Cosa Nostra – Radiance

The Italian writer/director Damiano Damiani started out as an artist, working on comic strips before entering the film industry as a production designer in the late 40s. He moved into screenwriting in the 50s and directed a couple of shorts before starting to direct feature films at the turn of the 60s.

That decade brought Damiani success both critically and commercially, with films like Arturo’s Island, A Bullet for the General and The Day of the Owl all going down well in Italy and beyond.

His films often had a political slant and took loose inspiration from headline news stories, particularly his crime movies, of which he made many during the 70s. In the 80s, he also made waves on TV by directing the first series of another crime drama, the hugely successful and influential La piovra.

Whilst enjoying a decent level of success in Italy, Damiani has never been a particularly well-known director overseas in the way contemporaries such as Enzo G. Castellari, Umberto Lenzi and Sergio Corbucci have become. This is likely because they revelled in the violence and gore of the genres they worked in, whereas Damiani’s films were more carefully drawn and intelligent, with investment in story, themes and character rather than action.

In a bid to cast light on this unjustly neglected figure in Italian cinema then, Radiance Films are releasing a trio of Damiani’s films together on Blu-ray, all connected by star Franco Nero and narratives concerning the mafia. Named Cosa Nostra: Franco Nero in three Mafia Tales by Damiano Damiani, the set contains The Day of the Owl (a.k.a. Mafia or Il giorno della civetta), The Case Is Closed: Forget It (a.k.a. L’istruttoria è chiusa: dimentichi) and How to Kill a Judge (a.k.a. Perché si uccide un magistrato).

I got hold of a copy and my thoughts follow.

The Day of the Owl (a.k.a. Mafia or Il giorno della civetta)

Director: Damiano Damiani
Screenplay: Damiano Damiani, Ugo Pirro
Based on a Novel by: Leonardo Sciascia
Starring: Franco Nero, Claudia Cardinale, Lee J. Cobb, Tano Cimarosa, Nehemiah Persoff
Country: Italy, France
Running Time: 109 min (Italian cut), 103 min (export cut)
Year: 1968

The Day of the Owl opens with the murder of truck driver Salvatore Colasberna a short distance from the home of Rosa Nicolosi (Claudia Cardinale) and her husband. Police Captain Bellodi (Franco Nero) is in charge of investigating the murder and when he speaks to Rosa to find out if she saw or heard anything, he discovers that her husband has been missing since that night.

Bellodi believes Nicolosi was murdered by the mafia after witnessing the crime, which he believes to have also been instigated by the organisation. So Nicolosi tries to get the tight-lipped Rosa to help him. She is torn, however, between assisting the police to find her husband and protecting her and her daughter’s lives from the threat of the local mafia, which is headed by Don Mariano Arena (Lee J. Cobb).

Struggling to get any support from Rosa or anyone else in town, Bellodi proceeds to try a range of questionable methods to bring down the Don whilst Mariano plots a scheme to besmirch Rosa.

Based on a popular and respected novel by Leonardo Sciascia, The Day of the Owl was very successful in Italy and has long been a mainstay on Italian TV. It was also hugely influential in being the first notable Sicilian mafia film and one that explored the stranglehold the mafia had over all aspects of Italian society.

It still holds up very well today. I was thoroughly impressed by this, kicking off the set in fine fashion. It’s expertly constructed, with a well-developed story and carefully controlled direction. Each frame has been cleverly thought through and blocked out, making for a handsome production that makes great use of its Sicilian locations.

The cast is very good too. Nero’s father was a carabinieri, like his character. As such, Nero felt he had a personal connection to his role and it turned out to be, according to an interview here, the first performance he got notable praise for in the press.

Claudia Cardinale is given a decent role too, allowing the great actress to display both her strength and vulnerability, rather than just banking on her sexuality, as a lesser director might have done.

Cobb’s inclusion here has an interesting slant too, given how the film has ‘snitching’ as an important plot element whilst the actor was known to have named names during the McCarthy witch trials. He’s as reliable as ever playing the film’s powerful central mafia figure.

