To some extent the Italian crime cinema divides into two.
On the one hand there are the art house films of directors like Francesco Rosi. These giallo-politico films emphasise dietrology. This means the study of looking behind events, or what lies beneath, hidden from all but the investigator. As such, these films have what Burch and Deleuze term a small form structure, in which an action, A, is required to disclose a situation, S, leading to a new action. The narrative revolves around what Deleuze terms the index, the small but revealing detail – in other words, the clue. In films like The Mattei Affair and Lucky Luciano politics is also a key concern, with the stance taken invariably an oppositional, anti-establishment, left-wing one. In these films architecture is often used symbolically, with a constrast being drawn between the clean, angular lines of modernist and brutalist styles and the hidden of the baroque.
On the other hand there are the vernacular films of directors like Umberto Lenzi. These poliziotteschi emphasise action. They have a large form structure, in which an initial situation, leads to an action, leading to a new situation. The narrative revolves around the binominal or duel – in other words, the protagonist’s need to catch his enemy in the act of committing a crime and then bring him to justice. In these films politics is less important, with the stance taken also being more ambivalent in critiquing left and/or right alike. In these films architecture is used more as something that is there to provide a backdrop for chases and shootouts.
But if we then place these two approaches as opposite ends of a continuum rather than as opposites, we come to films like this one.
The first issue for such films is whether they can manage to produce a satisfying cocktail out of their arthouse and grindhouse type ingredients.
The Iron Prefect succeeds here, such that it should have something to offer all but the most narrow-minded of enthusiasts in either camp.
The title refers to its protagonist, Cesare Moro. He was the police chief who was appointed to bring down the Mafia by Mussolini himself, using whatever means necessary.
The notable thing about Moro was that he himself was not a Fascist. Rather he was a pre-Fascist who implicitly agreed with both Liberal and Fascist Italy (and political theorists) that the state should have the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
What this meant, as portrayed here, is a blurring of the boundaries over what counts as acceptable and unacceptable violence. A potential model here – or at least a film that came to mind – is Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, specifically the sequence in which the new French commander outlines the options (as he understands them) to critical and even hostile French journalists: Do you want Algeria to remain part of France? If so, then this follows.
Here this translates, without the need for a wider national appeal, as: Do you (the good Italian) want to defeat the, the Mafia (the bad Sicilian)? If so, then cutting off the water supply to a Mafia stronghold village until the women are compelled to respond – albeit after a show of piety and/or (misplaced) faith – follows logically.
Moro is played by Giuliano Gemma. His scar makes him recognisable, although he is otherwise obscured beneath a severe haircut and grey dye job.
Gemma’s heritage in the Italian western is however also invoked in a number of tropes – Moro as the Sheriff riding into the corrupt town to bring law and/or order; the Mafia as the figures of campanelosimo, or Bell Tower Loyalty over any wider, more abstract notions of nation state or party; through the set pieces of men on horseback riding across the rugged countryside; and through some man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do duels – this as one facet of the code of honour, of respect, that Moro and his enemies endorse.
Claudia Cardinale plays the Sicilian woman whom Moro tries to help. While her presence isn’t really necessary and was probably down more to the fact that she is Squitieri’s partner than anything else, her role is suitably unglamorous. It’s also refreshing that her character, a widow, doesn’t become Moro’s love interest, as one imagines would have been the case in a more Hollywood-like version of the story. Rather, we see Moro’s wife arrive with him in Sicily, but soon after being forced to leave for her own safety as she is attacked by the local / native women (where is feminism, that all women are in this together...)?
Some of the dialogue also nicely point to misunderstandings: To the Sicilians Moro is a Piedmontese, but Moro asks why when he is not from that province.
Ennio Morricone contributes a fine soundtrack, with his compositions sounding suitably like Mafia songs.
If all of this, making a quality film that is potentially acceptable to both audiences, is accomplished – as I hope has been conveyed is the case here – then the second issue is then one of finding an audience.
That The Iron Prefect was only recently released on DVD, after a large number of other Italian crime productions seems to further testify to its awkward position; it’s worth noting here that whereas Rosi films like Salvatore Guiliano and Hands Over the City are on the prestigious Criterion label, the likes of Lenzi’s Almost Human and Violent Naples are on cult labels.
Give it a go; you won’t be disappointed. Or, put another way: Why is The Godfather so successful? In part as it has an easy to follow narrative, with violent set pieces? In part because it is The Leopard meets King Lear?
Showing posts with label poliziotto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poliziotto. Show all posts
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Sunday, 4 April 2010
La polizia è sconfitta / Stunt Squad / Execution Squad
Anyone interested in the poliziotto could do worse than track down this 1977 entry from veteran director Domenico Paolella and prolific screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti.
For Stunt Squad, as it was known in the Phillipines, proves a textbook example of the filone, delivering not only in violent action and exploitation but also thought-provoking sociological commentary on the state of Italy in the 'years of lead'.
We're first introduced to the protection racket headed by Valli (Vittorio Mezzogiorno), who has a particularly indiscriminate way of dealing with those Bolognese businesses who refuse to pay or even have the temerity to organise against him: Dressed as telephone engineers his men plant a bomb in a payphone as he observes from nearby. Once his men have left, he then dials the corresponding number.
A 'phone story', to use Michel Chion's term
Nothing personal, only business
After witnessing the devastation caused by Valli's terrorist-like tactics, we're well positioned for the introduction of our chief protagonist Commissioner Grifi (Marcel Bozzuffi), as he gets his superiors' permission to recruit for a special squad trained in combat driving, sharp-shooting, martial arts and the like.
Stunt squad training montage
The rest of the film follows the various skirmishes between Valli and Grifi and their men / proxies, with plenty of brutal violence along the way until finally the two go mano a mano in a powerful and deeply ironic showdown after the desperate Valli hijacks a crowded bus.
Dubious or telling incorporation of actuality footage
Yet if the hijacking suggests an indebtedness to Don Siegel's Dirty Harry, other aspects of the film, like the explosive beginnings and the escalating dynamics of violence are more reminiscent of Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, leading one to wonder – as so often with this cinema and its better-known, better-financed, better-distributed US genre counterpart – who was actually influencing who.
A giallo-esque murder
Paolella's direction and Sacchetti's writing are perfectly in tune with one another: If the director's handling is at times somewhat prosaic, you get the sense that this is precisely what worked best with Sacchetti's script. Correspondingly when Paolella pulls out the stops on the set pieces, with slow-motion, dramatic angles and so on, Sacchetti hasn't put anything in his way.
Through this, one perhaps gets an insight into why Sacchetti didn't get along with Dario Argento on Cat o' Nine Tails, that maybe Argento's more self-consciously auteurist approach meant he was unwilling to give Sacchetti the expected freedoms.
The leads and supporting players are solid, as are the technical contributions of the editor, production designer – with yet more of those abandoned factory found location sets so common in the filone and its giallo cousin – cinematographer and other crew.
Stelvio Cipriani provides the score in his usual idiom: Not outstanding on account of its predictability but also, for this selfsame reason, of sufficient quality and, indeed, in perfect accord with the film as a whole.
Recommended to both fans of the filone and casual viewers seeking a representative example of it.
For Stunt Squad, as it was known in the Phillipines, proves a textbook example of the filone, delivering not only in violent action and exploitation but also thought-provoking sociological commentary on the state of Italy in the 'years of lead'.
We're first introduced to the protection racket headed by Valli (Vittorio Mezzogiorno), who has a particularly indiscriminate way of dealing with those Bolognese businesses who refuse to pay or even have the temerity to organise against him: Dressed as telephone engineers his men plant a bomb in a payphone as he observes from nearby. Once his men have left, he then dials the corresponding number.
A 'phone story', to use Michel Chion's term
Nothing personal, only business
After witnessing the devastation caused by Valli's terrorist-like tactics, we're well positioned for the introduction of our chief protagonist Commissioner Grifi (Marcel Bozzuffi), as he gets his superiors' permission to recruit for a special squad trained in combat driving, sharp-shooting, martial arts and the like.
Stunt squad training montage
The rest of the film follows the various skirmishes between Valli and Grifi and their men / proxies, with plenty of brutal violence along the way until finally the two go mano a mano in a powerful and deeply ironic showdown after the desperate Valli hijacks a crowded bus.
Dubious or telling incorporation of actuality footage
Yet if the hijacking suggests an indebtedness to Don Siegel's Dirty Harry, other aspects of the film, like the explosive beginnings and the escalating dynamics of violence are more reminiscent of Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, leading one to wonder – as so often with this cinema and its better-known, better-financed, better-distributed US genre counterpart – who was actually influencing who.
A giallo-esque murder
Paolella's direction and Sacchetti's writing are perfectly in tune with one another: If the director's handling is at times somewhat prosaic, you get the sense that this is precisely what worked best with Sacchetti's script. Correspondingly when Paolella pulls out the stops on the set pieces, with slow-motion, dramatic angles and so on, Sacchetti hasn't put anything in his way.
Through this, one perhaps gets an insight into why Sacchetti didn't get along with Dario Argento on Cat o' Nine Tails, that maybe Argento's more self-consciously auteurist approach meant he was unwilling to give Sacchetti the expected freedoms.
The leads and supporting players are solid, as are the technical contributions of the editor, production designer – with yet more of those abandoned factory found location sets so common in the filone and its giallo cousin – cinematographer and other crew.
Stelvio Cipriani provides the score in his usual idiom: Not outstanding on account of its predictability but also, for this selfsame reason, of sufficient quality and, indeed, in perfect accord with the film as a whole.
Recommended to both fans of the filone and casual viewers seeking a representative example of it.
Sunday, 8 February 2009
Svegliati e Uccidi / Wake Up and Die
During the 1960s and 1970s Carlo Lizzani made a number of interesting genre films marked by a combination of solid entertainment, social comment and commitment, a logical extension of earlier neo-realist styled works such as Achtung Banditi and Cronaca di poveri amanti into the prime years of the filone cinema.
While preceded by Il Gobbo, about Rome resistance fighter and latterly bandit Alvaro Concenza, Svegliati e Uccidi - closer to Wake Up and Kill, rather than Wake Up and Die in English translation- marks an important step in the evolution of Lizzani's crime cinema, in engaging with contemporary Italian gangsterism rather than looking back to the 1940s.
The equivalent to Concenza here is petty criminal turned public enemy number one Luciano Lutring (Robert Hoffmann), another real-life bandit, Milanese rather than Roman, who became a respected writer and painter after his release from prison.
Lutring - whose name was also sufficiently well-known to be an alternative homonymous title for the film in Italy - is a complex character with obvious personal issues. First seeking to impress night-club singer Yvonne (Lisa Gastoni), whom he soon marries, he anaesthetises himself with drink and counters his feelings of inadequacy by carrying a machine gun he hardly knows how to use.
As an impulsive amateur rather than a professional, he emerges as something of the polar opposite of his counterpart in Bandits in Milan, Pierro Cavallero, who treats crime as a rational business like any other.
While Robert Hoffman is entirely satisfactory as Lutring the best performance in the film is probably that of Gian Maria Volonte, as his nemesis cum protector Inspector Moroni.
It's a testament to Volonte's abilities that while Moroni is very different from Cavallero in the later film, both characters are utterly convincing.
Moroni is also where the film gets even more interesting in political terms. In the Italian set portions of the film we see how he allows the media to focus on Lutring at the expense of other, actually more troublesome criminals whom he wishes to divert attention from and / or lull into a false sense of security, with a pragmatic emphasis on the either / or.
Ironically their number include one gang whom the naive Lutring brings a daring plan for a daylight robbery but who then decide to carry it out by themselves shortly before the arranged time in the hope that their erstwhile colleague will arrive just as the police do and serve as the fall guy.
The social commentary continues as Lutring flees to France, as different groups within the French police compete to be the ones who bring him to book, with predictable results.
Given all this, Lutring's position ultimately emerges as something of a riff on Peter Lorre's character in M, as a helpless figure whom everyone else, rather than wanting out of the picture, wishes to take advantage of.
