L'arcano incantatore (1996)

Having established a reputation inside the genre with La casa dalle finestre che ridono and Zeder, Pupi Avati became a more mainstream director with Noi tre, Bix, Magnificat and others: this return to horror is a stately, fairly arty anecdote that nevertheless manages an eerie charge and a surprise ending. In 18th Century Italy, scribe Giacomo (Stefano Dionisi) travels to an isolated region, assigned to work with a reclusive scholar (Carlo Cecchi), replacing the just-dead Nerio, a Satanist believed to have murdered two dispossessed nuns.

Mysteries, set up by confessional flashbacks, unfold as the ailing enchanter enlists his pupil's aid in sending coded letters, in bizarre DIY medical treatment and in guarding against Nerio's ghost by scattering flour on the flagstones and hanging warning bells on strings. The hero, in disgrace for suborning an abortion, is pressured by a local inquisitor to betray his master, while a wanton madwoman in the neighbouring ruin nags ominously. Giacomo sees the dead man's ghost and glimpses the dead nuns, but Avati seems almost more interested in details of decor like the three-story library of mysterious books. Early on, there's a supernatural turn as a little girl who has survived a near-death experience brings Giacomo a message from his dead mother, and this vein of the casual fantastic - stigmata, ghosts, curses, pacts with the Devil - continues throughout, as Avati lends a mystic character to the evocative landscapes.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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