Tag Archives: Enzo G. Castellari

Il Cittadino si rebella/ Street Law (Enzo. G. Castellari, 1974).

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Italian Poliziotteschi films of the 70s are a protest against existing conditions of existence. The literal translation of Il cittradino si rebella is A CITIZEN REBELS. The government is corrupt, the police is corrupt, the judges are corrupt; the bourgeois benefit from the system and are mostly inured from its worst effects. The average person makes do, bends the law, tries to scratch a living from left-over scraps. The top rung of professional criminals are ruthless, the lower ranks gleefully violent: causing suffering is their joy. It’s very different from what we see in American cinema of this period, even in the paranoid conspiracy thrillers. STREET LAW, the English title, is something that might well describe an American or even British crime film of this period. In America, the street does have its own laws, a separate, parallel world, but institutions are to be protected; the system might be tainted in this or that part but recoverable as a system. In the French policier of this period the institutions are upheld or left out of the narratives altogether and the criminals are excellent professionals who are too bored or too greedy to do anything else with their lives (The Melville films, the Verneuil films, Alain Delon’s policiers from this period). In Spain, the crime film won’t really begin to unfurl until Franco was dead and buried, even though some of these Italian ones are Spanish co-productions. In Italy, street crime is a given…..but a citizen rebels! The Poliziotteschi really are special.

 

In IL CITTADINO SI REBELLA, Franco Nero goes to put his hard-earned money in the bank, gets caught in a hold-up, and is so frustrated by institutional responses that he takes the law into his own hand, aping the American vigilante film (DEATH WISH) but doing something special with it. A characteristic of these films is that they are shot in location, in this case the port-town of Genoa, which not only brings grit but a historical context that exceeds the needs of the narrative proper. Reality intrudes, whether the film chases it or not. There are lots of shoot-ups, often in slow-motion, people getting run-over by cars, some car chases, very little characterisation, and lots of visual invention. The influence of Peckinpah is everywhere. Barbara Bach doesn’t have much to do but look beautiful, which she does.

José Arroyo

High Crime/ La polizia incrimina la legge assolve (Enzo G. Castellari, 1973)

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A stylish, pulpy crime film; clearly influenced by BULLIT (Peter Yates, 1968) and THE FRENCH CONNECTION (William Friedkin, 1971) one of the several enticing collaborations between Enzo Castellari and Franco Nero (Keoma) , then one of the most popular stars and Europe, here handsome as always but with one of the worst dye jobs in the history of cinema.

The film co-stars Fernando Rey as a former drug kingpin, underlining the connection to FRENCH CONNECTION, now living out a retirement in luxury, devoting his attention to his hot-house, and the beautiful flowers that surround him adding to the colour and heat, evoking luxury and a certain corruption or degradation that recalls THE BIG SLEEP (Howard Hawks, 1946).

The film has brilliantly playful compositions that are always a pleasure to look at:

There’s a brilliant word-less opening, a tour de force of speed, chase, operatic use of zooms, brilliantly edited to convey excitement in motion:

The chase scenes, which might seem slow  and clunky in the age of super-fast editing and CGI, seems to me more exciting than practically anything currently on-screen:

The images are elegantly composed to serve speed but usually also in a social context, here the crowd, a strike, as a place for the criminal to hide. Social context is interestingly deployed but  both visible in the films and transformed into something else, real social problems here a background to action/spectacle:

The mise-en-scène is dazzling. Note here the frames within frames of every composition; then the way the reflection on water is itself used as a framed plane of action; and lastly, the use of colour to the focus the eye once the body falls into the water. I find it brilliant.

Another trans in Poliziotteschi:

Typical Castellari

A great popular success credited with popularising the poliziotteschi genre. Perhaps not a great work of art but certainly the work of an extraordinarily skilled director.

 

José Arroyo

KEOMA (Enzo G. Castellari, 1976)

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I’m continuing with my Castellari kick, this time with Keoma, a western shot in Italy. It has one of the most visually stunning opening scenes I can remember: a lone soldier (Franco Nero as Keoma), looking like a bedraggled Jesus, return home from the Civil War only to encounter death in the figure of an old woman who reminds him/ tells us that she’d sought him out before when his homestead was slaughtered as a child. Death will walk with him periodically, like in Bergman’s THE SEVENTH SEAL, a clear influence. I finally understand why people like Tarantino are so entranced with these films. They lack subtlety but not depth; they are beautifully shot with some dazzling compositions, the action is superb; and to say that the melodrama is over the top, whilst true, does not get at why it continues to be so effective. At the end of the film, Keoma the ‘half-breed bastard’ is tied to the wheel of a cart like Jesus, the father who he went to live after his mother was killed, who loved and protected him is now gone; the craven, greedy, half-brothers who tortured his childhood are now in charge, ready to judge and pass sentence. The old black man (Woody Strode) who had taught Keoma to defend himself but who had given up on life after realising that winning the war of ‘Emancipation’ had not made him free is also no longer there. There’s a cholera epidemic raging in the town and a pregnant woman about to give birth. Keoma’s already saved them time and time again. Will any of them lift a finger for  Keoma?  A terrific film with a strange but effective cod-imitation Leonard Cohen score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis.