Lizzani achieves a nice balance between modes in his direction, with enough style to avoid simply being a documentary and enough documentary to effectively convey the reality of the characters and their world as part of our own. This is perhaps best realised in the nightclub scenes, which are simultaneously realistic and expressive to convey a sleazy glamour, and the set-piece robberies, as a how (not) to do it guide.
Ennio Morricone's score is beautiful in its simplicity, building tension through the use of quasi-minimalist 'cells' of piano and percussion in the suspense and action sequences and expanding out for lush vocal numbers in the nightclub scenes.
Volonte's younger brother Claudio Camaso - if anything an even more intense performer - also appears in the film.
While preceded by Il Gobbo, about Rome resistance fighter and latterly bandit Alvaro Concenza, Svegliati e Uccidi - closer to Wake Up and Kill, rather than Wake Up and Die in English translation- marks an important step in the evolution of Lizzani's crime cinema, in engaging with contemporary Italian gangsterism rather than looking back to the 1940s.
The equivalent to Concenza here is petty criminal turned public enemy number one Luciano Lutring (Robert Hoffmann), another real-life bandit, Milanese rather than Roman, who became a respected writer and painter after his release from prison.
Lutring - whose name was also sufficiently well-known to be an alternative homonymous title for the film in Italy - is a complex character with obvious personal issues. First seeking to impress night-club singer Yvonne (Lisa Gastoni), whom he soon marries, he anaesthetises himself with drink and counters his feelings of inadequacy by carrying a machine gun he hardly knows how to use.
As an impulsive amateur rather than a professional, he emerges as something of the polar opposite of his counterpart in Bandits in Milan, Pierro Cavallero, who treats crime as a rational business like any other.
While Robert Hoffman is entirely satisfactory as Lutring the best performance in the film is probably that of Gian Maria Volonte, as his nemesis cum protector Inspector Moroni.
It's a testament to Volonte's abilities that while Moroni is very different from Cavallero in the later film, both characters are utterly convincing.
Moroni is also where the film gets even more interesting in political terms. In the Italian set portions of the film we see how he allows the media to focus on Lutring at the expense of other, actually more troublesome criminals whom he wishes to divert attention from and / or lull into a false sense of security, with a pragmatic emphasis on the either / or.
Ironically their number include one gang whom the naive Lutring brings a daring plan for a daylight robbery but who then decide to carry it out by themselves shortly before the arranged time in the hope that their erstwhile colleague will arrive just as the police do and serve as the fall guy.
The social commentary continues as Lutring flees to France, as different groups within the French police compete to be the ones who bring him to book, with predictable results.
Given all this, Lutring's position ultimately emerges as something of a riff on Peter Lorre's character in M, as a helpless figure whom everyone else, rather than wanting out of the picture, wishes to take advantage of.
Lizzani achieves a nice balance between modes in his direction, with enough style to avoid simply being a documentary and enough documentary to effectively convey the reality of the characters and their world as part of our own. This is perhaps best realised in the nightclub scenes, which are simultaneously realistic and expressive to convey a sleazy glamour, and the set-piece robberies, as a how (not) to do it guide.
Ennio Morricone's score is beautiful in its simplicity, building tension through the use of quasi-minimalist 'cells' of piano and percussion in the suspense and action sequences and expanding out for lush vocal numbers in the nightclub scenes.
Volonte's younger brother Claudio Camaso - if anything an even more intense performer - also appears in the film.
La Legge violenta della squadra anticrimine / Cross Shot
The perfect poliziotteschi?
In truth I doubt that such a thing exists, in that there will be as many perfect examples as they are variations in the form, in that Lenzi vs Damiano or Merli vs Milian way.
But for a film with a fine balance between action, character-driven drama and socio-political commentary on Italy during the years of lead - a combination also featured in director Stelvio Massi's highly recommended Marc the Narc trilogy - Cross Shot may be difficult to beat.
John Saxon plays Commissioner Javocella, a no-nonsense cop frustrated by the shackles procedure places on his men, the thanklessness of their task, and the way in which the bad guys act with impunity and then go free on the rare occasions when they are brought to trial.
Lee J Cobb plays Dante Ragusa, a blind old-school mafia boss who has used a combination of threats and pay-offs to secure the right to redevelop the city, Bari, his way.
Lino Capolicchio plays Antonio Blasi, a young punk who joins a group of career criminals in a raid on an armoured car and soon finds himself way out of his depth after killing a cop and inadvertently hijacking a car belonging to one of Ragusa's men, containing as it does a briefcase full of incriminating documents detailing pay-offs to the city's government.
Then there is Renzo Palmer's Maselli, a left-liberal journalist concerned by Javocella's emphasis on order at the expense of law, takes every opportunity he can to sell extra copies by critiquing the police and their methods and who positions himself in-between Blasi and his pursuers in search of a scoop.
Finally, there are a whole host of well-drawn supporting characters - Blasi's well-meaning girlfriend, who only realises too late what he and now she have gotten themselves into; Javocella and Maselli's underlings, providing a chorus and commentary on their actions; and the Ragusa's lieutenants and son, the latter a disappointment who owes his position to family ties rather than his own abilities.
While the villains of the piece, in the form of the representatives of organised crime and those within the establishment who co-operate with them - here note the unseen governor's refusal to support Javocella - are are clear everything else is suitably indistinct. Maselli and Javocella are presented closer to one another than they might like to think, being likened at one point they are likened to two dogs fighting for a scrap of a bone
Likewise, although Massi pulls no punches, as illustrated by Javocella's penchant for beating on suspects a la Merli; his instruction not to cover the body of his murdered colleague, apparently a 23-year-old whose wife had just given birth to their first child, for added impact; or the way in which the other robbers throw a woman out of her hijacked car into the path of the incoming police car, he also makes Blasi almost sympathetic, a 1970s update of your classic noir era victim of circumstance. (Perhaps because of the two young lovers on the run set-up, I was reminded here of Farley Granger's character in They Live By Night.)
The expression on Capolicchio's face as he pulls the trigger on the machine gun he's only just been given - and here credit must go to the actor, one of those to straddled the divide between filone and auteur cinemas - tells us everything we need to know: I wasn't prepared for this! What have I just done?
Likewise, it seems plausible that his plight is worsened not only by Javocella's approach but also Maselli's not entirely neutral representation of the same.
Besides drawing out the best from his cast and handling the action scenes well, Massi also makes good use of the Bari locations - themselves welcome as an alternative to the more usual Naples, Rome or Turin - and provides some fascinating actuality footage of the newspaper typesetters and presses which, in conjunction with the other technology on display, further helps make the film into a real document of its time.
Definitely well worth a look, even in this panned and scanned Greek subtitled, English dubbed version.
In truth I doubt that such a thing exists, in that there will be as many perfect examples as they are variations in the form, in that Lenzi vs Damiano or Merli vs Milian way.
But for a film with a fine balance between action, character-driven drama and socio-political commentary on Italy during the years of lead - a combination also featured in director Stelvio Massi's highly recommended Marc the Narc trilogy - Cross Shot may be difficult to beat.
John Saxon plays Commissioner Javocella, a no-nonsense cop frustrated by the shackles procedure places on his men, the thanklessness of their task, and the way in which the bad guys act with impunity and then go free on the rare occasions when they are brought to trial.
Lee J Cobb plays Dante Ragusa, a blind old-school mafia boss who has used a combination of threats and pay-offs to secure the right to redevelop the city, Bari, his way.
Lino Capolicchio plays Antonio Blasi, a young punk who joins a group of career criminals in a raid on an armoured car and soon finds himself way out of his depth after killing a cop and inadvertently hijacking a car belonging to one of Ragusa's men, containing as it does a briefcase full of incriminating documents detailing pay-offs to the city's government.
Then there is Renzo Palmer's Maselli, a left-liberal journalist concerned by Javocella's emphasis on order at the expense of law, takes every opportunity he can to sell extra copies by critiquing the police and their methods and who positions himself in-between Blasi and his pursuers in search of a scoop.
Finally, there are a whole host of well-drawn supporting characters - Blasi's well-meaning girlfriend, who only realises too late what he and now she have gotten themselves into; Javocella and Maselli's underlings, providing a chorus and commentary on their actions; and the Ragusa's lieutenants and son, the latter a disappointment who owes his position to family ties rather than his own abilities.
While the villains of the piece, in the form of the representatives of organised crime and those within the establishment who co-operate with them - here note the unseen governor's refusal to support Javocella - are are clear everything else is suitably indistinct. Maselli and Javocella are presented closer to one another than they might like to think, being likened at one point they are likened to two dogs fighting for a scrap of a bone
Likewise, although Massi pulls no punches, as illustrated by Javocella's penchant for beating on suspects a la Merli; his instruction not to cover the body of his murdered colleague, apparently a 23-year-old whose wife had just given birth to their first child, for added impact; or the way in which the other robbers throw a woman out of her hijacked car into the path of the incoming police car, he also makes Blasi almost sympathetic, a 1970s update of your classic noir era victim of circumstance. (Perhaps because of the two young lovers on the run set-up, I was reminded here of Farley Granger's character in They Live By Night.)
The expression on Capolicchio's face as he pulls the trigger on the machine gun he's only just been given - and here credit must go to the actor, one of those to straddled the divide between filone and auteur cinemas - tells us everything we need to know: I wasn't prepared for this! What have I just done?
Likewise, it seems plausible that his plight is worsened not only by Javocella's approach but also Maselli's not entirely neutral representation of the same.
Besides drawing out the best from his cast and handling the action scenes well, Massi also makes good use of the Bari locations - themselves welcome as an alternative to the more usual Naples, Rome or Turin - and provides some fascinating actuality footage of the newspaper typesetters and presses which, in conjunction with the other technology on display, further helps make the film into a real document of its time.
Definitely well worth a look, even in this panned and scanned Greek subtitled, English dubbed version.
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
La Ragazza di Via Condotti / La Chica de Via Condotti / le Crime de la Via Condotti / Meurtres à Rome / Special Killers / Un flic obstiné
This French-Spanish-Italian is one of those crossover films that can’t seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be a poliziotto or a giallo, featuring as it does blackmail; a sex killer; fistfights, shoot outs, assassination and car chases. Unfortunately despite – or perhaps because of this mixture of crime thriller ingredients – it fails to find a coherent identity and ends up amounting to less than the sum of its parts.
As a giallo, the most obvious point of comparison given its co-production nature; the presence of Alberto De Martino and Simon Andreu amongst the cast; the importance of blackmail and other photographs, is probably Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion.
But, with a male protagonist, the equivalent ‘lady’ here, as incarnated by Femi Benussi, is reduced to a supporting role and is very much a suspect, being a less-than-respectable type – a stripper – who has managed to win her place in Rome society through dubious methods.
We open with a memorably shocking scene, recalling none less than House on the Edge of the Park, as Simone Mattei is strangled by her lover, who climaxes at the point of her death.
The killer, whoever he is, drops a photograph at the scene, which is discovered by Simone’s estranged husband Sandro along with her body. Having an iron-clad alibi by virtue of being with his photographer friend Tiffany at the time, Sandro calls the police. They prove characteristically ineffectual anyway, encouraging Sandro to put his Private Investigator skills to work. Tiffany blows up the photo for him, revealing Benussi’s character, Laura Damiani, to leading them to her and all into danger...
Though featuring a committed performance from Frederick Stafford as Sandro, suitably slimy and attractive support from De Martino and Andreu and Benussi and Claude Jade respectively, and an effective score from Enrico Simonetti (father of Goblin’s Claudio), Germán Lorente’s direction tends towards the perfunctory – look, I can shoot a car chase or a fist-fight in an wrecking yard, but don’t have the imagination or ability to make it different from anyone else’s – and the unpleasant.
While some unpleasantness is often a good thing in this kind of film, what we have here, such as the random shooting of a citizen who tries to intervene; the rape-murder antagonist; the swiping of a cop against a wall during a car chase, and a pervasive atmosphere of cynicism, makes for guilty rather than guilty pleasure viewing and something more often than not in bad taste than good bad taste.
As a giallo, the most obvious point of comparison given its co-production nature; the presence of Alberto De Martino and Simon Andreu amongst the cast; the importance of blackmail and other photographs, is probably Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion.
