantic imagination, yet Horst Buchholz and Catherine Spaak manage to conjure a dangerously effective chemistry as the on-screen couple. Her innocence is betrayed by darkened eyes, something that we’re sure Dino can sense but can’t help falling head over heels. Indeed, the better scenes in the film are those where Dino and Cecilia are interacting, scenes that seem almost improvised at points. It makes one wonder just how much was lost by dubbing over their originally English-speaking performances. An aging Bette Davis also makes an appearance here as Dino’s haughty and overbearing Mother – an actress that adds American influence to the already packed international cast comprising of Belgian, French, German and Italian members. This cultured cast means that the film doesn’t particularly channel any breed of Italian lifestyle, and oher than a brief appearance by The Spanish Steps, such a tale of romance and lust could have easily taken place in any one of Europe’s cosmopolitan cities during the sixties. The Empty Canvas relies a little less upon the comedy aspect and instead dives headlong into overblown melodrama that is too pushed to be believable and too poorly written to be ultimately engaging. There are snatches of sexiness to be found though, especially in one iconic scene where Dino covers Cecilia’s body with banknotes from his Mother’s safe. Such scenes do well to provide some much-needed distraction, but by all accounts the film rather sums up Damiani’s career as a filmmaker: longer than perhaps expected and driven by scenes of empty sexuality.

Our Rating: