Col cuore in gola

Plot

A French actor named Bernard (Jean-Louis Trintignant) comes across a beautiful young woman (Ewa Aulin) bending over the corpse of a murdered nightclub owner in London. He believes her that she is innocent of the crime, and runs off with her to protect her from a group of criminal types who are stalking her.

Cast

Production

Col cuore in gola was adapated from the paperback novel Il sepolcro di carta (1955) by Sergio Donati. Brass noted he was not very fond of the novel, and his producers wanted Jean-Louis Trintignant as the lead. On meeting Trintignant, he told him a different story than that of the novel which lead him to accept the role. Brass had then sent over the actual script stating that he had changed his mind. The films working title at this point was Enigma.

Brass did later change the plot, moving the story location from Rome to London noting that "London represented what Paris had represented before it: the place of transgression and freedom. Lots of things were happening. The Beatles were only one of them. It was Europe's liveliest urban center." Brass expressed that he "wanted to make a film in ideograms-like in Chinese writing, where a symbol indicates a whole concept. So I did not film a horse but an eye, or a spur. The characters eem two-dimension, as in a comic." In 1966 director Tinto Brass contacted Guido Crepax to draw the storyboards for the Cuol cuore in gola. Crepax created color storyboards even though he was used to working in black-and-white. For the cinematographer, Brass noted that his previous director of photography Bruno Barcarol had died and he needed a new one. Brass later chose Silvano Ippoliti as he reminded him a bit of Barcarol.

Release

Col cuore in gola was released in Italy in 1967 where it was not a commercial success. It has been released in France under the titles Le couer aux levres and En cinquieme vitesse (lit. The Fifth Speed).

The film was shown in the United States in Portland, Oregon on 7 September 1969. The film was released in the United States as I Am What I Am on the Cult Epics label.