But, with a male protagonist, the equivalent ‘lady’ here, as incarnated by Femi Benussi, is reduced to a supporting role and is very much a suspect, being a less-than-respectable type – a stripper – who has managed to win her place in Rome society through dubious methods.
We open with a memorably shocking scene, recalling none less than House on the Edge of the Park, as Simone Mattei is strangled by her lover, who climaxes at the point of her death.
The killer, whoever he is, drops a photograph at the scene, which is discovered by Simone’s estranged husband Sandro along with her body. Having an iron-clad alibi by virtue of being with his photographer friend Tiffany at the time, Sandro calls the police. They prove characteristically ineffectual anyway, encouraging Sandro to put his Private Investigator skills to work. Tiffany blows up the photo for him, revealing Benussi’s character, Laura Damiani, to leading them to her and all into danger...
Though featuring a committed performance from Frederick Stafford as Sandro, suitably slimy and attractive support from De Martino and Andreu and Benussi and Claude Jade respectively, and an effective score from Enrico Simonetti (father of Goblin’s Claudio), Germán Lorente’s direction tends towards the perfunctory – look, I can shoot a car chase or a fist-fight in an wrecking yard, but don’t have the imagination or ability to make it different from anyone else’s – and the unpleasant.
While some unpleasantness is often a good thing in this kind of film, what we have here, such as the random shooting of a citizen who tries to intervene; the rape-murder antagonist; the swiping of a cop against a wall during a car chase, and a pervasive atmosphere of cynicism, makes for guilty rather than guilty pleasure viewing and something more often than not in bad taste than good bad taste.
Friday, 16 January 2009
La Polizia ha le mani legate / Killer Cop / The Police Can't Move / Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man
Having made a number of entertaining and effective gialli earlier in the 1970s Luciano Ercoli responded to the rise in popularity of the poliziotto in the middle of the decade and the political situation of the "Years of Lead" by turning his hand to the filone with the giallo-poliziotto crossover Troppo rischio per un uomo solo, this film and the once-believed-lost kidnap drama La Bidonata.
The story is straightforward, the narrative somewhat convoluted: A terrorist gang plant a bomb at an international conference in a hotel, killing and wounding various innocents. One of the investigating officers, the accident-prone but ambitious Balsamo, then happens upon one of the terrorists as he is leaving an apology for the atrocity, but is prevented from pursuing further when the man pulls a pistol. Balsamo is then put into police protection by Armando di Federico, played with typical gusto by the no-nonsense Arthur Kennedy, who has been assigned to head the investigation, until the time comes to give his testimone oculare. Unfortunately Balsamo then contrives to get himself assassinated, the assassin being played by the always welcome Gianfranco Cianfriglia. It's then up to Balsamo's friend and colleague Commissario Matteo Rolani, essayed by the invariably committed and convincing Claudio Cassinelli, to work out what is going on, bring everything together and generally save the day...
Though somewhat light in the flesh department, with the director's wife and muse Nieves Navarro / Susan Scott conspicious in her absence, Killer Cop - a retitling which gives a different slant on the proceedings than the original with its translation of The Police Have Their Hands Tied, or the alternative of Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man - otherwise delivers the goods, with strong characterisations and performances, as with Kennedy's character being known for his tendency to suck on mints when tense; necessary and sufficient levels of action, suspense and intrigue; and a soupcon of politics.
Ercoli and his screenwriters raise the subject of false flag terrorism and the apparent inability of the state in finding a solution, with a particularly interesting discussion amongst the passengers on a bus over whether the bombing was the work of reds or anarchists; whether they were acting on their own initiative or not, and the issue of strong versus weak government in relation to the Fascist past.
While probably purely co-incidental it all came across as a vernacular version of a similar public transport conversation in Slatan Dudow and Berthold Brecht's 1931 Kuhle Wampe - a film made in a similar crisis situation.
Issues of seeing correctly are also expressed by the fact that one of the terrorists, the one whom Balsamo could have identified, has actually lost his glasses and suffers from extremely poor vision. In addition to coincidentally or otherwise prefiguring a similar motif in Sergio Martino's Suspicious Death of a Minor, in which Cassinelli's investigator is continually breaking his glasses, this also seems to foreground a distinction between different types of poliziotto films.
To explain, by way of a bit of theory: In Cinema 1 Gilles Deleuze talks about two distinct forms of Hollywood genre cinema, those of the the large and the small form. Within the large form, within which Deleuze includes the gangster film, the basic structure is SAS'. Reading the situation, S, the protagonist acts, A, resulting in a new, usually improved situation, S'; the classical gangster film is actually different here, in that its trajectory is invariably a downwards one for the gangster protagonist, if thereby an upwards one for non-criminal society. Within the small form, within which Deleuze includes the mystery film, the basic structure is ASA'. Here the situation is initially unclear, only being revealed through the character's actions.
Transposing these ideas to the Italian filone cinema, I would argue that the more ostensibly apolitical poliziotto of the Umberto Lenzi sort, which characteristically takes the form of a succession of "binominal" duels between the cop and the criminals, is usually of the SAS' form. The protagonist knows who his antagonists are and that something is afoot. By contrast the more overtly political poliziotto of the Sergio Martino sort is usually of the ASA' form. The protagonist does not initially know who his antagonists are and thus proceeds blindly at first, acting to see what the situational consequences are and what "indices" are revealed.
Much like Ercoli's gialli, Killer Cop has a somewhat uneven tone. This is something that some may object to, that innocent people getting blown up should not be juxtaposed with slapstick comedy. In Ercoli's defence I would argue that the dose of comic relief supplied by Balsamo in particular was necessary to make the film palatable to its target audience within Italy.
Who would want to brave the mean streets of the time in going to the cinema to then see a film which dwelt on the aftermath of a terrorist bombing and offered only the scant relief that certain mavericks within the system might be capable of finding and dealing with those behind such crimes, albeit only after the (f)act?
It would have been too much, too depressing and despairing a conclusion. In such a popular / vernacular context, Ercoli's gallows humour has its reassuring function, that the good guys will prevail and the ordinary citizens be (mostly) saved.
He also has a knack for switching the tone from comic to tragic in an instant, as with the assassination of Balsamo when he foolishly goes shopping. One moment Balsamo is arguing with the stall-holder over his right to test the merchandise and accidentally disturbing the displays of fruit, the next he is knocking them over wholesale as a result of being shot.
The stall-holder's response is also telling and reassuring as he then concentrates his attention on the dying Balsamo rather than his spilled merchandise. An automatic response, perhaps, but one which also tells the viewer that there is a shared community of values that still prevail, even amongst the petty bourgeoisie.
Stelvio Cipriani provides another one of those same-sounding yet undeniably effective driving soundtracks.
In sum, another film that delivers everything required of it and a bit more...
The story is straightforward, the narrative somewhat convoluted: A terrorist gang plant a bomb at an international conference in a hotel, killing and wounding various innocents. One of the investigating officers, the accident-prone but ambitious Balsamo, then happens upon one of the terrorists as he is leaving an apology for the atrocity, but is prevented from pursuing further when the man pulls a pistol. Balsamo is then put into police protection by Armando di Federico, played with typical gusto by the no-nonsense Arthur Kennedy, who has been assigned to head the investigation, until the time comes to give his testimone oculare. Unfortunately Balsamo then contrives to get himself assassinated, the assassin being played by the always welcome Gianfranco Cianfriglia. It's then up to Balsamo's friend and colleague Commissario Matteo Rolani, essayed by the invariably committed and convincing Claudio Cassinelli, to work out what is going on, bring everything together and generally save the day...
Though somewhat light in the flesh department, with the director's wife and muse Nieves Navarro / Susan Scott conspicious in her absence, Killer Cop - a retitling which gives a different slant on the proceedings than the original with its translation of The Police Have Their Hands Tied, or the alternative of Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man - otherwise delivers the goods, with strong characterisations and performances, as with Kennedy's character being known for his tendency to suck on mints when tense; necessary and sufficient levels of action, suspense and intrigue; and a soupcon of politics.
Ercoli and his screenwriters raise the subject of false flag terrorism and the apparent inability of the state in finding a solution, with a particularly interesting discussion amongst the passengers on a bus over whether the bombing was the work of reds or anarchists; whether they were acting on their own initiative or not, and the issue of strong versus weak government in relation to the Fascist past.
While probably purely co-incidental it all came across as a vernacular version of a similar public transport conversation in Slatan Dudow and Berthold Brecht's 1931 Kuhle Wampe - a film made in a similar crisis situation.
Issues of seeing correctly are also expressed by the fact that one of the terrorists, the one whom Balsamo could have identified, has actually lost his glasses and suffers from extremely poor vision. In addition to coincidentally or otherwise prefiguring a similar motif in Sergio Martino's Suspicious Death of a Minor, in which Cassinelli's investigator is continually breaking his glasses, this also seems to foreground a distinction between different types of poliziotto films.
To explain, by way of a bit of theory: In Cinema 1 Gilles Deleuze talks about two distinct forms of Hollywood genre cinema, those of the the large and the small form. Within the large form, within which Deleuze includes the gangster film, the basic structure is SAS'. Reading the situation, S, the protagonist acts, A, resulting in a new, usually improved situation, S'; the classical gangster film is actually different here, in that its trajectory is invariably a downwards one for the gangster protagonist, if thereby an upwards one for non-criminal society. Within the small form, within which Deleuze includes the mystery film, the basic structure is ASA'. Here the situation is initially unclear, only being revealed through the character's actions.
Transposing these ideas to the Italian filone cinema, I would argue that the more ostensibly apolitical poliziotto of the Umberto Lenzi sort, which characteristically takes the form of a succession of "binominal" duels between the cop and the criminals, is usually of the SAS' form. The protagonist knows who his antagonists are and that something is afoot. By contrast the more overtly political poliziotto of the Sergio Martino sort is usually of the ASA' form. The protagonist does not initially know who his antagonists are and thus proceeds blindly at first, acting to see what the situational consequences are and what "indices" are revealed.
Much like Ercoli's gialli, Killer Cop has a somewhat uneven tone. This is something that some may object to, that innocent people getting blown up should not be juxtaposed with slapstick comedy. In Ercoli's defence I would argue that the dose of comic relief supplied by Balsamo in particular was necessary to make the film palatable to its target audience within Italy.
Who would want to brave the mean streets of the time in going to the cinema to then see a film which dwelt on the aftermath of a terrorist bombing and offered only the scant relief that certain mavericks within the system might be capable of finding and dealing with those behind such crimes, albeit only after the (f)act?
It would have been too much, too depressing and despairing a conclusion. In such a popular / vernacular context, Ercoli's gallows humour has its reassuring function, that the good guys will prevail and the ordinary citizens be (mostly) saved.
He also has a knack for switching the tone from comic to tragic in an instant, as with the assassination of Balsamo when he foolishly goes shopping. One moment Balsamo is arguing with the stall-holder over his right to test the merchandise and accidentally disturbing the displays of fruit, the next he is knocking them over wholesale as a result of being shot.
The stall-holder's response is also telling and reassuring as he then concentrates his attention on the dying Balsamo rather than his spilled merchandise. An automatic response, perhaps, but one which also tells the viewer that there is a shared community of values that still prevail, even amongst the petty bourgeoisie.
Stelvio Cipriani provides another one of those same-sounding yet undeniably effective driving soundtracks.
In sum, another film that delivers everything required of it and a bit more...
Sunday, 26 October 2008
I Padroni della città / Mr Scarface / Blood and Bullets / Rulers of the City / The Big Boss / Zwei Supertypen räumen auf
Though not quite as accomplished as the “milieu trilogy” of Milan Calibre 9, Manhunt and Murder Inferno, this 1976 entry is nevertheless the kind of poliziotto that confirms Fernando Di Leo’s position as one of the key players in the filone in terms of style and themes alike.
We open with a slow-motion flashback sequence in which Jack Palace’s ‘Mr Scarface’ / Manzini guns down his partner in crime before the man’s son, whom he then punches out after the boy picks up an empty firearm and tries to shoot his father’s assassin.
The opening scene
What’s odd, however, is that the meaning of this traumatic fragment, beyond the basic fact that Manzini is clearly a badass, though not quite so unremittingly evil as to kill a child who might recognise him like Once Upon a Time in the West’s Frank – is that subsequent sequences appear completely unconnected to it.
