Whatever its other claims to fame, Giuilio
Questi’s Death Laid an Egg can safely be categorized as one of cinema’s
most chicken-centric works (it was also released under the title Plucked!),
a large part of it taking place in a poultry plant with thousands of good-looking,
cooped-up two-footed extras, punctuated with ample shots of eggs in various
states of motion or breakage, samples of chicken-themed art, and (most indelibly)
brief glimpses of a laboratory-bred mutant chicken which lacks a head or wings
and develops exceptionally quickly (a concept perhaps ahead of its time, for better or worse). Against
all of this, in less than ninety minutes, Questi puts together a story of intersecting
murderous designs, corporate intrigue, and weird erotic fetishes, starring
Jean-Louis Trintignant at his most furtively inscrutable, playing Marco, a
poultry association executive married to the owner of a massive breeding plant
(Gina Lollobrigida, used far less interestingly), with an apparent sideline in
murdering whores at a roadside motel, and a desire for his wife’s cousin (Ewa Aulin), who however has something going on with a publicity
man hired by the association. Questi confidently breezes past all holes and
improbabilities, with a torrent of eye-catching framing and cutting and a sporadically
plausible feeling of scientific seriousness; at the end (which, following a series
of extremely rapid twists, consists of a guy eating an egg) one may judge the
experience to have been oddly meaningful (although in a way beyond
articulating). Passing concepts include a “room of truth” stripped of all
furniture and distraction, in which the occupants may unlock emotions otherwise
denied them – it doesn’t really relate to much else in the film, but illustrates
its odd, quasi-experimental streak (as it happens, nothing unlocked in the room
of truth appears to relate directly to the chickens though).
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