Pulp, Police and Politics: The hard and fast… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Pulp, Police and Pol­i­tics: The hard and fast world of Poliziotteschi

21 Jun 2021

Words by Adam Scovell

Two men, one in a brown tweed jacket and the other in a white jumper, seated outdoors in a wooded setting.
Two men, one in a brown tweed jacket and the other in a white jumper, seated outdoors in a wooded setting.
Through­out the 1970s an excit­ing sub­genre dom­i­nat­ed Ital­ian cin­e­ma, com­bined action and crime to dizzy­ing effect.

The 1970s wit­nessed an explo­sion of raw crime cin­e­ma. All around the globe, the genre looked at real­i­ty and turned the dials up. Crim­i­nals weren’t sim­ply vil­lains, they were vir­tu­al­ly demon­ic. Police­men required the gun­slinger men­tal­i­ty of the old West just to sur­vive their screen time and the gen­er­al con­sen­sus was that cities were irre­me­di­a­bly decaying.

While these themes were explored in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma in par­tic­u­lar, Europe devel­oped an equal­ly pow­er­ful flair for genre. Euro­crime became cyn­i­cal and uncom­pro­mis­ing, even in Britain, yet few nation­al cin­e­mas embraced this shift as Italy did. With a back­drop of some of the most volatile vio­lence in Europe, Italy’s crime cin­e­ma of the 70s spawned an entire­ly new genre: Poliziotteschi.

Birthed from the grow­ing trend for heist films, influ­enced ini­tial­ly by French thrillers by the likes of Jean-Pierre Melville, the genre soon came in to its own. These films took vio­lence to extreme lev­els, mix­ing pulp and pol­i­tics to cre­ate a heady body of work that is still con­tro­ver­sial to this day.

Writ­ten off simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as sen­sa­tion­al grind­house and dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da, the genre was still a great suc­cess with peri­od audi­ences. As with many con­tro­ver­sial cin­e­mat­ic move­ments, it deserves a more nuanced approach to under­stand­ing it. Behind its relent­less­ness was a genre that took risks in order to entertain.

Poliziotteschi were more than one kind of film – they rep­re­sent­ed a huge range of nar­ra­tives from tough guy cops chas­ing killers, to ter­ror­ist cells hold­ing cities to ran­som, gangs of lib­ertines mur­der­ing their way through sub­urbs, and even sim­ple revenge and vig­i­lante flicks. Some­times the nar­ra­tives of Spaghet­ti west­erns were trans­posed direct­ly and it’s telling that many fig­ures from that genre cross over into Poliziotteschi. The genre has an unusu­al melt­ing pot of influ­ences. The most obvi­ous is Don Siegel’s Dirty Har­ry, with the vig­i­lante cop being a com­mon theme. Equal­ly, William Friedkin’s The French Con­nec­tion and Michael Winner’s Death Wish played their part.

A man in a beige jumper stands amidst tall grass, partially obscured by the stalks. His face is visible, with a serious expression.

Some­times the Ital­ian films sit bet­ter than those that inspired them. Enzo G Castellari’s Street Law, for exam­ple, takes Death Wish and man­ages to make a moral tale of it. On the oth­er hand, the films some­times feel like absurd but enjoy­able par­o­dies; Umber­to Lenzi’s Vio­lent Naples is a ridicu­lous take on Dirty Har­ry. Anoth­er overt influ­ence came from Sam Peck­in­pah, with many films bor­row­ing his stylised slow-motion ultra­vi­o­lence. Already, the mix push­es buttons.

Anoth­er unde­ni­able influ­ence was Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange, pro­duc­ing an inter­est­ing array of copy­cats, all set in the mod­ern day. In films such as Mario Imperoli’s Like Rabid Dogs, Romo­lo Guerrieri’s Young, Vio­lent and Dan­ger­ous and Vit­to­rio Salerno’s Sav­age Three, groups of Dro­ogish youth roam. Salerno’s film is espe­cial­ly pow­er­ful, fol­low­ing a young Joe Dalle­san­dro as he and two friends go from ner­vous com­put­er ana­lysts to full blown sadists.