Most poliziotto directors would have made it clear that the next character we’re introduced to, Tony, played by German actor and frequent Fassbinder collaborator Harry Baer, is the grown up version of the child who in now in search of revenge. Di Leo leaves us wondering and, indeed, thereafter appears to drop this plot thread. It’s not bad moviemaking, more another sign that he was willing to take risks and do things other filone filmmakers wouldn’t.
Is this the same child grown up?
Much the same can be said of his tendency to avoid straightforward identification figures. Baer’s Tony, like Gastone Moschin in Milan Calibre 9 and Mario Adorf in Manhunt, is clearly a more attractive proposition than the rest of the gang he’s with.
Is this Eleonora Fani?
He adheres to the gangster’s code, as also fore-grounded by his old-timer friend, Napoli, whom the others regard as a has-been or never-was and treat with attitudes ranging from disregard to contempt. (“You know you old guys are pretty funny, all that talk about practice. Give me a Honda and I’d make more snatches than you anyday. Works faster these days,” remarks one younger member, whose pocket Napoli then surreptitiously picks to demonstrate the value of his supposedly outmoded practice.)
He’s also a likeable, light hearted kind of guy – a characterisation further at odds with the conventional figure on a vendetta, if he is indeed such – whose goal is less to be padrone of the city than to make some money and retire to Brazil.
Moreover, he’s reluctant to use violence unnecessarily or to excess, despite being more capable in a hand-to-hand fight than anyone else in either gang. (“You’re beginning to tire me. If I have to fight you like this every week for what you pay our friend, one of us might get hurt,” as he says to one reluctant – and armed – debtor he knocks out with his hands and feet alone, leaving no doubt as to who might get hurt next time round.)
Yet, despite all this, there’s nevertheless the sense that, like the protagonists of the spaghetti westerns Di Leo co-authored, Tony’s the hero because he’s the one who wins the fights, rather than the one who wins the fights because he’s the hero. It’s a subtle, but important, distinction.
The relatively complicated plot really gets going as one of Manzini’s gang, Rick, played by Al Cliver, visits the illegal gambling den run by Tony’s boss, Luigi Cherico, played by Edmund Purdom and clearly cast, like Palance, for special guest star type marquee value.
Rick gets thrown out of the place after complaining – rightfully as it turns out – that its games are rigged by the house, but issues the warning that he or his boss will be back. Whilst Manzini makes a visit to the club to restore face, he is also displeased that Rick should have been fooled and expels him from the gang following a punishment beating. (“If you don’t know which table to sit at don’t go gambling. I stepped in because my men don’t get taken, but if a man gets taken for a sucker he can’t be one of mine”)
Joining a card game and claiming to be out of money, Manzini convinces the dealer to let him cash a cheque for three million lire. In the morning it’s discovered that the cheque is no good. After fighting and defeating his rival Peppi, who considers himself Cherico’s rightful number two, Tony rashly announces that he will get the money back from Manzini.
Back home, it is Rick, whom Tony had conveniently found and taken home to recuperate following his beating, who provides the method: The two men hire an actor from a variety hall and he and Tony then visit Manzini’s offices posing as tax inspectors, compelling the absent boss to pay up ten million lire to avoid an official investigation whilst also helping illustrate the world of corruption and collusion in which the 70s poliziotto as a whole is so firmly embedded.
Keeping seven million for themselves, Tony gives Cherico back his three million, expecting him to be pleased. Instead, however, his boss – encouraged by Peppi – is furious, fearful that Tony has just escalated the conflict with Manzini still further. Disgusted at the gang’s all-talk and little action approach, Tony announces that he is going it alone.
As Manzini makes his next move, sending his men to take care of the music hall performer, whose identity they have uncovered, Tony and Rick realise that continuing to play both ends against the middle – to introduce another spaghetti western theme Di Leo would have been familiar with – is going to prove a challenge, even when assisted by Napoli’s and his wise counsel. (“If you want to take this seriously you’ve got to learn. But a lot of these punks today have never passed the third grade – what do they know?”)
One of the numerous fight scenes
While taking some time to get up to full speed, it would be wrong to give the impression that Mr Scarface is all talk and little or no action, with several decently executed fight scenes affording Tony the opportunity to demonstrate his skills and – more importantly – nature even at this stage, not to mention one of those signature Di Leo girl dancing / camera dancing around girl scenes. But unlike Milan Calibre 9’s Barbara Bouchet, she’s strictly there for decoration, with this proving one of the more masculine films out there and, in the process, reminding one of Leone’s Dollars trilogy westerns.
The definitive Di Leo shot?
Much the same can be said of Gisela Hahn’s nightclub singer cum moll, Clara, clearly included as part of the German side of the co-production given the notable absence of any subplot between her and Tony; if we get no sign that Tony prefers men to women, as per one of Peppi’s taunts, romance isn’t a particular interest / weakness of his either.
Purdom and Hahn
Moreover, after the midway point those more interested in action than auteurism should be more than satisfied with the procession of chases and shootouts that ensue, especially when these culminating in a settling of accounts set against the always welcome abandoned slaughterhouse setting in which also we get an exploding car and a the running down of another bad guy by a motorcyclist doing a wheelie.
Note the various carnival posters expressing Tony's desire to go to Brazil
With a good cast featuring plenty of familiar faces amongst the supporting players, like Fulvio Mingozzi as Manzini’s initial victim; well-chosen locations and adroit use of the camera, and an effective score by regular Di Leo composer Luis Enrique Bacalov – albeit one lacking anything matching the brilliance of his outstanding, oft-used Preludio from Milan Calibre 9, but featuring some nice percussion and funky flute work nonetheless – Masters of the City is well worth a look for fans of the Di Leo or the poliziotto as a whole.
We open with a slow-motion flashback sequence in which Jack Palace’s ‘Mr Scarface’ / Manzini guns down his partner in crime before the man’s son, whom he then punches out after the boy picks up an empty firearm and tries to shoot his father’s assassin.
The opening scene
What’s odd, however, is that the meaning of this traumatic fragment, beyond the basic fact that Manzini is clearly a badass, though not quite so unremittingly evil as to kill a child who might recognise him like Once Upon a Time in the West’s Frank – is that subsequent sequences appear completely unconnected to it.
Most poliziotto directors would have made it clear that the next character we’re introduced to, Tony, played by German actor and frequent Fassbinder collaborator Harry Baer, is the grown up version of the child who in now in search of revenge. Di Leo leaves us wondering and, indeed, thereafter appears to drop this plot thread. It’s not bad moviemaking, more another sign that he was willing to take risks and do things other filone filmmakers wouldn’t.
Is this the same child grown up?
Much the same can be said of his tendency to avoid straightforward identification figures. Baer’s Tony, like Gastone Moschin in Milan Calibre 9 and Mario Adorf in Manhunt, is clearly a more attractive proposition than the rest of the gang he’s with.
Is this Eleonora Fani?
He adheres to the gangster’s code, as also fore-grounded by his old-timer friend, Napoli, whom the others regard as a has-been or never-was and treat with attitudes ranging from disregard to contempt. (“You know you old guys are pretty funny, all that talk about practice. Give me a Honda and I’d make more snatches than you anyday. Works faster these days,” remarks one younger member, whose pocket Napoli then surreptitiously picks to demonstrate the value of his supposedly outmoded practice.)
He’s also a likeable, light hearted kind of guy – a characterisation further at odds with the conventional figure on a vendetta, if he is indeed such – whose goal is less to be padrone of the city than to make some money and retire to Brazil.
Moreover, he’s reluctant to use violence unnecessarily or to excess, despite being more capable in a hand-to-hand fight than anyone else in either gang. (“You’re beginning to tire me. If I have to fight you like this every week for what you pay our friend, one of us might get hurt,” as he says to one reluctant – and armed – debtor he knocks out with his hands and feet alone, leaving no doubt as to who might get hurt next time round.)
Yet, despite all this, there’s nevertheless the sense that, like the protagonists of the spaghetti westerns Di Leo co-authored, Tony’s the hero because he’s the one who wins the fights, rather than the one who wins the fights because he’s the hero. It’s a subtle, but important, distinction.
The relatively complicated plot really gets going as one of Manzini’s gang, Rick, played by Al Cliver, visits the illegal gambling den run by Tony’s boss, Luigi Cherico, played by Edmund Purdom and clearly cast, like Palance, for special guest star type marquee value.
Rick gets thrown out of the place after complaining – rightfully as it turns out – that its games are rigged by the house, but issues the warning that he or his boss will be back. Whilst Manzini makes a visit to the club to restore face, he is also displeased that Rick should have been fooled and expels him from the gang following a punishment beating. (“If you don’t know which table to sit at don’t go gambling. I stepped in because my men don’t get taken, but if a man gets taken for a sucker he can’t be one of mine”)
Joining a card game and claiming to be out of money, Manzini convinces the dealer to let him cash a cheque for three million lire. In the morning it’s discovered that the cheque is no good. After fighting and defeating his rival Peppi, who considers himself Cherico’s rightful number two, Tony rashly announces that he will get the money back from Manzini.
Back home, it is Rick, whom Tony had conveniently found and taken home to recuperate following his beating, who provides the method: The two men hire an actor from a variety hall and he and Tony then visit Manzini’s offices posing as tax inspectors, compelling the absent boss to pay up ten million lire to avoid an official investigation whilst also helping illustrate the world of corruption and collusion in which the 70s poliziotto as a whole is so firmly embedded.
Keeping seven million for themselves, Tony gives Cherico back his three million, expecting him to be pleased. Instead, however, his boss – encouraged by Peppi – is furious, fearful that Tony has just escalated the conflict with Manzini still further. Disgusted at the gang’s all-talk and little action approach, Tony announces that he is going it alone.
As Manzini makes his next move, sending his men to take care of the music hall performer, whose identity they have uncovered, Tony and Rick realise that continuing to play both ends against the middle – to introduce another spaghetti western theme Di Leo would have been familiar with – is going to prove a challenge, even when assisted by Napoli’s and his wise counsel. (“If you want to take this seriously you’ve got to learn. But a lot of these punks today have never passed the third grade – what do they know?”)
One of the numerous fight scenes
While taking some time to get up to full speed, it would be wrong to give the impression that Mr Scarface is all talk and little or no action, with several decently executed fight scenes affording Tony the opportunity to demonstrate his skills and – more importantly – nature even at this stage, not to mention one of those signature Di Leo girl dancing / camera dancing around girl scenes. But unlike Milan Calibre 9’s Barbara Bouchet, she’s strictly there for decoration, with this proving one of the more masculine films out there and, in the process, reminding one of Leone’s Dollars trilogy westerns.
The definitive Di Leo shot?
Much the same can be said of Gisela Hahn’s nightclub singer cum moll, Clara, clearly included as part of the German side of the co-production given the notable absence of any subplot between her and Tony; if we get no sign that Tony prefers men to women, as per one of Peppi’s taunts, romance isn’t a particular interest / weakness of his either.
Purdom and Hahn
Moreover, after the midway point those more interested in action than auteurism should be more than satisfied with the procession of chases and shootouts that ensue, especially when these culminating in a settling of accounts set against the always welcome abandoned slaughterhouse setting in which also we get an exploding car and a the running down of another bad guy by a motorcyclist doing a wheelie.
Note the various carnival posters expressing Tony's desire to go to Brazil
With a good cast featuring plenty of familiar faces amongst the supporting players, like Fulvio Mingozzi as Manzini’s initial victim; well-chosen locations and adroit use of the camera, and an effective score by regular Di Leo composer Luis Enrique Bacalov – albeit one lacking anything matching the brilliance of his outstanding, oft-used Preludio from Milan Calibre 9, but featuring some nice percussion and funky flute work nonetheless – Masters of the City is well worth a look for fans of the Di Leo or the poliziotto as a whole.
Sunday, 21 September 2008
Sbirro, la tua legge è lenta... la mia... no! / Hunted City
Merli, Merola and Massi
How can you go wrong?
You can't, though it's true that the way in which Merli and Merola's characters operate is perhaps not quite as fans would expect at times, whilst Massi's direction might also come across as somewhat lazy in its frequent reliance upon the zoom.
