La Corta Notte Delle Bambole Di Vetro (aka Short Night Of Glass Dolls) (1971)

Set in Czechoslovakia, the corpse of a a foreign journalist (Jean Sorel, BELLE DE JOUR) is discovered and brought to the morgue and pronounced D.O.A. Except that he's alive and his brain feverishly trying to remember the series of events that brought him to this point. But will he be able to make them realize he's alive before his planned autopsy? Directed by Aldo Lado, this is unusual for an Italian giallo because the violence is remarkably restrained. Instead of the usual excessive gore inherent in the genre, Lado's film relies on suspense rather than bloodletting. So it's an exercise in style over substance and it works on that level which is good since the actual mystery itself when revealed is rather ludicrous. Still, I don't think I quite expected the grim conclusion that transpires. It's an odd polyglot of a cast with the French Sorel, the Swedish Ingrid Thulin playing Americans, the Italian Mario Adorf playing an Irishman and the American Barbara Bach (THE SPY WHO LOVED ME) as a Czech but that's due more to the necessities of international production in the 60s and 70s than anything else. Ennio Morricone provides one of his more subtle scores.