The provocative Italian filmmaker Elio Petri's most internationally acclaimed work is this remarkable, visceral, Oscar-winning thriller. Petri maintains a tricky balance between absurdity and realism in telling the Kafkaesque tale of a Roman police inspector (A Fistful of Dollars's Gian Maria Volonté, in a commanding performance) investigating a heinous crime-which he committed himself. Both a penetrating character study and a disturbing commentary on the draconian crackdowns by the Italian governmenthe late 1960s and early '70s, Petri's kinetic portrait of surreal bureaucracy is a perversely pleasurable rendering of controlled chaos.
The provocative Italian filmmaker Elio Petri's most internationally acclaimed work is this remarkable, visceral, Oscar-winning thriller. Petri maintains a tricky balance between absurdity and realism in telling the Kafkaesque tale of a Roman police inspector (A Fistful of Dollars's Gian Maria Volonté, in a commanding performance) investigating a heinous crime-which he committed himself. Both a penetrating character study and a disturbing commentary on the draconian crackdowns by the Italian governmenthe late 1960s and early '70s, Petri's kinetic portrait of surreal bureaucracy is a perversely pleasurable rendering of controlled chaos.
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