The truth, I would argue, is that Hunted City has a different approach to the poliziotto that, when considered in wider relation to the films of Umberto Lenzi and Massi's earlier filone entries such as the Marc the Narc series gives a tentative sense of an emergent auteur at work.
Massi's films are more complex in their characterisation, narrative and politics whilst Lenzi's tend to have the superior set-pieces. This is not, however, to diminish the action sequences here or elsewhere in Massi's oeuvre. They're perfectly satisfactory but just don't have the same jaw-dropping intensity as those of Lenzi at his best.
Hunted City begins in classic fashion with the gunning down of a mafia-connected financier, Mr Guidi, followed by the arrival of Merli's cop, Commissioner Paolo Ferro – a name suggestive of his iron nature and also recalling a previous Massi / Merli collaboration, Il Comissario di Ferro – in Milan, where he is met by sidekick Arrigo, on hand to provide comic relief and a sense of contrast with Merli's ubercop.
The first deviation from formula comes when we are introduced to Merola's restauranteur Raffaele Acampora, an ex-mafioso – or at least member of the Camorra; as with most subtitled Italian crime films the distinctions aren't always made clear – telling and showing some punks who try to shake him down for protection exactly where they can go.
He's the sort of character you wouldn't get in a Lenzi film where things tend to be that much more obvious. At this point in the Lenzi version, we'd no doubt have a scene in which we were told that Merola was only using his restaurants as a legitimate front to conceal his illegal activities; a scene which would also likely preclude the preceding shakedown attempt unless it has been staged for the benefit of Merli.
But here, in Massi's vision and version of Violent Milan, we go straight the arrival of Merli's cop as the men are ejecte, being comparatively warmly received by Merola and given the information he's after. It's not so much that Acompara has an alibi, which is as would be expected, as that he had already satisfactorily completed his business dealings with Guidi and, in any case, appears to be doing far better as a legitimate businessman than an illegitimate one. This said, as the film progresses another aspect of Massi's shades of grey approach that emerges is to repeatedly blur the boundaries around respectability and legitimacy anyway; while Lenzi's films also blur the boundaries as a means of criticising the society of the times his protagonists tended to stand apart and above such compromises.
Next, Ferro visits his sister and her family. It's here that one of the film's dramatic contrivances emerges as we recognise her son Stefano's friend as the hitman who killed Guidi. An improbable coincidence perhaps, but one that is excusable and explicable in relation to genre formula whilst also providing for much needed suspense and drama given the anti-climatic nature of the preceding sequence: is Stefano also mixed up in the syndicate? If so will Ferro realise in time and how will he react?
As the assassinations continue, the next victim being a lawyer who is gunned down by some masked, tennis-bag carrying hitmen, another party becomes involved in the form of Don Alfonso, played by Francisco Rabal – albeit almost unrecognisable with / without (not being certain of which is the case) his hairpiece.
Though Alfonso and Ferro have a shared past, the way this works again proves distinctive. Regarding one another as honourable and worthy opponents, a rare commodity in the film's milieux and arguably that of the wider society it represents, the two men agree to put past differences behind them in pursuit of their common enemies:
Ferro: “I once did you a favour”
Alfonso: “But that's how honoured family members speak”
Again, in our imagined Lenzi version of the film it's hard to see the lines being crossed in this way whilst even if they were there would surely be a double-cross from the mafioso sooner or later. Here, by contrast, Ferro is sufficiently trusting to eventually have the Don arrange a hit on him through his contacts – a desparate strategy that he hopes will bring the elusive murder syndicate into the open...
Returning to the subject of Massi's direction, I would argue that it encapsulates the kind of vernacular poetry discussed by Mikel Koven in his study of the giallo. Koven's ideas here are based on the theories of Pasolini, who argued for a distinction between a classical “cinema of prose,” which effaced the signs of its own construction, and a modernist “cinema of poetry,” which foregrounded them.
The key aspect of this theory in relation to Hunted City seems less the intersubjective nature of the poetic camera, as revealing the consciousness of the director behind his characters – although I suspect a case could be made for the use of the zooms in and out as conveying a sense of urgency and immediacy whereby no-one has much time to waste – as constantly making us aware of the camera's presence.
Essentially where the classical cinema would use cuts to break a scene up, going from the establishing shot to the medium shot or the close up and reframing whenever someone or something new enters into the set, Massi instead zooms in or out or, less frequently, racks focus instead, as when the camera picks out three gunmen who know one another from the tennis rackets they are carrying across a plaza.
The danger, of course, is that such an approach can easily be seen as lazy filmmaking, the kind of approach that was adopted by filone filmmakers for economic more than aesthetic reasons. Against this it can be noted that Massi also makes use of handheld; some comparatively elaborate mirror based set-ups; false POV shots from inside a vending machine, all in addition to finding some imaginative locations, most notably a church whose hall has been transformed into a firing range. (In this we also get a neat variant on the Dirty Harry “did he fire six bullets or only five” trope, as Ferro calmly blows away the bad guy who's holding a gun to Arrigo's head in the knowledge that the weapon, one of his, is empty.)
The performances are also pleasing, with Merli, Merola and Rabal each giving their characters greater depth than is often the case. Though they may still not be playing the full eight octaves range in a manner acceptable to art cinema snobs, they are considerably more than one note.
The way Massi handles Ferro's love interest is also noteworthy here. First, because he even gets one, as an apparent departure from single-minded duty. Second, because it gives Merli the opportunity to play – as distinct from be – vulnerable. Third, because the way the scenario ultimately plays out is in accord with the comparatively strong female characters present in some of his other films, most obviously the Baader-Meinhof gang styled terrorist played by Marcella Michelangeli in Mark Strikes Again.
Stelvio Cipriani delivers a solid score, with dynamic suspense and action cues incorporating slapped bass and wacka wacka guitar, further demonstrating his stylistic adaptability by substituting disco themes for the kind of organ-heavy shake cues that would have omnipresent earlier in the 70s in the film's obligatory nightclub scene.
[The film is available to download from Cinemageddon]
How can you go wrong?
You can't, though it's true that the way in which Merli and Merola's characters operate is perhaps not quite as fans would expect at times, whilst Massi's direction might also come across as somewhat lazy in its frequent reliance upon the zoom.
The truth, I would argue, is that Hunted City has a different approach to the poliziotto that, when considered in wider relation to the films of Umberto Lenzi and Massi's earlier filone entries such as the Marc the Narc series gives a tentative sense of an emergent auteur at work.
Massi's films are more complex in their characterisation, narrative and politics whilst Lenzi's tend to have the superior set-pieces. This is not, however, to diminish the action sequences here or elsewhere in Massi's oeuvre. They're perfectly satisfactory but just don't have the same jaw-dropping intensity as those of Lenzi at his best.
Hunted City begins in classic fashion with the gunning down of a mafia-connected financier, Mr Guidi, followed by the arrival of Merli's cop, Commissioner Paolo Ferro – a name suggestive of his iron nature and also recalling a previous Massi / Merli collaboration, Il Comissario di Ferro – in Milan, where he is met by sidekick Arrigo, on hand to provide comic relief and a sense of contrast with Merli's ubercop.
The first deviation from formula comes when we are introduced to Merola's restauranteur Raffaele Acampora, an ex-mafioso – or at least member of the Camorra; as with most subtitled Italian crime films the distinctions aren't always made clear – telling and showing some punks who try to shake him down for protection exactly where they can go.
He's the sort of character you wouldn't get in a Lenzi film where things tend to be that much more obvious. At this point in the Lenzi version, we'd no doubt have a scene in which we were told that Merola was only using his restaurants as a legitimate front to conceal his illegal activities; a scene which would also likely preclude the preceding shakedown attempt unless it has been staged for the benefit of Merli.
But here, in Massi's vision and version of Violent Milan, we go straight the arrival of Merli's cop as the men are ejecte, being comparatively warmly received by Merola and given the information he's after. It's not so much that Acompara has an alibi, which is as would be expected, as that he had already satisfactorily completed his business dealings with Guidi and, in any case, appears to be doing far better as a legitimate businessman than an illegitimate one. This said, as the film progresses another aspect of Massi's shades of grey approach that emerges is to repeatedly blur the boundaries around respectability and legitimacy anyway; while Lenzi's films also blur the boundaries as a means of criticising the society of the times his protagonists tended to stand apart and above such compromises.
Next, Ferro visits his sister and her family. It's here that one of the film's dramatic contrivances emerges as we recognise her son Stefano's friend as the hitman who killed Guidi. An improbable coincidence perhaps, but one that is excusable and explicable in relation to genre formula whilst also providing for much needed suspense and drama given the anti-climatic nature of the preceding sequence: is Stefano also mixed up in the syndicate? If so will Ferro realise in time and how will he react?
As the assassinations continue, the next victim being a lawyer who is gunned down by some masked, tennis-bag carrying hitmen, another party becomes involved in the form of Don Alfonso, played by Francisco Rabal – albeit almost unrecognisable with / without (not being certain of which is the case) his hairpiece.
Though Alfonso and Ferro have a shared past, the way this works again proves distinctive. Regarding one another as honourable and worthy opponents, a rare commodity in the film's milieux and arguably that of the wider society it represents, the two men agree to put past differences behind them in pursuit of their common enemies:
Ferro: “I once did you a favour”
Alfonso: “But that's how honoured family members speak”
Again, in our imagined Lenzi version of the film it's hard to see the lines being crossed in this way whilst even if they were there would surely be a double-cross from the mafioso sooner or later. Here, by contrast, Ferro is sufficiently trusting to eventually have the Don arrange a hit on him through his contacts – a desparate strategy that he hopes will bring the elusive murder syndicate into the open...
Returning to the subject of Massi's direction, I would argue that it encapsulates the kind of vernacular poetry discussed by Mikel Koven in his study of the giallo. Koven's ideas here are based on the theories of Pasolini, who argued for a distinction between a classical “cinema of prose,” which effaced the signs of its own construction, and a modernist “cinema of poetry,” which foregrounded them.
The key aspect of this theory in relation to Hunted City seems less the intersubjective nature of the poetic camera, as revealing the consciousness of the director behind his characters – although I suspect a case could be made for the use of the zooms in and out as conveying a sense of urgency and immediacy whereby no-one has much time to waste – as constantly making us aware of the camera's presence.
Essentially where the classical cinema would use cuts to break a scene up, going from the establishing shot to the medium shot or the close up and reframing whenever someone or something new enters into the set, Massi instead zooms in or out or, less frequently, racks focus instead, as when the camera picks out three gunmen who know one another from the tennis rackets they are carrying across a plaza.
The danger, of course, is that such an approach can easily be seen as lazy filmmaking, the kind of approach that was adopted by filone filmmakers for economic more than aesthetic reasons. Against this it can be noted that Massi also makes use of handheld; some comparatively elaborate mirror based set-ups; false POV shots from inside a vending machine, all in addition to finding some imaginative locations, most notably a church whose hall has been transformed into a firing range. (In this we also get a neat variant on the Dirty Harry “did he fire six bullets or only five” trope, as Ferro calmly blows away the bad guy who's holding a gun to Arrigo's head in the knowledge that the weapon, one of his, is empty.)
The performances are also pleasing, with Merli, Merola and Rabal each giving their characters greater depth than is often the case. Though they may still not be playing the full eight octaves range in a manner acceptable to art cinema snobs, they are considerably more than one note.
The way Massi handles Ferro's love interest is also noteworthy here. First, because he even gets one, as an apparent departure from single-minded duty. Second, because it gives Merli the opportunity to play – as distinct from be – vulnerable. Third, because the way the scenario ultimately plays out is in accord with the comparatively strong female characters present in some of his other films, most obviously the Baader-Meinhof gang styled terrorist played by Marcella Michelangeli in Mark Strikes Again.
Stelvio Cipriani delivers a solid score, with dynamic suspense and action cues incorporating slapped bass and wacka wacka guitar, further demonstrating his stylistic adaptability by substituting disco themes for the kind of organ-heavy shake cues that would have omnipresent earlier in the 70s in the film's obligatory nightclub scene.
