Watch Short Night of Glass Dolls For Free

Perfect cast and a good story

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

A Major Disappointment

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

In Prague, a man is found dead and sent to the morgue. The coroner finds his passport and identifies the American journalist Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel).He finds strange his body temperature and the absence of rigor mortis. However, Gregory is alive and totally paralyzed and recalls all the previous events. Gregory works in Prague with the journalists Jessica (Ingrid Thulin), with whom he had a love affair, and Jacques Versain (Mario Adorf). He will be transferred to London and meets his girlfriend Mira Svoboda (Barbara Bach) to invite her to travel with him. They go to a party and then he returns to his apartment with Mira. However Jacques calls him to investigate the death of a minister. However the information is fake and when he returns to the apartment, he finds that Mira has gone missing. The inefficient Inspector Kierkoff (Piero Vida) is in charge of the investigation and Gregory finds that several young women have disappeared in Prague. He carries out his own investigation culminating to find a mysterious cult. Meanwhile his friend and doctor finds weird the condition of his corpse and tries to revive Gregory. Will he succeed?"La corta notte delle bambole di vetro", a.k.a. "Short Night of Glass Dolls", is a totally different giallo. The story has no gore and slightly recalls the idea of "Sunset Boulevard", where a dead man tells the previous series of events until his death, and "Rosemary's Baby" since there are many people involved in a satanic cult. The conclusion is excellent with no redemption. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "A Breve Noite das Bonecas de Vidro" ("The Short Night of the Glass Dolls")

A superior giallo classic from Aldo Lado, who would follow it up with the watchable but not quite so gripping WHO SAW HER DIE?. SHORT NIGHT OF THE GLASS DOLLS is an acknowledged classic of the genre for the few people who have seen it, a suspenseful and thoroughly atmospheric conspiracy thriller which takes an understated approach to rival the sheer claustrophobic paranoia of such '70s classics as INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Lado's movie is expertly-made, from the stylish cinematography which brings the beauty of the Prague location to the fore, to the strong acting on display and the fitting score by genre maestro Ennio Morricone.The conspiracy lies at the centre of the movie and we watch as the lead, Gregory, gradually gets a step nearer at a time to discovering the truth about the disappearance of his girlfriend, as played by the incredibly fragile Barbara Bach. The slow-paced nature of the narrative may be off-putting to some viewers but the lack of action is by no means a hindrance, rather a plus as Lado takes time out to characterise the leads, build atmosphere, and also work on the level of suspense the film offers, ever increasing. The framing narrative of the story unusually comes from the point of view of Gregory's corpse, or rather his body as he is suffering from a form of the rare condition catalepsy (which of course led to Edgar Allan Poe's fears of being buried alive). However, the fear of something much worse is at hand here - an autopsy! The finale involves Gregory's body being laid on the autopsy table in front of a student college and is sheer nail-biting stuff, which brings the tension up to breaking point and is near unwatchable. An extremely powerful conclusion that I can't really say any more about, other than it's well worth waiting for and one of the scariest bits of cinema I've seen in a long while.Lado ignores the typical horrific approach for the genre - i.e. to ladle in oodles of sadism and gore - and instead concentrates on psychological horror over the physical stuff - there are no faces burned off by acid or gruesome knifings in this movie. Instead what we have is a deliberate pacing which helps get us into the increasingly desperate head of the lead Gregory as he alienates those around him and becomes a murder suspect himself as he hunts for the missing Mira, becoming increasingly dishevelled as he does so. Lado has some excellent set pieces in which the filming and lighting are spot on (take for instance the shot where Gregory hides in the darkened room, or the train station murder sequence). Technically the film is perfect and, seen in its subtitled version, the dialogue is witty, believable, and often packed with double-meanings.Jean Sorel is perfectly cast as the young, handsome male lead, in what is a chivalrous and Franco Nero-type role. His acting gets better as he gets increasingly fraught throughout the production and I couldn't imagine a better actor in the role. The supporting cast also turn in strong performances which give the movie a realistic edge - you don't feel like you're watching actors acting here, just real people. Lado deepens his movie with political subtexts and inserts some arty clues (a case of butterflies which cannot fly), which are the norm for the genre. The title, incidentally, refers to a crystal chandelier which hangs above Sorel's bed. Other spine-shuddering moments include mysterious characters hanging around on street corners (always a good scare for me) and a really weird orgy/Satanic ritual which comes as a real surprise. Lado's movie avoids being sleazy (there are nude scenes, but mainly of old women!) and gory yet stands out as one of the highlights of the giallo genre - a minor classic that deserves a better reputation than the (lack of) one it has at the moment.

It's not every day that you see an entry into an Italian exploitation subgenre - giallo - and see possible inspirations for Stanley Kubrick's later career.But then, "Short Night of Glass Dolls" really isn't a giallo. There's very little violence here, or lurid shock tactics. The sex and nudity isn't gratuitous or erotic and is saved for one very specific scene.What "Short Night of Glass Dolls" is, is a brilliantly understated and gripping thriller, the horror of which gradually dawns on you just as it closes in on the comatose hero. The atmosphere is stifling, as in a room slowly filling with odorless gas. This is one mystery you almost wish you hadn't started to follow, but the execution of it is masterful.

As far as I know, there exist only two films that are narrated by corpses telling their story from "the other side": the 1947 Bela Lugosi vehicle "Scared to Death," one of the world's worst, and Billy Wilder's 1950 offering, "Sunset Blvd.," one of the world's best. And then there's Aldo Lado's meaninglessly titled "Short Night of Glass Dolls" (1971), in which a man, only supposedly dead, lies in a morgue and thinks back on how he came to be there. It turns out that the semistiff is an American journalist named Greg Moore (sympathetically played by Jean Sorel), who had been working in Prague and dating a beautiful young local named Mira. When Mira mysteriously disappeared, Moore had entered into an investigation that soon broadened into an attempt to learn why so many other young women had recently vanished.... Featuring as it does only a small handful of virtually bloodless killings, "Short Night" hardly qualifies as a giallo--a mystery thriller would be a more apt description--but still has much to offer. Lado, in this, his first film, does a fine job (I much prefer this one over Lado's "Who Saw Her Die?" from 1972), and Ennio Morricone's waltzlike score for the film is at once somber, atmospheric and dreamlike. Prague itself is shown to be as gorgeous a city as you may have heard, and speaking of gorgeous, Barbara Bach, in her small role as Mira, is very appealing and not a little sexy. Ingrid Thulin, here playing a fellow journalist of Sorel, looks much less severe than I am used to seeing her in Bergman pictures; a pleasant surprise. The film ends very strangely, and its decidedly downbeat suggestion of evil triumphant should linger long in the memory. In truth, this is not a bad little picture at all, and beautifully captured on the Anchor Bay DVD that I just watched.