Strange Shadows in an Empty Room
Action! If there’s one word associated with cinema, the tension of movie sets, and the focus of attention, it’s this one. Action is very often at the heart of popular cinema: Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock hands in Safety Last! (1923), Cary Grant threatened and strafed by a plane in North by Northwest (1959), Franka Potente gasping for air in Run Lola Run (1998)... Westerns, swashbuckler films, martial arts or adventure flicks, thrillers, all these genres rely on action—sometimes frenetic, sometimes meticulously measured.
From movies by Sergei Eisenstein to Gilles Carle, from John Ford to John Boorman and Werner Herzog, via Paul Verhoeven, Kathryn Bigelow, Park Chan-wook, Érik Canuel, and Nicolas Winding Refn, this series will take you through the full range of emotions, from laughter to thrills, from fear to satisfaction.
Captain Tony Saitta of the Ottawa police investigates the death of his sister Louise. She was poisoned at a party and Saitta first arrests one of her professors with whom she has had an affair. But a new murder takes place and seems to be related to Louise's death. So Saitta investigates further and discovers that his sister was involved in a robbery in Toronto and that the murderer was connected to this robbery. Featuring Carole Laure and shot in Montreal and Ottawa, this film by Alberto De Martino—released under the pseudonym Martin Herbert—is a memorable and unusual thriller featuring thrilling chases.
Alberto De Martino
Alberto De Martino was an Italian film director. Born in Rome, he started as a child actor and later returned to cinema where he also worked as a screenwriter and dubbing supervisor. De Martino's films as a director specialised in well-crafted knock-offs of Hollywood hit films. These were specifically created films in Western, horror and mythology genres, developed for the international market. His best known of these film was probably The Antichrist (1974), which capitalized on the appeal of The Exorcist (1973). Strange Shadows in an Empty Room (1976) features a protagonist inspired by Dirty Harry (1971).