[The film is available to download from Cinemageddon]
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
I Gabbiani volano basso / Seagulls Fly Low
In this obscure 1978 thriller Maurizio Merli is cast somewhat against type as a professional killer. I say somewhat because, as we soon learn, he's not really a bad guy and more a victim of circumstance: a Vietnam veteran who grew tired of the war and deserted, he found himself in Italy where he was forced into working for businessman-cum-criminal Micheli, played by Mel Ferrer.
The film begins with what is supposed to be Merli's last job, the assassination of Martini, a former business partner of Micheli and his colleague Calvi; though some of the organisation's own men, like the one played by Franco Garofalo, could easily have performed the hit just as well, Micheli correctly felt it safer to employ an outsider.
Merli's problems only really start as he boards the plane for New York, equipped with a one-way ticket and a forget passport. One of the other passengers suffers a heart attack and everyone has to disembark and wait in the departure lounge. In an uncharacteristic loss of composure, Merli comes to believe that his fake passport has been detected by the airport security, and thus flees from the airport and back to Micheli.
Maurizio Merli as Jeff Blynn?
Maurizio Merli sans moustache
We might however wonder if he doesn't make too much a show of his panic, running through the airport, stealing a car and then driving off at high speed; perhaps airport security was just that bit more relaxed 30 years ago.
While Micheli deals with the situation with customary calmness, helping Merli to change his appearance and arranging for another passport to be made – I keep using the actor's name because his character tellingly doesn't really have one, being referred to as “the mechanic” and “the freak” initially and then using the alias “Albert Morgan” – Calvi starts to worry about his own exposure and thus orders Garofalo to take care of Micheli, setting up Merli to take the fall...
Some dubious red tinted Vietnam flashbacks
Competently if unexceptionally directed, as the kind of film where the stylish moments tend to come across as such, rather than being seamlessly integrated into the whole, and featuring a good cast, also including Dagmar Lassander as a nightclub proprietor and Nathalie Delon as the lost soul who takes sympathy on Merli (“you mustn't give up now; it's not as if you've killed somebody” ironically foregrounding exactly what he cannot tell her) to add glamour and romance, it's something of a mystery why Seagulls Fly Low isn't better known.
Featuring a passable quotient of action, plenty of suspense and a suitably dark and cynical 70s worldview – though film noir and French poetic realism certainly establish a longer heritage here – the film gives Merli far more to do as an actor than was usually the case, his role being marked by a world-weary reluctance to use a gun or his fists alien to his Iron Inspector characters and, after he meets Delon, the tentative possibility of his life taking another course.
Perhaps part of the problem was that Merli's fans were happy to see him play an essentially tragic, doomed character, but wanted to see him go down fighting rather more if he was not to ultimately be triumphant. To make a neo-noir comparison, trying imagining a Point Blank where Lee Marvin's character didn't go on a quixotic quest for his money.
Another possibility is that in initially looking a bit like Jeff Blynn, with longer and bushier hair than usual, and then losing the iconic moustache, he simply wasn't immediately recognisable as Merli. To make a noir comparison, we might think of Orson Welles's deconstruction of Rita Hayworth's image in The Lady from Shanghai.
The familiar image of a plane departing
Or maybe it's just the title: while its meaning is explained in the course of the film, it doesn't exactly tell you what to expect. In the world of the filone cinema this mattered, as director Giorgio Cristalli clearly knew from previous credits such as You're Jinxed, Friend, You've Met Sacramento and Four Gunmen of the Holy Trinity.
To summarise, a film that's worth the Merli fan's attention but which probably won't appeal to the more casual poliziotto viewer who only wants to see car chases, shootouts and fist-fights.
[The film is available on VHS rip from Cinemageddon]
The film begins with what is supposed to be Merli's last job, the assassination of Martini, a former business partner of Micheli and his colleague Calvi; though some of the organisation's own men, like the one played by Franco Garofalo, could easily have performed the hit just as well, Micheli correctly felt it safer to employ an outsider.
Merli's problems only really start as he boards the plane for New York, equipped with a one-way ticket and a forget passport. One of the other passengers suffers a heart attack and everyone has to disembark and wait in the departure lounge. In an uncharacteristic loss of composure, Merli comes to believe that his fake passport has been detected by the airport security, and thus flees from the airport and back to Micheli.
Maurizio Merli as Jeff Blynn?
Maurizio Merli sans moustache
We might however wonder if he doesn't make too much a show of his panic, running through the airport, stealing a car and then driving off at high speed; perhaps airport security was just that bit more relaxed 30 years ago.
While Micheli deals with the situation with customary calmness, helping Merli to change his appearance and arranging for another passport to be made – I keep using the actor's name because his character tellingly doesn't really have one, being referred to as “the mechanic” and “the freak” initially and then using the alias “Albert Morgan” – Calvi starts to worry about his own exposure and thus orders Garofalo to take care of Micheli, setting up Merli to take the fall...
Some dubious red tinted Vietnam flashbacks
Competently if unexceptionally directed, as the kind of film where the stylish moments tend to come across as such, rather than being seamlessly integrated into the whole, and featuring a good cast, also including Dagmar Lassander as a nightclub proprietor and Nathalie Delon as the lost soul who takes sympathy on Merli (“you mustn't give up now; it's not as if you've killed somebody” ironically foregrounding exactly what he cannot tell her) to add glamour and romance, it's something of a mystery why Seagulls Fly Low isn't better known.
Featuring a passable quotient of action, plenty of suspense and a suitably dark and cynical 70s worldview – though film noir and French poetic realism certainly establish a longer heritage here – the film gives Merli far more to do as an actor than was usually the case, his role being marked by a world-weary reluctance to use a gun or his fists alien to his Iron Inspector characters and, after he meets Delon, the tentative possibility of his life taking another course.
Perhaps part of the problem was that Merli's fans were happy to see him play an essentially tragic, doomed character, but wanted to see him go down fighting rather more if he was not to ultimately be triumphant. To make a neo-noir comparison, trying imagining a Point Blank where Lee Marvin's character didn't go on a quixotic quest for his money.
Another possibility is that in initially looking a bit like Jeff Blynn, with longer and bushier hair than usual, and then losing the iconic moustache, he simply wasn't immediately recognisable as Merli. To make a noir comparison, we might think of Orson Welles's deconstruction of Rita Hayworth's image in The Lady from Shanghai.
The familiar image of a plane departing
Or maybe it's just the title: while its meaning is explained in the course of the film, it doesn't exactly tell you what to expect. In the world of the filone cinema this mattered, as director Giorgio Cristalli clearly knew from previous credits such as You're Jinxed, Friend, You've Met Sacramento and Four Gunmen of the Holy Trinity.
To summarise, a film that's worth the Merli fan's attention but which probably won't appeal to the more casual poliziotto viewer who only wants to see car chases, shootouts and fist-fights.
[The film is available on VHS rip from Cinemageddon]
Tuesday, 12 August 2008
Il Conto è chiuso / The Last Round
A mysterious stranger enters a town controlled by two criminal factions. After proving his abilities and learning who's who in the process, he plays them off against each other, before cleaning up those who are still left...
The drifter on the road
If The Last Round's scenario sounds familiar, it should. For the film is a contemporary update of A Fistful of Dollars set in a northern Italian town, with a revenge subplot involving a music box clearly derived of For a Few Dollars More – even as the protagonist's skill with a knife, which he prefers over the gun if he is forced to use something other than his fists for reasons of range, is more reminiscent of Yojimbo.
The music box and photographic memory
The stranger, Marco Russo, is played by Argentinean middleweight boxing champion Carlos Monzon, who understandably makes up for in physical presence what he may have lacked in acting ability.
The leader of one faction, Rico Manzetti, is played by poliziotti regular Luc Merenda, with his brothers and gang including such familiar filone faces as Gianni Dei and Gianfranco Cianfriglia.
Merenda shows his prowess with a gun, aiming not for the heart but a range of targets, including the left and right eyes.
The leader of the other faction, Belmondo (sic), is played by Leone regular Mario Brega. His faction is not as like the Baxters as Merenda's are the Rojos, in that he's neither the law in the town nor dominated by his wife – indeed, we never actually see his family.
Monzon demonstrates his skills
In the middle of all this are a blind girl and her adoptive father who live in a shack near a run down factory and provide Russo with information and assistance, and a second girl and her mother who kept prisoner by Rico Manzetti. They are played by Giampiero Albertini, Eleonora Fani, Annaluisa Pesce and Mariangela Giordano, the last of whose presence serves to also highlights the involvement of Gabriele Crisanti as executive producer and of his frequent screenwriting collaborator, the prolific Piero Regnoli.
I know the face, but not the name
While Luis Enrique Bacalov's imaginative and varied score also highlights the spaghetti western connection, the actual representation of the town and its two gangs has more in common with the poliziotto and Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest, itself a largely unacknowledged reference point for Kurosawa and Leone's film alike.
Although we are told that the police have been bought off they never appear as an obstacle to Marco, a plot point which would perhaps have better emphasised the gangsters' power, although against this a magistrate who does make a public stand against them is almost immediately gunned down.
More generally the references to the running down of the city's industry, labour unrest and its heavily polluted atmosphere suggest a wider context not too far removed from that of Hammett's Poisonville.
Though certainly entertaining – the main issue, it must always be remembered – and stimulating – the secondary issue – I was not convinced that The Last Round's relocation of the Leone spaghetti to 1970s Italy really worked.
A nice re-imagining of the Leone corrida in a present-day setting – the two gangs in a sports arena, with Russo watching from above in the middle
The issue isn't so much with corrupt town, which one can easily believe in as an exaggerated version of an actual city in northern Italy at the time – though the selection of this is somewhat unexpected, given that the specific cultural framework of the spaghetti has been convincingly argued to be a southern Italian one by critics like Christopher Frayling – as the juxtaposition of two fundamentally different approaches to place, time and action or, to use Bakhtin's notion, chronotopes.
Marco belongs to the 'mythic' realm, where the single heroic individual can triumph through strength (the peplum film) and / or skill and guile (the spaghetti western) over seemingly impossible odds. These same impossible odds, as they are presented in the poliziotto context of The Last Round, however belong far more to the 'real' world (more so than the superspy films of the previous decade, as a form that cross-fertilised with the spaghetti western in certain ways), where they either cannot be surmounted or the hero's triumph is necessarily 'imaginary'.
This division is apparent in some other poliziotteschi, being highlighted by the traditional maverick cop on a one-man crusade as incarnated by Maurizio Merli, but it is also less pronounced because he is embedded in this same world. To put it crudely, he uses guns versus guns, not a knife or his fists. He can also be defeated, die, or achieve a victory that is partial or pyhrric.
It could also be said, however, that the distinctive combination of character and environment in The Last Round serves to make the imaginary aspect of its solutions to real problems more prominent than in 90 per cent or more of mainstream films, including most other poliziotteschi.
Mario Brega, looking a little like Lucio Fulci here
In real life, that is, the individual is arguably fundamentally powerless, or at least tends to have his or her capabilities overstated by the (non)powers that be for various reasons. (Just try to imagine a politician or party whose message was that they really had little or no control in the grand scheme of things.)
Stelvio Massi's direction is brisk and efficient, presenting a one-two combination of surprisingly elegant camera movements, especially in the studio-bound and interior sequences, and crash zooms. He also throws in some tricksy mirror shots as Russo and Belmondo meet for the first time, an approach which seems less showing off for its own sake as a externalisation of the duplicities inherent in the set up and Russo's character as a trickster hero.
The fight sequences sometimes make use of slow motion to highlight Monzon's pugilistic abilities, although the blows still sound like car doors slamming – realism, that is, is again limited by the higher priority of entertainment...
[The film is on Region 1 DVD from Noshame. The package also includes a CD of contemporary interpretations of 70s poliziotto music and a somewhat surreal extra in the form of a tour of Luc Merenda's antique shop]
The drifter on the road
If The Last Round's scenario sounds familiar, it should. For the film is a contemporary update of A Fistful of Dollars set in a northern Italian town, with a revenge subplot involving a music box clearly derived of For a Few Dollars More – even as the protagonist's skill with a knife, which he prefers over the gun if he is forced to use something other than his fists for reasons of range, is more reminiscent of Yojimbo.
