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