The Designated Victim (aka La Vittima Designata)

Known in its native Italian tongue as La Designata Vittimia, The Designated Victim to use a modern term is "A Re-imagining" of Alfred Hitchcocks' Strangers On A Train. Stefano Argenti (Thomas Millian) is a businessman who is looking for an escape, far from owning a struggling business things are in fact booming, a buyer is offering substantially more than the business is worth, at least to Stefano. If he can sell the business he can escape Italy, most importantly with the one he loves Fabienne (Katia Christine); one little issue stands in his way, his wife Luisa (Marisa Bartoli), and she is in no mood to sell the business.

While on a romantic retreat with Fabienne, Stefano has a number of strange encounters with Count Matteo Tiepolo (Pierre Climenti). A strange friendship forms between the two men and after several encounters, Matteo makes Stefano a bizarre offer; if he kills Matteo's brother, then in return he will kill Luisa. While Stefano jokes the situation off, it seems… more »

Known in its native Italian tongue as La Designata Vittimia, The Designated Victim to use a modern term is "A Re-imagining" of Alfred Hitchcocks' Strangers On A Train. Stefano Argenti (Thomas Millian) is a businessman who is looking for an escape, far from owning a struggling business things are in fact booming, a buyer is offering substantially more than the business is worth, at least to Stefano. If he can sell the business he can escape Italy, most importantly with the one he loves Fabienne (Katia Christine); one little issue stands in his way, his wife Luisa (Marisa Bartoli), and she is in no mood to sell the business.

While on a romantic retreat with Fabienne, Stefano has a number of strange encounters with Count Matteo Tiepolo (Pierre Climenti). A strange friendship forms between the two men and after several encounters, Matteo makes Stefano a bizarre offer; if he kills Matteo's brother, then in return he will kill Luisa. While Stefano jokes the situation off, it seems Matteo has no such plans, and when he decides to execute them, Stefano is slowly cornered into fulfilling his end of an un-agreed deal.

Like so many movies for reasons best known to the movies producers, it seems in the best interest of the audience to go at it with some scissors. This is exactly what happened with The Designated Victim, hacked up like one of Cropsy's (The Burning) victims, the movie then went into a sort of omission from the movie industry. The guys at Shameless with movie historian/author/preservationist/all round movie nut Marc Morris went to the painful detail of restoring this long lost 1971 movie. Sourcing all the missing bits from here there and everywhere, they have created the most preserved release the world has seen for some considerable time. While a sterling job has been done a few short scenes (totalling no more than a minute combined) are of far lesser quality than the rest of movies beautiful print. I'm a firm believer that people want, nay need to see the movie as its director intended you to see it, regardless of the overall cost, anyone who would not want this is not a movie lover, but someone simply passing the time, with this in mind I feel the weaker quality is a sacrifice worth making.

Onto the movie itself, and familiar Shameless viewers will perhaps be underwhelmed by the incredibly low body count of this movie, no abundance of deaths here, for the most part we are talking just one in fact. With The Designated Victim it's all about the story and what a great rollercoaster of a movie this is, although for me it was all about the highs. The movie rocks along really nicely, it's up and down for the duration, with a hell of a lot of character development along the way. A big asset for the movie is that unlike a lot of Italian thrillers, there is no real mystery here; you know who is what and what they do, yet it still manages to keep you glued to the screen.

Italian films get a lot of stick, among people with little vision, but only a fool would dispute that this movie has all the attributes of the big Hollywood offerings. So many movies go straight for the kill, quite literally in some cases, but director Maurizio Lucidi (with a variety of help including the legendary Aldo Lado) is in no hurry to kill his cast giving you the ultimate understanding of the relationships, and the temperament of the initial victim.

It's nice to view The Designated Victim alongside Aldo Lado's Who Saw Her Die?, both movies have input from Lado and both are for the most part filmed in Venice. The difference between the movies is that while Who Saw Her Die shows you the aspects of the City that most Italians would not want you to see, perhaps even the true side of Venice.