The music box and photographic memory
The stranger, Marco Russo, is played by Argentinean middleweight boxing champion Carlos Monzon, who understandably makes up for in physical presence what he may have lacked in acting ability.
The leader of one faction, Rico Manzetti, is played by poliziotti regular Luc Merenda, with his brothers and gang including such familiar filone faces as Gianni Dei and Gianfranco Cianfriglia.
Merenda shows his prowess with a gun, aiming not for the heart but a range of targets, including the left and right eyes.
The leader of the other faction, Belmondo (sic), is played by Leone regular Mario Brega. His faction is not as like the Baxters as Merenda's are the Rojos, in that he's neither the law in the town nor dominated by his wife – indeed, we never actually see his family.
Monzon demonstrates his skills
In the middle of all this are a blind girl and her adoptive father who live in a shack near a run down factory and provide Russo with information and assistance, and a second girl and her mother who kept prisoner by Rico Manzetti. They are played by Giampiero Albertini, Eleonora Fani, Annaluisa Pesce and Mariangela Giordano, the last of whose presence serves to also highlights the involvement of Gabriele Crisanti as executive producer and of his frequent screenwriting collaborator, the prolific Piero Regnoli.
I know the face, but not the name
While Luis Enrique Bacalov's imaginative and varied score also highlights the spaghetti western connection, the actual representation of the town and its two gangs has more in common with the poliziotto and Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest, itself a largely unacknowledged reference point for Kurosawa and Leone's film alike.
Although we are told that the police have been bought off they never appear as an obstacle to Marco, a plot point which would perhaps have better emphasised the gangsters' power, although against this a magistrate who does make a public stand against them is almost immediately gunned down.
More generally the references to the running down of the city's industry, labour unrest and its heavily polluted atmosphere suggest a wider context not too far removed from that of Hammett's Poisonville.
Though certainly entertaining – the main issue, it must always be remembered – and stimulating – the secondary issue – I was not convinced that The Last Round's relocation of the Leone spaghetti to 1970s Italy really worked.
A nice re-imagining of the Leone corrida in a present-day setting – the two gangs in a sports arena, with Russo watching from above in the middle
The issue isn't so much with corrupt town, which one can easily believe in as an exaggerated version of an actual city in northern Italy at the time – though the selection of this is somewhat unexpected, given that the specific cultural framework of the spaghetti has been convincingly argued to be a southern Italian one by critics like Christopher Frayling – as the juxtaposition of two fundamentally different approaches to place, time and action or, to use Bakhtin's notion, chronotopes.
Marco belongs to the 'mythic' realm, where the single heroic individual can triumph through strength (the peplum film) and / or skill and guile (the spaghetti western) over seemingly impossible odds. These same impossible odds, as they are presented in the poliziotto context of The Last Round, however belong far more to the 'real' world (more so than the superspy films of the previous decade, as a form that cross-fertilised with the spaghetti western in certain ways), where they either cannot be surmounted or the hero's triumph is necessarily 'imaginary'.
This division is apparent in some other poliziotteschi, being highlighted by the traditional maverick cop on a one-man crusade as incarnated by Maurizio Merli, but it is also less pronounced because he is embedded in this same world. To put it crudely, he uses guns versus guns, not a knife or his fists. He can also be defeated, die, or achieve a victory that is partial or pyhrric.
It could also be said, however, that the distinctive combination of character and environment in The Last Round serves to make the imaginary aspect of its solutions to real problems more prominent than in 90 per cent or more of mainstream films, including most other poliziotteschi.
Mario Brega, looking a little like Lucio Fulci here
In real life, that is, the individual is arguably fundamentally powerless, or at least tends to have his or her capabilities overstated by the (non)powers that be for various reasons. (Just try to imagine a politician or party whose message was that they really had little or no control in the grand scheme of things.)
Stelvio Massi's direction is brisk and efficient, presenting a one-two combination of surprisingly elegant camera movements, especially in the studio-bound and interior sequences, and crash zooms. He also throws in some tricksy mirror shots as Russo and Belmondo meet for the first time, an approach which seems less showing off for its own sake as a externalisation of the duplicities inherent in the set up and Russo's character as a trickster hero.
The fight sequences sometimes make use of slow motion to highlight Monzon's pugilistic abilities, although the blows still sound like car doors slamming – realism, that is, is again limited by the higher priority of entertainment...
[The film is on Region 1 DVD from Noshame. The package also includes a CD of contemporary interpretations of 70s poliziotto music and a somewhat surreal extra in the form of a tour of Luc Merenda's antique shop]
Saturday, 19 July 2008
Genova a mano armata / Merciless Man
If it would be difficult to think of a more generic title for a poliziotto than Genova a mano armata, writer-director Mario Lanfranchi's 1976 film nevertheless manages to produce the occasional surprise amongst the de rigeur shoot outs, brawls, chases, crosses and double-crosses.
Specifically, rather than being a dedicated crime fighter or a gangster, our protagonist (Tony Lo Bianco) is an ex-cop kicked off the force for inappropriate conduct.
Taking advantage of his father's Italian origins he's relocated to Genoa and set himself up as a private investigator – a post assumed against the wishes of local cop Gallo (Adolfo Celi) who is convinced 'The American' is up to something but cannot put his finger on anything specific.
Not that it can be said that the American has exactly shone in his new occupation, with his most recent case going spectacularly wrong on all counts as he failed to save a kidnapped businessman from being killed, the ransom from going missing and the kidnappers from escaping.
Nonetheless given that a group of gangsters seem intent on following the American's every move and also warn him against further involvement in the case he does at least have some leads to go on when the victim's daughter, Dr Marta Mayer (Maud Adams), hires him to track down her father's killers and bring them to justice one way or another...
Whether on account of the cross-over between the hunters and hunted or the apparent omission of 15 or 20 minutes of material in the version I watched, Genova a mano armata had a somewhat choppy narrative, being prone to jump from one plot point or incident to another without bothering too much about the finer details of the whys and wherefores
Though the eventual resolution goes some way to explaining how this should be so, it's also one of those cases of too little too late.
Other incidents along the way such as the American's shooting up heroin in order to infiltrate a private clinic he believes is involved in the increasingly confusing affair – presumably an idea borrowed from the French Connection 2, just as a later bus hijacking recalls Dirty Harry – strain credulity, without being well enough put together to get by on character, performance or direction alone, especially when we're not really given much reason to care about Lo Bianco's character to begin with.
Bond fans may care to note that the film may well be unique in starring not one but two of that franchise's major villains in the form of Thunderball's Celi and Octopussy's Adams, while the presence of Howard Ross / Renato Rossini as the leader of the gangsters should be a plus as far as Italian trash fans are concerned as will Franco Micalizzi's characteristically energetic score.
Specifically, rather than being a dedicated crime fighter or a gangster, our protagonist (Tony Lo Bianco) is an ex-cop kicked off the force for inappropriate conduct.
Taking advantage of his father's Italian origins he's relocated to Genoa and set himself up as a private investigator – a post assumed against the wishes of local cop Gallo (Adolfo Celi) who is convinced 'The American' is up to something but cannot put his finger on anything specific.
Not that it can be said that the American has exactly shone in his new occupation, with his most recent case going spectacularly wrong on all counts as he failed to save a kidnapped businessman from being killed, the ransom from going missing and the kidnappers from escaping.
Nonetheless given that a group of gangsters seem intent on following the American's every move and also warn him against further involvement in the case he does at least have some leads to go on when the victim's daughter, Dr Marta Mayer (Maud Adams), hires him to track down her father's killers and bring them to justice one way or another...
Whether on account of the cross-over between the hunters and hunted or the apparent omission of 15 or 20 minutes of material in the version I watched, Genova a mano armata had a somewhat choppy narrative, being prone to jump from one plot point or incident to another without bothering too much about the finer details of the whys and wherefores
Though the eventual resolution goes some way to explaining how this should be so, it's also one of those cases of too little too late.
Other incidents along the way such as the American's shooting up heroin in order to infiltrate a private clinic he believes is involved in the increasingly confusing affair – presumably an idea borrowed from the French Connection 2, just as a later bus hijacking recalls Dirty Harry – strain credulity, without being well enough put together to get by on character, performance or direction alone, especially when we're not really given much reason to care about Lo Bianco's character to begin with.
Bond fans may care to note that the film may well be unique in starring not one but two of that franchise's major villains in the form of Thunderball's Celi and Octopussy's Adams, while the presence of Howard Ross / Renato Rossini as the leader of the gangsters should be a plus as far as Italian trash fans are concerned as will Franco Micalizzi's characteristically energetic score.
Sunday, 13 July 2008
La Mano lunga del padrino / Long Arm of the Godfather
We open with a daring attack on an army convoy carrying a consignment of weapons. But for the technology on display – cars, trucks and submachine guns – it could easily be a scene in a spaghetti western, all the more so when one of the robbers proceeds to make off with the loot, leaving his companions for dead.
As Long Arm of the Godfather's title suggests, however, we're actually in poliziotto territory. In truth, however, the term is something of a misnomer here insofar as no members of the police or other authorities are ever seen ever as taking any interest in the case, which is a curious omission given that you would think that soldiers would be the kind of crime to that attention.
Noir-ish imagery with Lawrence
This is not to say, however, that the perpetrator of the betrayal, Vincenzo, is about to have things easy since his ex-boss Don Carmelo is, as his title indicates, a rather prominent gangster and soon proves to have also survived the incident.
And then there's the issue of actually finding a buyer for the guns...
Erica Blanc, intelligent and charming as ever
Directed and co-written by Nardo Bonomi, whose only credit this is, the latter role in conjuction with Giulio Berutti of Killer Nun fame, this is nasty little crime film where Peter Lee Lawrence / Karl Hirenbach's Vincenzo provides our point of identification almost by default.
About the only things he has going for him in comparison with Adolfo Celi's old school Don are that he is the attractive young underdog aspiring to have his day and is acting at least partly out love, in the form of Erika Blanc's somewhat more level headed and forward thinking moll, Sabina.
Shades of giallo
Otherwise, however, they're cut from much the same cloth, with the action providing that familiar mix of car chases, shootouts, men beating one another and women up to car door slamming type sound effects, and a reasonable degree of suspense over what is going to happen next.
This is the kind of film where the nightclub owner is more interested in whether the dancer can also serve drinks than her primary talents
Yet another savage beating
Though nothing outstanding Bonomi's direction is efficient, with a good use of locations and some eye-catching camera set-ups. The performances are more going through the motions than truly inspired, although there is an added poignancy to the denoument if one is aware Lawrence and Blanc's rumoured real-life relationship and of the actor's subsequent suicide less than two years later.
As Long Arm of the Godfather's title suggests, however, we're actually in poliziotto territory. In truth, however, the term is something of a misnomer here insofar as no members of the police or other authorities are ever seen ever as taking any interest in the case, which is a curious omission given that you would think that soldiers would be the kind of crime to that attention.
Noir-ish imagery with Lawrence
This is not to say, however, that the perpetrator of the betrayal, Vincenzo, is about to have things easy since his ex-boss Don Carmelo is, as his title indicates, a rather prominent gangster and soon proves to have also survived the incident.
And then there's the issue of actually finding a buyer for the guns...
Erica Blanc, intelligent and charming as ever
Directed and co-written by Nardo Bonomi, whose only credit this is, the latter role in conjuction with Giulio Berutti of Killer Nun fame, this is nasty little crime film where Peter Lee Lawrence / Karl Hirenbach's Vincenzo provides our point of identification almost by default.
About the only things he has going for him in comparison with Adolfo Celi's old school Don are that he is the attractive young underdog aspiring to have his day and is acting at least partly out love, in the form of Erika Blanc's somewhat more level headed and forward thinking moll, Sabina.
Shades of giallo
Otherwise, however, they're cut from much the same cloth, with the action providing that familiar mix of car chases, shootouts, men beating one another and women up to car door slamming type sound effects, and a reasonable degree of suspense over what is going to happen next.
