Elio Petri: Satire, Italian Style
April 10–24, 2003
From the late 1960s
through the early 1970s, the writer/director Elio Petri was considered
one of the major figures of Italian cinema. Petri began his career
as a film critic and assistant to the neorealist filmmaker Giuseppe
De Santis before developing his own style, distinguished by dry,
caustic humor, political outrage, and an enthusiasm for the unexpected.
His stiletto satires—Investigation of a Citizen Above
Suspicion (1970) and The Working Class Goes to Heaven
(1971), for instance—may have cut into modern Italian
society, but his subjects, like those of Voltaire, were the inconstancy
of a civil society and the unpredictability of human behavior. This
retrospective, presented by Cinecittà Holding, includes ten
of the eleven features Petri completed before his death, in 1982,
at the age of fifty-three.
Organized
by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Media,
MoMA, and Antonio Monda, Professor of Italian Cinema, NYU; presented
by Cinecittà Holding. All films are in Italian with English
subtitles. The exhibition is supported with a grant from the Italian
Cultural Institute. Films are shown with the kind permission of
Columbia Pictures, Alberto Grimaldi production, Medusa Film, Movietime,
Surf Film, Titanus, and WAC. Thanks go to Urban
Skin and to Camilla Cormanni of Cinecittà Holding.
. 1976. Italy. Directed by Elio Petri.
Screenplay by Petri, Tonino Guerra. With Gian Maria Volonté,
Marcello Mastroianni, Mariangela Melato. A metaphysical mystery,
Todo modo is the most curious and puzzling of Petri’s
films. A group of Italy’s most successful politicians
go on a monastic retreat to contemplate their notable
careers. For no immediate apparent reason, some die in
their cells. 130 min.
.
1967. Italy. Directed by Elio Petri. Screenplay by Petri,
Ugo Pirro. With Gian Maria Volonté, Irene
Papas, Salvo Randone. One of the earliest—and darkest—films
to venture into the heart of the Mafia. In a Sicilian
town, two men are killed. A lonely professor, outraged and
with no family of his own to protect, begins an obsessive investigation. 96
min.
.
1961. Italy. Directed by Elio Petri. Screenplay by Petri,
Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa, Tonino
Guerra. With Marcello Mastroianni, Cristina Gaioni, Salvo Randone. A
suave art dealer is surprised by a police interrogation. Either
he is just a “ladykiller,” or he actually murdered his mistress. A satiric
attitude is evident in Petri’s first feature-length
film, as are the themes that will recur throughout his
career: sudden catastrophe, ambiguous behavior, social anomie. 105
min.
. 1962. Italy.
Directed by Elio Petri. Screenplay by Petri, Tonino Guerra,
Carlo Romano. With Salvo Randone, Regina Bianchi, Paolo
Ferrari. A man collapses on a city street, and Cesare, who witnesses
the stranger’s death, has an epiphany. Since he
too may die at any moment, he decides to enjoy what days are left to him. 102 min.
. 1965. Italy.
Directed by Elio Petri. Screenplay by Petri, Tonino Guerra.
With Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress, Salvo Randone.
Made before video arcades and computer games, Petri’s
vision of a future where murder is not only sanctioned
but turned into a public competition was prescient. Two
celebrated killers, a man and a woman, are assigned to assassinate each other, but of course they fall in love.
95 min.
. 1968. Italy. Directed by Elio Petri.
Screenplay by Petri, Tonino Guerra.With Vanessa Redgrave,
Georges Geret, Gabriella Grimaldi. In this shivery melodrama, a successful
painter rents a quiet country house. Isolated, he becomes haunted by
the villa’s previous tenant, a beautiful woman who died
under questionable circumstances. 105 min.
. 1970. Italy.
Directed by Elio Petri. Screenplay by Petri, Ugo Pirro.
With Gian Maria Volonté, Florinda Bolkan,
Salvo Randone. The iciest of film noirs, Investigation
of a Citizen Above Suspicion won the Academy Award
for Best Foreign-Language Film of 1970. A highly respected police
commissoner murders his mistress and plants evidence pointing to
his guilt, but being “above suspicion,” he
is not himself accused. 112 min.
. 1971. Italy. Directed by
Elio Petri. Screenplay by Petri, Ugo Pirro. With Gian
Maria Volonté, Mariangela Melato, Salvo Randone.
A factory worker whose thoughts of sex inspire his activity
on the assembly line sets productivity records, but then
an accident changes him in unexpected ways.… This absurdist fable won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1971.
111 min.
. 1973. Italy. Directed by Elio
Petri. Screenplay by Petri, Ugo Pirro. With Ugo Tognazzi, Flavio Bucci,
Salvo Randone. In this savage fable, a bank clerk, allergic to
money, takes personal revenge on a social system that
rewards corporate larceny and makes property the measure
of man. He begins to steal from a butcher who runs a
successful small business. When the butcher realizes what is happening, he devises his own payback. 125 min.
. 1979. Italy. Written
and directed by Elio Petri. With Giancarlo Giannini, Angela
Molina, Aurore Clement. A disaffected media executive
bumps into a former classmate, who has received a death threat
and is frightened to the point of paralysis. The executive conspires with
his friend’s wife to have him committed to an asylum.
With carnal and economic betrayals the order of the day,
civil life continues its devilish whirl. 110 min.
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