Bad Lieutenant
The Unusual Suspect
Elliott Stein
Tuesday, April 1st 2003
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Sony Pictures Repertory
The hands of crime: Gian Maria Volonté in Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Details:
Directed by Elio Petri
Written by Ugo Pirro and Petri
April 4 through 10, at Film Forum
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Citizen (1969), a potent study of power as pathology, is his most successful use of the highly marketable suspense-thriller form. Its protagonist is a psychopathic police chief, an antihero who reflects Fascist ideals that harken back to Il Duce—for him and for his network of aides and informants, it's always open season on Maoists, gays, and student radicals. He cuts the throat of his masochistic mistress, then deliberately plants clues that implicate himself to prove that he's entirely above suspicion. He goes up to total strangers and confesses—the man thinks he can commit any crime he wants. He gets into a complicated cat-and-mouse game with his colleagues, leaving clues, then thwarting the investigation.
The film is dominated by the mesmerizing performance of Gian Maria Volonté as the chief—he's never given a name. A militant leftist, Volonté, who got his start portraying heavies in spaghetti westerns and became the major star of Italian political cinema of the 1970s, was an actor of extraordinary presence. Hardly ever offscreen, he struts through the entire movie—nattily dressed, smirky, charismatic, simultaneously handsome and repellent as Petri's visually flamboyant film turns into a heady mix of Marx, Freud, Wilhelm Reich, and Brecht, with a bit of Dashiell Hammett thrown into the blender.
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