Film info: La Paloma

Film Information

Original Title	La Paloma
English Title
Director	Daniel Schmid
Countrys
Year	1974
Format	35 mm
Colour	Color
Duration	110 min

Cast:

Ingrid Caven, Peter Kern, Peter Chatel, Bulle Ogier, Jérôme Olivier Nicolin

Production:

Director: Daniel Schmid
Guión: Daniel Schmid
Fotografía: Renato Berta
Montaje: Ila von Hasperg
Producción: Yves Peyrot, Erick Franck, Yves Gasser
Contacto de Producción: Citel Films, Genf Artco Film, Les Films du Losange

Synopsis

Wherever Viola Schlump (stage name La Paloma) performs, the audience includes Count Isidor Palewski, a corpulent young man who has followed her from one second-rate nightclub to another for years, despite her failure to show much interest in him. She finally consents to become his mistress when she is diagnosed as being in the advanced stages of consumption. Isidor takes her to Europe’s luxury sanatoriums, where she stages an unexpected recovery and starts to fall in love, not with Isidor but with his love for her, and agrees to marry him. When her belief in his love starts to falter, Viola falls ill again and sets out to revenge herself. About this heady exercise in excess –that mixes the operatic passion of La Traviata, the stylish decadence of Stroheim and Sternberg, and the macabre glee of Grand Guignol–, it has been said that “Daniel Schmid fashions this tale into a poem, a play of associations around the (romantic) themes of love, death and the tomb. He is fascinated and tormented by the artistic desire to examine the creatures of the night, the stuff of longing and despair”.