Such vio­lence may sug­gest com­par­isons to gial­lo cin­e­ma, but its style and empha­sis dif­fers to Poliziotteschi. One dis­turb­ing dif­fer­ence is how much atten­tion is paid to the perpetrator’s faces dur­ing acts of extreme vio­lence, their plea­sure fill­ing the screen in earnest. Gial­lo added mys­tery, reveal­ing the murderer’s plea­sure in hind­sight once unveiled behind the black leather gloves and star­ing eyes. Mur­der­ers in Poliziotteschi are of pri­ma­ry focus from the begin­ning, dar­ing the view­er to see them­selves in their often every­day personas.

In spite of their obvi­ous her­itage, the genre is replete with orig­i­nal cin­e­mat­ic treats. Their ener­gy is nev­er less than addic­tive. At times the fre­net­ic action out­does its Amer­i­can peers, with car chas­es espe­cial­ly shot in such an obvi­ous­ly dan­ger­ous fash­ion that it’s sur­pris­ing no one was real­ly killed. Stelvio Masi’s High­way Rac­er is a great exam­ple of this, a film which is most­ly a col­lec­tion of car chas­es reach­ing absurd pro­por­tions. Anoth­er is Fer­nan­do Di Leo’s Man­hunt in Milan which has a superb over-the-top chase as Mario Adorf pur­sues the van that has just killed his wife and daugh­ter, hang­ing on to its bon­net while smash­ing the wind­screen with his fore­head to attack the driver.

Famil­iar faces fre­quent­ly pop up: Oliv­er Reed in Ser­gio Sollima’s Revolver; Charles Bron­son in Sollima’s Vio­lent City; Hen­ry Sil­va in Di Leo’s Mur­der Infer­no, Lenzi’s Almost Human and Michele Mas­si­mo Tarantini’s Poliziot­ti Vio­len­ti to name just a few. Fans of Spaghet­ti west­erns too will be hap­py to see their favourite heroes stalk­ing the unfor­giv­ing streets rather than the dusty deserts. Per­form­ers such as Fran­co Nero and Fabio Testi ful­fil their roles as pro­to-Djan­gos and Rin­gos, though feel more vul­ner­a­ble than their almost super­nat­ur­al cow­boy counterparts.

Often told from the police perspective, these films rarely portrayed anyone in a good light – and thats entirely the point.

Over­all, Poliziotteschi are aes­thet­i­cal­ly fan­tas­tic. No oppor­tu­ni­ty is missed for inno­v­a­tive com­po­si­tions, aston­ish­ing moments of vis­cer­al vio­lence and a visu­al style that will leave any­one vague­ly fond of 70s kitsch des­per­ate for more. The sound­tracks are equal­ly out­stand­ing, usu­al­ly scored along the lines of a prog band cov­er­ing a Euro­vi­sion entry and com­posed by the likes of Luis Bacalov and Mau­r­izio and Gui­do De Ange­lis. Eagled eared view­ers will recog­nise many sound­tracks from var­i­ous Quentin Taran­ti­no films. Along­side these pulpy plea­sures, how­ev­er, sits a dark­er strand: a polit­i­cal con­text that gives rise to the genre’s pow­er and controversy.

The polit­i­cal con­text of crime cin­e­ma came under scruti­ny in the 70s. Poliziotteschi arguably faced greater scruti­ny because of Italy’s sit­u­a­tion dur­ing the main peri­od of pro­duc­tion. This has lead to some alarmist gen­er­al­i­sa­tions about the genre, mak­ing those sim­i­lar­ly con­cerned by the Amer­i­can equiv­a­lents seem nuanced by com­par­i­son. As with most over-egged wor­ries, how­ev­er, the real­i­ty is more com­pli­cat­ed than the sweep­ing dis­missals of such films as dan­ger­ous pro­pa­gan­da suggests.

The peri­od of the genre, last­ing from the late 60s to the 80s, is known in Italy as the Years of Lead’. The fis­sure of May 1968 bred a wealth of rad­i­cal extrem­ists, ter­ror­ist cells and organ­ised crime, from all ends of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. Marx­ist-Lenin­ist groups like the Red Brigades sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly kid­napped and mur­dered dozens of peo­ple through­out the decade, while fas­cist groups like the Armed Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Nuclei killed over 80 peo­ple with a bomb in 1980 in Bologna. Along with thou­sands of sim­i­lar sto­ries involv­ing numer­ous extrem­ist cells, urban depri­va­tion seemed irre­versible. Vio­lent crime was unprece­dent­ed­ly high, police vio­lence and cor­rup­tion was endem­ic and Mafia influ­ence gave the sit­u­a­tion an unimag­in­able momentum.

