Tag Archives: Franco Nero

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

John Wick: Chapter 2 (Chad Stahelki, USA, 2017)

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A highly-saturated neon-noir. John Wick: Chapter 2 is all Keanu Reeves, action-set pieces in exotic locations and attitude. Keanu has the face of an oriental sage, a body that’s imposingly lean and athletic, and the stance of a surfer dude who’s acquired sophistication along the way but still doesn’t get wit: He tries, and the camera helps him along. But who cares? He’s got a marvellous stillness, a face so full of architectural planes it refract enough shadow to sculpt darkness out of light: you can project anything you want onto it, onto him, and it projects something back, maybe something different for each of us but maybe also something sad and broody that’s unique to you.

The film is an updated notion of dumb fun. The plot merely an excuse for staging exciting action in glamorous places. The fights are indeed exciting: they’re well-choreographed against museums, art installations, subways (Montrealers might recognise the Place des Arts metro), Iconic monuments – this time mainly in Rome and New York.

In between fights, treasured character actors are given a chance to conjure some laughs and shine: some succeed (Lance Reddick, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishbourne), some don’t (John Leguizamo, Franco Nero, Peter Stormare). In a sense, the film reminds me of Speed (Jan De Bont, 1994): everything in the movie is designed as pace-in-time, to showcase action; it’s all move along, move fast, and bang bang against a series of distinctive images. But Keanu has a very particular and distinctively pleasurable way of holding a gun: elbow in, eye on the trigger. And Chad Stahelski knows how to stage action so that one sees the complete movement, is aware of the geography of characters and bodies, and in backgrounds that add visual pleasure and thematic density (the mirrored ‘Souls’ installation near the end). It’s a great-looking film (shot by Dan Laustsen) , a brightly hued noir that adds a sharp if artificial light to a series of explosive actions amidst an encroaching darkness. All of that plus Dog. Great fun. Even better than the original.

PS Since writing the above I’ve come across a really interesting analysis of Keanu Reeves by Angelica Jade Bastién for ‘Bright Wall/Dark Room’ that you can find here.

José Arroyo