This is the kind of film where the nightclub owner is more interested in whether the dancer can also serve drinks than her primary talents
Yet another savage beating
Though nothing outstanding Bonomi's direction is efficient, with a good use of locations and some eye-catching camera set-ups. The performances are more going through the motions than truly inspired, although there is an added poignancy to the denoument if one is aware Lawrence and Blanc's rumoured real-life relationship and of the actor's subsequent suicide less than two years later.
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Delitto al Blue Gay / Ein Superesel auf dem Ku'Damm / Cop in Drag
Delitto al Blue Gay opens with six minutes of non-stop action, albeit at least in part culled from previous poliziotto films, accompanied by a voice-off introducing Tomas Milian's Nico Giraldi character to those unfamiliar with him; I have the strong suspicion that the opening clip actually sees Milian pursuing himself, in the guise of one of his Lenzi characters.
Next we get a lip synched song and dance number, “man or woman, makes no difference on stage” delivered by a bunch of men in drag, at the Blue Gay club. Following some backstage bitching between leading diva Columba Lamar and her understudy and rival, Nadia, the introduction of visiting German film director Kurt Linder, and another stage routine, Nadia is found in her dressing room, murdered.
Columba and Nadia, moments before the latter is murdered
A bunny girl with a difference
No prizes for guessing who is assigned the job of going undercover at the Blue Gay or who he ropes in to help him...
The many faces of Nico Giraldi
Directed and co-written by Bruno Corbucci, this 1984 film is the 11th and last entry in the Giraldi series inaugurated by Cop in Blue Jeans eight years before. The formula remains much the same as its predecessors, with a mixture of action and crude comedy episodes centred around the endearingly scruffy Nico, his bumbling petty criminal sidekick Venticello and common-law wife Angela, who has just had another baby.
Unfortunately with all this there's also the sense of not really trying to go beyond a somewhat tired formula, that we've seen it all before and done better before, with two exceptions. The first, the inclusion of the song and dance numbers, most notably an interminable breakdancing and body popping zombie music video a la Thriller, soon become tiresome. The second, a chase in which Nico, dressed as a roman centurion, pursues a car in a chariot, is a nice idea, but fails to convince – how slow is the car going for the chariot to keep up – and also means there is no real possibility for more crazy stunts.
A familiar sight
Breakdancing zombies
The English title, Cop in Drag, is also something of a cheat in that Nico himself never actually dresses up as a woman, and keeps the beard and moustache throughout, with it being Venticello who is assigned the task of impersonating a woman on their visits to the Blue Gay.
This said, despite the stereotypical gay characters and frequent references to “fags” and “faggots” in the dialogue, the filmmakers prove surprisingly progressive and sympathetic in their portrayals of the Blue Gay's habitues, with Nico soon largely overcoming his masculine heterosexual anxieties and even incorporating Columba into his extended family by the end.
Next we get a lip synched song and dance number, “man or woman, makes no difference on stage” delivered by a bunch of men in drag, at the Blue Gay club. Following some backstage bitching between leading diva Columba Lamar and her understudy and rival, Nadia, the introduction of visiting German film director Kurt Linder, and another stage routine, Nadia is found in her dressing room, murdered.
Columba and Nadia, moments before the latter is murdered
A bunny girl with a difference
No prizes for guessing who is assigned the job of going undercover at the Blue Gay or who he ropes in to help him...
The many faces of Nico Giraldi
Directed and co-written by Bruno Corbucci, this 1984 film is the 11th and last entry in the Giraldi series inaugurated by Cop in Blue Jeans eight years before. The formula remains much the same as its predecessors, with a mixture of action and crude comedy episodes centred around the endearingly scruffy Nico, his bumbling petty criminal sidekick Venticello and common-law wife Angela, who has just had another baby.
Unfortunately with all this there's also the sense of not really trying to go beyond a somewhat tired formula, that we've seen it all before and done better before, with two exceptions. The first, the inclusion of the song and dance numbers, most notably an interminable breakdancing and body popping zombie music video a la Thriller, soon become tiresome. The second, a chase in which Nico, dressed as a roman centurion, pursues a car in a chariot, is a nice idea, but fails to convince – how slow is the car going for the chariot to keep up – and also means there is no real possibility for more crazy stunts.
A familiar sight
Breakdancing zombies
The English title, Cop in Drag, is also something of a cheat in that Nico himself never actually dresses up as a woman, and keeps the beard and moustache throughout, with it being Venticello who is assigned the task of impersonating a woman on their visits to the Blue Gay.
This said, despite the stereotypical gay characters and frequent references to “fags” and “faggots” in the dialogue, the filmmakers prove surprisingly progressive and sympathetic in their portrayals of the Blue Gay's habitues, with Nico soon largely overcoming his masculine heterosexual anxieties and even incorporating Columba into his extended family by the end.
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Circuito chiuso
We open with the titles unfolding over a somewhat indistinct image of a gun, aggressively pointing at us. The gun proves to be that of Guiliano Gemma on a poster for the western Day of Anger and its location that of a provincial cinema about to open for the day.
The audience gradually filters in, a variegated assortment of everyday types, and the film begins; genre buffs may care to note, however, that the clips we see are from A Sky Full of Stars.
Just prior to the climactic showdown a middle-aged man comes in and sits down near the front, next to a couple and obscuring the view of the man behind him who, after trying to adjust his position, moves to another seat.
A shot rings out and the middle-aged man falls dead...
The doors are locked and the police called in to investigate. They have suspects and opportunity amongst the audience, but no weapon nor motive. A reconstruction of the scene thus seems the way forward, with one of the cinema staff sitting in for the dead man. Incredibly, he too is shot dead.
Yet this is not as incredible as the resolution to the mystery which will ultimately transpire as a sociologist, in attendance to study the audience rather than the film, begins to make the leaps of logic required to solve the mystery...
[Spoiler allusions follow]
Posters for Profondo rosso, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and The Perfume of the Lady in Black are nice, telling, touches
Before Demons and The Purple Rose of Cairo (both 1985) there was Circuito chiuso.
But before Circuito chiuso there were L' Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1896) and The Great Train Robbery (1902).
In the Lumiere brothers' actualite a train arrived at a station. Not being aware of the difference between real and reel life, members of the film's audience apparently panicked as the train advanced upon them.
By the time of Edwin S Porter's proto-western, meanwhile, it was possible for the filmmaker to include an image of one of the robbers pointing his gun directly at the audience, an act of aggression that, like the rest of the narrative, assumed an element of cine-literacy on the part of the spectator. He or she had to read the film image as such, and neither recoil nor – in the case of any actual cowboys in the audience – return fire. (Goodfellas' closing image, of Tommy's return from the dead, is a nod to Porter's film.)
Giuliano Gemma in the film within the film
We tend, that is, to forget that film images and our ability to read them are cultural rather than natural phenomena. This is the point made by political critics of mainstream cinema, though too often they denied it as having any transformative or consciousness-raising potential.
Yet this is what Circuito chiuso does. It is, in its own way, an extremely subversive film for a Italian thriller made from 1978, in presenting cinema and the fantasies it encourages as dangerous.
We have to remember that the 1970s saw the large scale domestication of Italian social life, with television replacing cinema as the predominant visual medium. While this process echoed that which had already occurred in the US and UK in previous decades (a large part of the reason behind the spaghetti western boom of the 1960s was, after all the decline in western film production as Hollywood turned its attentions to the small screen) it was also encouraged by the endemic terrorism and street crime of the anni di piombi. Put simply, going out to the cinema came to be perceived as an inherently risky activity.
Returning the gaze; who is the character actor on the far left of the first picture?
Maybe you felt safer once in the reassuring darkness of the auditorium and / or when watching a poliziotto that affirmed, however ambiguously, that justice could still be done and that one man could still triumph, even if only mythically and symbolically, over the system.
But what if the auditorium becomes a site for murder? (This is a theme also seen, in a even more threatening realist guise in the excellent giallo-politico / poliziotto Io ho paura, where a porno theatre is chosen as a site for assassination, all the better to impugn the reputation of the intended victim.) What if the film ceases to offer comfort but instead threatens by exposing the dangers inherent in our emotional and libidinal investments in the image?
Nor, moreover, is it simply a question of opposing cinema to other media here: as the authorities bring in televisions for this captive audience to watch as they are kept in the theatre overnight, the TV news only fanning the flames by showing student demonstrators clashing with the police.
A Baudrillardian horror film?
It's the ubique media daemon, where there is no escape from the circuit of cameras and images, recording, representing and reflexively constructing an arguably increasingly virtual unreality.
And, ultimately, it's the nightmare that all our ontologies and epistemologies are no defence against the absurdity and chaos of the universe...
The audience gradually filters in, a variegated assortment of everyday types, and the film begins; genre buffs may care to note, however, that the clips we see are from A Sky Full of Stars.
Just prior to the climactic showdown a middle-aged man comes in and sits down near the front, next to a couple and obscuring the view of the man behind him who, after trying to adjust his position, moves to another seat.
A shot rings out and the middle-aged man falls dead...
The doors are locked and the police called in to investigate. They have suspects and opportunity amongst the audience, but no weapon nor motive. A reconstruction of the scene thus seems the way forward, with one of the cinema staff sitting in for the dead man. Incredibly, he too is shot dead.
Yet this is not as incredible as the resolution to the mystery which will ultimately transpire as a sociologist, in attendance to study the audience rather than the film, begins to make the leaps of logic required to solve the mystery...
[Spoiler allusions follow]
Posters for Profondo rosso, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and The Perfume of the Lady in Black are nice, telling, touches
Before Demons and The Purple Rose of Cairo (both 1985) there was Circuito chiuso.
But before Circuito chiuso there were L' Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1896) and The Great Train Robbery (1902).
In the Lumiere brothers' actualite a train arrived at a station. Not being aware of the difference between real and reel life, members of the film's audience apparently panicked as the train advanced upon them.
By the time of Edwin S Porter's proto-western, meanwhile, it was possible for the filmmaker to include an image of one of the robbers pointing his gun directly at the audience, an act of aggression that, like the rest of the narrative, assumed an element of cine-literacy on the part of the spectator. He or she had to read the film image as such, and neither recoil nor – in the case of any actual cowboys in the audience – return fire. (Goodfellas' closing image, of Tommy's return from the dead, is a nod to Porter's film.)
Giuliano Gemma in the film within the film
We tend, that is, to forget that film images and our ability to read them are cultural rather than natural phenomena. This is the point made by political critics of mainstream cinema, though too often they denied it as having any transformative or consciousness-raising potential.
Yet this is what Circuito chiuso does. It is, in its own way, an extremely subversive film for a Italian thriller made from 1978, in presenting cinema and the fantasies it encourages as dangerous.
We have to remember that the 1970s saw the large scale domestication of Italian social life, with television replacing cinema as the predominant visual medium. While this process echoed that which had already occurred in the US and UK in previous decades (a large part of the reason behind the spaghetti western boom of the 1960s was, after all the decline in western film production as Hollywood turned its attentions to the small screen) it was also encouraged by the endemic terrorism and street crime of the anni di piombi. Put simply, going out to the cinema came to be perceived as an inherently risky activity.
Returning the gaze; who is the character actor on the far left of the first picture?
Maybe you felt safer once in the reassuring darkness of the auditorium and / or when watching a poliziotto that affirmed, however ambiguously, that justice could still be done and that one man could still triumph, even if only mythically and symbolically, over the system.
But what if the auditorium becomes a site for murder? (This is a theme also seen, in a even more threatening realist guise in the excellent giallo-politico / poliziotto Io ho paura, where a porno theatre is chosen as a site for assassination, all the better to impugn the reputation of the intended victim.) What if the film ceases to offer comfort but instead threatens by exposing the dangers inherent in our emotional and libidinal investments in the image?
Nor, moreover, is it simply a question of opposing cinema to other media here: as the authorities bring in televisions for this captive audience to watch as they are kept in the theatre overnight, the TV news only fanning the flames by showing student demonstrators clashing with the police.
A Baudrillardian horror film?
It's the ubique media daemon, where there is no escape from the circuit of cameras and images, recording, representing and reflexively constructing an arguably increasingly virtual unreality.
And, ultimately, it's the nightmare that all our ontologies and epistemologies are no defence against the absurdity and chaos of the universe...
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