Netflix and CSC's Restoration of Tinto Brass's 'Col cuore in gola' Coming to Netflix Following Venice Debut

Nearly six decades after it first reached Italian screens, Tinto Brass's Col cuore in gola (Deadly Sweet) is getting a second life. Netflix partnered with Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC) to finance the restoration of the 1967 film, and the newly restored version premiered as the pre-opening night gala of the 2026 Venice Film Festival on September 1, ahead of its Netflix debut in Italy on September 15.

Directed by Brass early in a career defined by experimentation, Col cuore in gola follows a French actor (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who becomes entangled with a young woman (Ewa Aulin) accused of murder in London, and pulls her away from the criminals stalking her. Loosely adapted from Sergio Donati's novel Il sepolcro di carta, the film remains a singular entry in Brass's filmography: his only excursion into the giallo genre, shot through with the visual language of 1960s Pop Art and comics, including storyboards by the celebrated illustrator Guido Crepax for several of its most iconic sequences.

Restoring the film was a months-long undertaking. Working from the original negatives, restoration technicians began by physically inspecting the film reels, repairing mechanical damage frame by frame before scanning the picture and sound negatives for digitization. From there, specialists removed decades of wear, stabilizing the image, repairing tears, and eliminating noise from the soundtrack, while color correction brought each sequence as close as possible to its original tone. The finished restoration was checked against period prints struck at the time of the film's theatrical release, and the full project took approximately five months to complete.

The restoration is the latest chapter in Netflix's ongoing collaboration with CSC, an effort centered on preserving Italian film heritage while investing in the next generation of Italian filmmakers. The partnership also includes the restoration and reopening of Cinema Europa in Rome, a historic venue being revived as a cultural hub for students and young cinephiles.

Tinny Andreatta, Vice President for Italian content at Netflix, stated: “For Netflix, it is important to contribute concretely to the enhancement of Italy's cinematic heritage, and we chose to do so together with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, with whom we have a happy collaborative relationship. Col cuore in gola struck us as a particularly significant film because it represents a lesser-known phase of Tinto Brass's career, that of his most experimental and innovative research. Thanks to the restoration, we are pleased to be able to give audiences back the visual power and cinematic quality with which Brass had envisioned the film, making it available on Netflix in Italy following its Venice debut.”

Gabriella Buontempo, President of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia Foundation, continued: "The restoration of Col cuore in gola, an important work that Tinto Brass made with an exceptional cast in the Swinging London of the Sixties, has been selected by the Venice Film Festival as a pre-opening screening. A fitting tribute to the significance of Brass's cinema, and also a meaningful recognition of a restoration that saw the virtuous collaboration between the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and Netflix, both committed to the preservation and dissemination of film culture."

Tinto Brass, director of the film, concluded: "I'm proud to have directed Col cuore in gola: I felt the time had come to explore cinema's still-unknown possibilities and push myself to make exceptional films. Today it's a great joy to finally see it restored in 4K and to rediscover the visual impact of those intuitions I had back then."

Download stills from the restored movie here.

Download Tinto Brass' photo here (Credits: Leandro Manuel Emede/Netflix).