José Arroyo

The HEROIN BUSTERS/ LA VIA DELLA DROGA (Enzo, G. Castellari, 1977)

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Another Poliziotteschi by Enzo G. Castellari, a follow-up to THE BIG RACKET, just as sensationalist, just as sensational and also starring Fabio Testi. This one is clearly inspired by the French Connection fims and this time Testi plays an undercover cop trying to bust a heroin ring. The film begins with him buying drugs in Hong Kong, Amsterdam and New York before returning to Rome, where he gets busted, befriends a junkie in jail, and uses him as a conduit into the local dealers and couriers. David Hemmings narratively plays the detective who’s the only one in the know as to Testi’s true identity and purpose;  industrially he functions like Vincent Gardenia in THE BIG RACKET, as a box office hope of some Anglo-American exposure.

The film is beautifully shot with some dazzling panning zooms that involve very intricate framing knitted together marvellously in editing to maintain pace and usually ending on some striking composition:

An attempt at providing the sex the filmmakers think audiences wanted in that period is quite lurid but interestingly narrated. Are we being shown something actually happening behind a door or is it the boyfriends’s projected dream or a fear; or a combination of both?. See the exchange of looks the precedes the sex scene:

It features remarkable staging:

and marvellous set-pieces such as the one in the Rome metro, which must then have been in the process of being built:

A superb bike chase and shootout:

and some great stunts throughout, including this areal one:

The stunts remain so thrilling that they raise questions as to why the action sequences in contemporary action cinema usually aren’t. What is the effect of CGI on how audiences experience action/

Fabio Testi has a very particular ‘look’ in THE HEROIN BUSTERS, and I don’t remember anything quite like this from the 70s, flares yes, platforms yes, pointy collars yes, but those are for other people in this movie. He wears one outfit in the whole film — dressing or undressing the various components: knee-high boots with jeans and a long denim jacket tied in the middle with a thin scarf, lots of necklaces and a baseball cap. I don’t remember anything quite like it, like a Carnaby Street variant of 90s grunge. He’s supposed to play an undercover cop though everything about the outfit says ‘look at me!’

 

 

The ten years since Blow UP (Antonioni, 1966) had not been kind to David Hemmings:

The filming in front of things with characters in the background and the striking compositions seen in THE BIG RACKET are evident here too:

 

Every image is a pleasure to see, even in the most lurid contexts:

this film also features the on-location shooting seen in THE BIG RACKET, this time also as setting for spectacular set-pieces:

A real pleasure to see and I’m eager for more

 

José Arroyo

IL GRANDE RACKET/ THE BIG RACKET (Enzo G. Castellari, 1976)

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Saw Enzo G. Castellari’s IL GRANDE RACKET/ THE BIG RACKET last night, my first POLIZIOTTESCHI – originally a disdainful term, like SPAGHETTI WESTERN – to describe popular homegrown crime films influenced but seen as derivative of American Crime movies. This one is about racketeers brutally extorting small businesses around the Piazza Navona with some very evocative on-location shooting.

The film is beautifully shot by Marcelo Maclocchi, one of those ‘every frame a painting’ type of movie, but also one where this type of aesthetic is least likely to find a home, a bombastic action movie, crude in characterisation, with melodramatic situations taken to loopy heights ( see the nun in the car bit). The contrast between the artistry involved in creating the look and movement and the crudeness in the writing of ‘themes’ and character is quite startling.

This would rank quite high in my list of most violent movies I’ve seen, not because of what it shows, we’ve seen it all before — and much more graphically — but because of the relish with which it acknowledges moral and psychological violence and punctuates scenes with their transgression. It’s a film in which it’s not enough to rob, kill, rape and pillage, you’ve then also got to see the relish with which the goons urinate on their victims as relatives watch.

How to Agitate a Mob:

Clearly influenced by DIRTY HARRY and DEATH WISH, it was accused of being fascist when first released. It is about a cop (Fabio Testi) so frustrated in his work by corrupt higher ups that he enlists the victims of the racketeers to fight gangs (there’s a bit of THE DIRTY DOZEN in this as well). I think the politics are a bit more complex than this (there is a scene of horrors an unruly mob may inflict when manipulated by gangsters). It’s also seen as a reflection of the YEARS OF LEAD in Italy, that period of gang wars and kidnappings in the 70s where it seemed to some that Italy was becoming a failed state and again, though it would be too simple to see it as pure reflection there are definitely elements of that context that feed into the film and are interestingly mediated by the narrative.

The reason to see it now is that it’s thrilling to see both for the way it stages action and for the way it films it. The action scenes are super and must be amongst the most beautiful and thrilling every filmed.  Characters are often shot through something, framed in the background, always in movement to or away from the camera, as stuntmen do incredible things over-head or on the side, actions and their effects immanently evoked, a clear sense of what’s at stake in each deadly beat.

THE FAMOUS CAR ROLLOVER SCENE:

Other things that caught my eye: Vincent Gardenia is wonderful as a jovial gangster and lightens up every scene he’s in; one of gangsters is a woman played by Marcella Michelangel, even more evil and chilling than Mercedes McCambridge in TOUCH OF EVIL; her character doesn’t just want to watch, she wants to do. Lastly, and superficially, has a crime film ever featured as many gorgeous men as this one?