Film Review: Delitto d'amore (1974)

In the 1960s and '70s Italian cinema seemed to specialize in reinventing film genres from other countries. The spaghetti western was a deconstruction of the American western with an added dollop of Japanese samurai films; giallo films were Hitchcock with more blood and less humour; and poliziotteschi were American cop noir films like The French Connection given a frenzied and feverish makeover. Or to look at it another way, Italians were the counterfeit designer label purveyors of the film world. But this ersatz cinema was always vastly entertaining.

Delitto d'amore is Love Story (1970) redone with bonus Marxism, environmentalism, political violence, labour activism, and angry debate about Italy's north-south divide. The lovers are Nullo and Carmela, both of whom work in a noisy, smoky metalworks factory in Milan. Nullo is a northerner whose family are all anarchists. Carmela and her very traditional Catholic family are recent arrivals from Sicily. They live in a crowded hovel in a part of town that looks as if it would be more habitable if it was bulldozed. Carmela falls in love with Nullo at first sight, he takes a little longer to come around to her charms. They want to get married but fight over her demand for a religious marriage and his insistence on a civil marriage only. Carmela gets a fatal illness from toxic fumes in the factory, and marries Nullo in a civil ceremony on her deathbed. The last shot of the film has Nullo walking through a crowd of workers protesting the factory's working conditions, and as he goes off-camera we hear a pistol shot as he shoots (we assume) one of the factory managers.

There are a lot of raw edges in this film, but it's charm and power comes from its dogged enthusiasm in embracing every hot button issue of the day, and subtlety be damned. Pollution? How about a scene by a river that was once pristine (according to Nullo) but is now foaming with industrial effluents and bordered by trash heaps. Poverty? Carmela's tenement is horribly overcrowded and surrounded by wasteland. The screenwriter was Ugo Pirro, who, not surprisingly, also did the script for Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (my review). This was a guy who knew how to tackle themes like social injustice and make them entertaining.

The film really has a bit too much on its plate, but that's par for the course in Italian films of that era. Some of the giallos of that period (Death Walks on High Heels comes to mind) had enough plot for three or four movies. Considering how politically-neutered Hollywood filmmaking has been over the years, it's always refreshing to watch a film that sinks its teeth into big issues and won't let go. The location photography is great. Milan in winter is wrapped in perpetual fogs and mists, and as is usual in Italian films of that time, the cinematographer seems to go out of his way to avoid locations that show the country's natural and architectural beauty. The acting is all over the map. Stefania Sandrelli is very good as Carmela, but Giulano Gemma is a bit meh. Like too many leading men from '70s Italian cinema, Gemma is a pretty face and a cool haircut in search of an acting class. He tries, though.

Delitto d'amore (Crime of Love in English) isn't a classic, but it's energetic, angry and clumsily entertaining. The gold standard for films about the Italian proletariat and labour strife has to go to The Organizer (my review), but there are several other films in a similar vein (1900, The Working Class Goes to Heaven, The Railroad Man) so I'm thinking there needs to be a genre classification for them. How about classe operaia films?

Related Posts:

Review of Plot of Fear 
Review of Almost Human

Film Review: Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)

The most shocking thing about this film, from a 2012 point of view, is that it wears its political heart on its sleeve. I mean, when's the last time you saw a film that made a political statement in a loud voice and did it in an imaginative and entertaining way? Hollywood occasionally lobs liberal spitballs at easy targets like Big Business, but generally speaking mainstream films are politcally emasculated. You know this is true when Fox News has to attack The Muppets when they want to find a film that's anti-capitalist.

Anti-establishment films were practically mainstream in the 1960s and early '70s, especially in Europe, and Investigation is one of the best. The plot is beautifully simple: the head of the homicide squad in Rome murders his mistress and then leaves an abundance of clues pointing directly to himself. He wants to see just how far his position and power protect him from investigation. Along the way the director and scriptwriter Elio Petri neatly dissects the workings of the fascist mind. The nameless head of the homicide squad is a strutting bully to his inferiors, a worm to his superiors, and contemptuous towards ordinary citizens, especially those who are left of centre.

Investigation is far from subtle in its point of view, but the filmmaking is first-rate. The Roman locations and interiors are often from the Brutalist, fascist school of architecture, with the notable exception of the murdered woman's flat, which is a riot of Art Deco design elements. The difference between her apartment and her killer's is startling and intentional. The cinematography is fluid and clever, and Enno Morricone's score is, as usual, weird and wonderful.

The real star of the film is Gian Maria Volonte as the head of the homicide squad. Most film fans will be familiar with him as the villain in the first two Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. Volonte never made the transition to Hollywood films (he would have made a great Bond villain), and that's a pity because this film makes it clear that he was one of Italy's finest actors. He and Elio Petri, both members of the Italian Communist Party at various times, collaborated on several films, of which Investigation is the most famous, winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. It really deserves to be remade, perhaps with Kermit in the Volonte role and Miss Piggy as his mistress.