A popular and political film based on a real person, Claudio Mori, who was sent by Mussolini to Palermo in 1925 to eradicate the Mafia. Mori, humourless, systematic, efficient and ruthless begins to smoke them out; first the peasants, then the landowners followed by the churchmen, bourgeois and aristocrats. But it’s no use, at the end all his troubles have been for nothing because all the money leads to the Fascist Party and the State. His goal had been to make people respect the law by making citizens fear the state as much as they fear the Mafia. In the end, they do but only because the State is already the Mafia.

A gripping film with no particular visual razzmatazz but with an eye for both scale and intimacy and a superb Ennio Morricone score. Giuliano Gemma is good in a role meant for his idol, Burt Lancaster. The presence of Claudia Cardinale, second-billed in a tiny role that would seem worthless of her if she didn’t represent ‘the people’ (and have ‘the people’ ever been more beautifully represented?), was a complete mystery to me — why would such a big star take this small and far from challenging role?  — until I learned she was Squitieri’s partner at this time. The extras on the Radiance disc are excellent and I learned from Alex Cox’s intro that Giuliano Gemma was so popular in Japan he had a range of motorcycles and scooters named after him by Suzuki.