Beyond the Fulcis, Bavas and Argentos of the world, I have to confess that my experience of Italian cinema is very limited, so I’m coming to this boxset of Damiano Damiani and Franco Nero’s collaborations with not just fresh eyes, but little context for what to expect beyond the basics laid out by the description ‘three mafia tales’. You’ll have to pardon me if I miss some context to these films that having seen more, or knowing more about this late ’60s and early ’70s in Italian film, would allow.
The Films
The Day of the Owl (1968, ★★★) begins with one of the film’s best sequences. As the credits come up, we see what we assume is a hunter, hiding on the side of a road on a hill. We never see his face, and when a truck carrying a load of cement rounds the hill, he fires, eventually killing both driver and a witness. Damiani builds suspense masterfully in this sequence, making the dispassionate killings stick with us. However, this isn’t particularly an indication of what kind of film we’re about to watch. This is the sole eruption of violence.
The rest of the film unfolds something like a Police procedural, with Franco Nero’s young, somewhat idealistic, police captain trying to bring down the construction industry connected local Mafia that he believes is responsible for the murders. However, the trail isn’t a simple one to follow, for him or for us. A convoluted web is woven, where pretty much every character could have pulled the trigger, from the low level maifosos (some of whose loyalties are also unclear) to a local woman (Claudia Cardinale), whose husband is also missing and presumed dead.
It’s always hard to judge performances in an Italian film of this era, as they are all completely dubbed. I watched the Italian version (which is slightly longer, and felt more authentic, as aside from Lee J. Cobb as the big local boss, the cast is largely Italian). What can be said is that Nero and Cardinale both have a natural smouldering intensity and the big, bombastic figure that Cobb projects doesn’t go against the voice he’s given here. Around them are are cast of interesting faces; characters who feel as though they could have stepped off the streets of this small town.
For much of the running time, I found The Day of the Owl a frustrating watch, as I tried to find some handle that would give me a clue as to the true culprit behind the killings, and allow me to untangle the connections between the various branches of the mafia and the workings of the town. However, the ending makes clear that that isn’t the point here. The tangled web and the impossibility of unpicking it is. That recontextualised the film for me somewhat, and I suspect my grade might go up on a rewatch, but as it is this stands as an interesting introduction to the set, and to Nero’s intense style.
The Case is Closed: Forget It (1971, ★★★★) doubles down on the themes of corruption. This time we find Nero somewhat on the other side of the law. He’s Vanzi, a wealthy architect sent to prison on remand while his sentence in a case in which he killed someone with his car is worked out (we never quite know if he was drunk behind the wheel).
Vanzi’s interaction with the corruption of the prison is, to begin with, somewhat trivial; trading his money for favours like better food, getting in with the Mafia figure who, essentially, helps run the place so he can get a better cell. However, favours have to be repaid, and we see how the system works both with the prisoners and the guards as Vanzi is put in with a man who is set to testify in a mob case.
Damiani immerses us in the prison. We begin behind the walls, and until the coda we never leave them, nor see the world beyond them. The film builds an entirely insular society, in a much more coherent and easier to follow way than The Day of the Owl. The problems with the dubbed performances remain. The dubbing performances aren’t bad, and the sync is fine, but there’s often a slight disconnect between visuals and dialogue. Nero though continues to break through that barrier with his charisma and sheer ability to draw focus (he is, it has to be said, almost ridiculously handsome). It’s not the most eventful narrative in the world, but The Case is Closed stands up as a well told slow burn of a movie, building both a credible world and a message that uses that setting as a microcosm to say something about the world as a whole that continues to ring true.
How to Kill a Judge (1975, ★★★½) again takes a different approach to the influence of the mafia. Here Nero plays an analogue for Damiani himself; Giacomo Solaris (a nod to Tarkovsky, perhaps?) a left wing filmmaker whose latest film depicts, with what seems to be a thin veil of fiction, a corrupt judge under the thumb of the mafia, who is eventually killed by a hitman. The film is hated by associates of the judge, and by his wife, but does great business, especially after the judge is murdered in what looks like an echo of the film’s ending.
Perhaps even more so than the earlier films, there is a lot going on here. Plot wise, the mystery has shades of early giallo (though without the elaborately staged murders), but it’s what lies underneath that plot that is most interesting. Again, Damiani suggests the stench of widespread corruption and lies, from an institution as small as a marriage to one as big as society itself. Beyond that, with Solaris serving as the film’s investigator figure—another move that recalls giallo, whose investigators were often from outside the Police—it delves into questions of media ethics via the connection between the judge’s assassination and his film and, latterly, his friendship with the editor of a left wing newspaper.
Nero is as good as ever, and his suspicious relationship with Françoise Fabian, as the judge’s widow, is effective throughout, with Fabian’s justifiable hatred of Solaris making an interesting dynamic as they investigate her husband’s murder.
If you’re going into this set blind, it delivers something different than you’re expecting. I’d imagined it would present three pretty standard issue gangster films, but Damiani and Nero do something more interesting here. The cliches of gangster cinema are well represented elsewhere, but these films use the Cosa Nostra as a way to comment on society, be it the insular corruption in a small town or the larger scale corruption of the system represented by the prison and judicial systems and the mafia’s ability to get inside those systems.
Like the other films in this set, How to Kill a Judge is a methodical and patient film, more concerned with politics and tension between people than with action (though a couple of shootings do punctuate this one). Settle to the rhythm of these films, engage with their subtext, and they are very rewarding.
The Discs and Extras
Only the discs were supplied for review, but the release version of the set comes in a hard box with a 120 page book including new and archival critical writing on the films and their context within Italian cinema of the era, as well as a newly translated interview with Damiani.
Each of the films are restored in new 2K transfers which, as is the case for many of these archival releases, take care to preserve grain to give the picture structure while also making the image look clean and sharp, just not in that sometimes oversharpened look that modern digital cinematography can have.
No commentaries are offered, but there are plentiful video extras, both new and archival. These lead off with new interviews with Franco Nero covering each of the films, which average out at about 15 minutes per film. Nero has clear and fond memories of the films and Damiani, and towards the end of the last interview talks about his current work with an enthusiasm that still seems to match that he has for his earlier films. Among the other new video extras are three video essays, one on Damiani’s career and another more specifically on How to Kill a Judge, and the last on Lee J. Cobb and his career, as well as a new interview with Damiani’s biographer,
There are also archival extras included, among them a making of documentary on The Case is Closed: Forget It, from 2015. We also get archival interviews with Nero, writer Ugo Pirro and production designer Lucio Trentini and with co-star Claudia Cardinale on The Day of the Owl.
On the whole, this is an in depth and exhaustive package with much to offer both fans and newcomers to these films.
We have been informed that the release date has been moved up to the 3rd of July, 2023.