Like Dirty Har­ry and Death Wish, Poliziotteschi were respond­ing to these real­i­ties, albeit with pulp sim­plic­i­ty. Often told from the police per­spec­tive, these films rarely por­trayed any­one in a good light – and that’s entire­ly the point. Accu­sa­tions of sup­port­ing an extreme con­ser­v­a­tive per­spec­tive seem far too sim­ple, espe­cial­ly when, at the end of the day, we’re deal­ing with most­ly self-aware genre films. Some films deal with extreme left-wing cells and paint them as bour­geois and hyp­o­crit­i­cal; a pos­si­ble expla­na­tion for some of the genre’s dismissal.

Yet this was a view shared by Marx­ists of the peri­od, too, includ­ing Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni (him­self mur­dered in the decade) and French crime author of Nada, Jean-Patrick Manchette. Claude Chabrol’s 1974 adap­ta­tion of Manchette’s nov­el is arguably more bit­ing­ly crit­i­cal of such groups than any pure­ly Ital­ian Poliziotteschi.

A man wearing a dark suit and tie, with a serious expression on his face, set against a background of high-rise buildings.

Either way, such groups were not often the main vil­lains of these films. The chief antag­o­nists were usu­al­ly shady, right-wing busi­ness­man, Mafia stand-ins and cor­rupt offi­cials (usu­al­ly police­men), for exam­ple in Toni­no Ricci’s The Big Fam­i­ly or Dami­ano Damiani’s Con­fes­sions of a Police Cap­tain. These vil­lains were usu­al­ly upper-mid­dle class, while the police fight­ing them were work­ing class. It per­haps explains some of the films’ domes­tic suc­cess. If some prob­lem­at­ic aspects come from lean­ing, Siegel-like, into the lone ranger west­ern trans­plant – sug­gest­ing naive­ly that police should be giv­en a free hand – then it’s real­ly not a prob­lem unique to Italy’s genre.

Equal­ly, these films deal with extreme vio­lence, misog­y­ny and a whole host of oth­er dif­fi­cult issues. They do so, how­ev­er, with that unde­ni­able Ital­ian vivac­i­ty, mak­ing some incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to watch. The raw open­ing pur­suit and mur­der of a woman in Salerno’s No, the Case is Hap­pi­ly Resolved is a good exam­ple. Vio­lence towards women is com­mon and fetishised. The gen­er­al vio­lence is espe­cial­ly indebt­ed to Italy’s Hor­ror cin­e­ma and its pen­chant for extreme, gut wrench­ing blood­i­ness and bru­tal­i­ty. The films pos­sess that typ­i­cal­ly grimy grind­house feel.

It begs the ques­tion of why a view­er, if eas­i­ly offend­ed, would be look­ing for light enter­tain­ment and moral enlight­en­ment from a 1970s Ital­ian genre film. Just as with Italy’s take on the west­ern and hor­ror, this is cin­e­ma fir­ing on all cylin­ders. Every­thing is over the top, even when deal­ing with touch-paper themes. Going into films with titles like Cry of the Pros­ti­tute or What Have They Done to Your Daugh­ters, and expect­ing any­thing less is naïve at best.

Poliziotteschi com­prised genre films deter­mined to divert as much as diag­nose. Like their French coun­ter­parts, they were unde­ni­ably cin­e­mat­ic. If they can be sum­marised by one aspect, it’s that vio­lence under­mines, even for those forced to deal in it for work. In Dallamano’s superb Colt 38 Spe­cial Squad, this is per­fect­ly encap­su­lat­ed. When asked by the press whether the crimes of the film are being com­mit­ted by fas­cists or com­mu­nists, Inspec­tor Van­ni (Mar­cel Boz­zuf­fi of The French Con­nec­tion fame) looks dis­mayed and sim­ply tells the jour­nal­ist Stop that bull­shit.” When the bod­ies were pil­ing up, it didn’t mat­ter what cause it was in aid of. Mur­der was murder.

Years of Lead: Five Clas­sic Ital­ian Crime Thrillers 1973 – 77 is released in a lim­it­ed edi­tion Blu-ray box set on 21 June via Arrow Video.

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