Vision had the pleasure of interviewing Edoardo Vitaletti, the director of The Last Thing Mary Saw, his feature film debut.
This drama-horror film, set in 1843 New York, tells the story of the forbidden love between a noble lady, named Mary, and her maiden in her family’s house, under the oppression of the community’s matriarch. It is an effective, character-driven, and atmospheric thriller with an oppressive tone, well-written dialogue, fantastic performances, great cinematography, and period detail.
Vision recently spoke to the director to discuss his latest project and take a deep-dive into what inspired Edoardo to be a filmmaker.
So, tell me a bit about yourself. This is your second directorial film and your first feature-length film, what has inspired you to become a director? And what has been your journey up until this point?
This is my first feature-length film. I started wanting to make movies when I was like 17 to 18. It was not necessarily something that blossomed very early in my life. But I realised storytelling is a great means to express some of the things that I want to say, that I want to talk about, and I try to go for the job in the position that would allow me to tell my own stories in my own way. And so, yeah, it is a really hard job. It has a lot of the great things that people think it does, it does have them, I think there is a lot that’s a little bit more complicated than what shows on the surface, but it’s an incredibly fulfilling position. It allows you to tell your stories the way you want to tell them, for better or worse, but yeah, absolutely.
What are the sources of inspiration for you? Are you more inspired by literature or films?
It depends, it varies from story to story. For instance, for The Last Thing Mary Saw, because I was trying to convey precisely a sense of the time period and of the atmosphere and the culture at that time, where of course – you know – none of us were alive for, I was trying to take as much inspiration as possible from the time period; in this case, a lot of painterly references, a lot of folklore literature, religious slash pagan literature from the time and earlier on. So for this movie it worked out this way. In general, I try to not watch too many movies when I’m writing or preparing a movie because I think this can be very seductive. And there are so many – you know – wonderful movies out there that it just naturally makes you lean towards a particular movie and certainly end up imitating something which can never be quite successful. So for this particular movie, it was a lot of literature and paintings and folklore and personal experiences, of course, having grown up as a very religious person and whatnot.
Yeah, I can definitely see that. I see a lot of, like you said, the folklore and things that really just take us back to that time period. Especially props, like the old style pistol gun powders, and the old-style stove and bread, how did you work to capture the feeling of that time period?
It is a combination of more or less three things: the costumes; the formality of the language (with a little bit of work on the accent); the location, it has to be, for a movie that doesn’t have unlimited resources. The location serves as the bones of the story, so finding a house that was period-appropriate was important. And in our case, the lighting, especially, you know, giving a sense that when, like past 5pm, after sundown, you’re not going to be able to see anything unless you have a candle. So all these stage elements, with the costumes and the accent, create a sense of being transported to a different time period in history, which is something that we really wanted to not fail on. Because I think for this type of movie, it remains credible, so long as you remain anchored to the fact that it could only be happening a long time ago. So you need a very good production designer, a great costume designer, a great cinematographer, which, I was very lucky to be able to work with all of them. They were great.
Yeah, the cinematography was excellent. I do notice that there are lots of dark scenes in this film, so were they shot at night or where they shot in the day?
All the exteriors were shot at night, we barely supplemented the scene with lights sometimes, you know, we had a lot of practicals like the lanterns with real candles inside, a lot of the scenes that are interior that are dark or darkly lit, you shoot them during the day, and you just kind of black out the windows so that you can shape the light after that. And I think that that was our strategy because, like the climax of the movie, which I won’t spoil, it all takes place at night, and we shot it over the course of three to four days continuously. It was the strange feeling that we blocked out the windows and we’re shooting this thing that is happening all at night, but then you go out for lunch break, and it’s like, you know, it’s sunny, so it’s a little weird. But it kind of makes you fall into this rabbit hole where you feel like you’re living inside that movie.
Yeah, that’s wonderful. So, for you, what were the most fun parts to shoot in this film?
Definitely the supper scene towards the end of the movie, that was the most fun, because it was very fragmented. And there is the editing, which kind of picks up in pace and everything ramps up. So you got to shoot everything a little more segmented – you have three seconds of this, three seconds of that. So it was kind of choreographed. But, unlike the funeral scene, which also was very choreographed, but a little more frustrating to shoot, I think the supper was really fun, because all the actors are having a good time, without spoiling, once again, with the way the day ended with their scene, it gets very gory and colourful at the same time, so I think watching the actors having a good time with it, and all of us, it brought a lot of fun on set for sure.
So overall, how involved were you with the editing process, because you also mentioned a funeral scene, which was excellently edited.
Yeah, my editor – Matthew Hardy – he’s a master. When you’re making a movie, especially this size, you’re kind of sitting in the editing room with the editor every day.Nine to five is the polite kind of timeframe, really, sometimes we go from nine to nine, to ten, and then nine to midnight, when you’re like in a crunch time. You’re always there. And you want to know that you’re working with someone who is there to provide a different angle, fresh eyes, their own ideas. You, as a director, ultimately you are going to have the last word on it, but every good director knows to invite different ideas from different perspectives. And my editor, he’s great. He’s a master at what he does, and a lot of the editing choices and the way that certain things were structured definitely came from him, because that’s what you want from your editor. I was very happy about the process.
Sounds like an amazing collaboration. And you are also the writer of this film. When you were shooting this film, did you feel a certain satisfaction when realizing your writing onto the screen?
Yeah, it feels kind of strange and great at the same time, to write something for many months and then you watch the actors say your lines, it’s incredibly fulfilling. Writing, in my opinion, remains the hardest part of the process. Since I made this as my first movie, I, as a filmmaker, I grew the most in this process, and writing is the hardest code to crack, in my opinion. It’s important to never, never let go of the potential for the script to be better and better and better and better, but it feels awesome when you get such good talented actors to say your lines. It’s just kind of strangely awesome. Yeah.
Speaking of the actors, we have Stephanie Scott from Insidious 3, Rory Culkin who starred in Scream 4, Judith Roberts from Dead Silence. What was a like working with those talents?
They are great. They’re awesome actors. They are people who have a lot of experience with the genre. They were very curious about the world and all the intricacies of the story and the darkness of it all. So, you know, you can only write so good, and you need good actors to elevate the material. And I think they elevated it way past the point to which I could take it. So I was lucky. And I felt honoured and privileged to be able to work with them.
Yeah, that does sound wonderful. Are there any fun stories about those actors when working with them?
Yeah. You sort of try to break the spell of how dark and unsettling the story is by being a little lighter in between takes, and I think it’s something that I learned not immediately, but as we were going through the shoot, especially with Isabel and Stephanie, they sort of took me under their wing a little bit, and they kind of taught me to be lighter and to laugh and to love the process, because you don’t get to make a movie very often. So you know, it’s important to enjoy the making of it, just as much as the final product. So, no matter how dark and unsettling your story is, you should always be able to kind of crack a laugh in between takes for sure.
That does sound very sweet. Sounds like behind the camera everyone is warm and supportive overall?
Yeah, very much.
Okay. One more question. Where would you like to go after this? Would you like to make a film in a different genre?
I’d like to continue with the genre. I was very specific about my first genre film, and my first horror film too, to have a lot of drama-leaning elements to it. So I feel like I will probably continue down this road with drama-leaning horror films. I will probably stick with it. I also like period pieces, I’m working on another thing that is a period piece, so yeah, definitely similar, always in the genre with some drama-leaning elements to it. For sure. Because it’s great. It’s great fun.
The Last Thing Mary Saw is available Exclusively on Shudder, a channel specializing in horror.