I also liked the score a great deal. It had a distinctive flavour of the Godfather theme in some cues. At first, I took this as ripping off Nino Rota before I remembered that The Day of the Owl was made four years prior to Coppola’s masterpiece. So, perhaps Rota was the one doing the plagiarizing.

I won’t ramble on, as there are another two films to get to but, as mentioned, this was a first-class start to the set, being a finely crafted crime drama with a well-constructed narrative, masterful direction and strong performances.

Film:

Director: Damiano Damiani
Screenplay: Damiano Damiani, Massimo De Rita, Dino Maiuri
Based on a Novel by: Leros Pittoni
Starring: Franco Nero, Riccardo Cucciolla, Georges Wilson, John Steiner, Ferruccio De Ceresa, Antonio Casale, Daniele Dublino, Claudio Nicastro
Country: Italy, France
Running Time: 106 min
Year: 1971

The Case Is Closed: Forget It sees Nero play someone on the opposite side of the law this time around, as his character, Vanzi, is introduced as he’s being thrown in prison. He’s only in there on a traffic offence, so hopes to get out soon, but his case hits problems, causing him to be stuck behind bars for a while.

Being from a wealthy, bourgeois background, Vanzi struggles to adjust to life as a convict. He learns to use his money to make his time more comfortable but this only ends up landing him in trouble after a while.

You see, the mafia even calls the shots in jail, with high-profile Cosa Nostra prisoner Salvatore Rosa (Claudio Nicastro) pulling all the strings. He takes aim at Vanzi after the wet-behind-the-ears con witnesses one of Salvatore’s enemies, Pesenti (Riccardo Cucciolla), handling some secret information.

Whereas The Day of the Owl was a big success, The Case is Closed was received fairly coldly on release in Italy, possibly because it came out around the same time as another, higher-profile, easier-to-digest prison film starring Alberto Sordi. I can see why Damiani’s film might not have appealed to everyone though, as it’s deeply political, cynical and pretty grim in places. It totally hit the mark for me though.

As with The Day of the Owl, The Case is Closed was based on a book (‘Tante Sbarre’ by Leros Pittoni) but Damiani altered this a great deal to tackle the left-wing, anti-establishment themes he wanted to explore. The film treads waters of murky morality and this is what pushes the film above the level of most generic prison movies. The ending is particularly potent. I don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll try to be vague (skip to the next paragraph if you’d rather not risk it), but the supposedly honourable, law-abiding citizen at the core of the story ends up being a coward who lets injustice happen right in front of him due to fear of becoming a victim himself.

Damiani likes to use non-actors in smaller parts in his films and, supposedly, some of the extras and minor roles here were played by actual prisoners. One fairly major role was a former prisoner too, a man who had been given a life sentence before getting pardoned by the president a few years prior to filming. This all adds to the gritty realism of the film, helping sell its damning portrayal of the Italian judicial system.

Damiani continues to show his great skill as a director too, not only producing a classy-looking film but one with several expertly devised set-pieces. A couple that stick in the mind are a near-wordless, swift operation where the guards cover up for their planned beating of a prisoner and a harrowing murder sequence towards the end.

Morricone provides the score here and, as usual, provides a winning mixture of unusual but effective atmospherics and memorable themes.

Overall, The Case is Closed offers a clever, cynical and political spin on the prison movie. It’s another expertly crafted gem from Damiani that grips hard and never lets go.

Film:

Director: Damiano Damiani
Screenplay: Damiano Damiani, Fulvio Gicca Palli, Enrico Ribulsi
Starring: Franco Nero, Françoise Fabian, Pierluigi Aprà, Giancarlo Badessi, Luciano Catenacci, Tano Cimarosa
Country: Italy
Running Time: 110 min
Year: 1975

In How to Kill a Judge, Nero plays Giacomo Solaris, a film director who gets into hot water with his latest work, which is a thinly veiled attack on a high-profile magistrate. Solaris’ film shows the judge working hand in hand with the mafia before getting murdered by them.

The incendiary film is a big success, so the real-life judge, Traini (Marco Guglielmi), tries to talk Solaris into pulling the film. The director resists but, soon after, Traini is murdered in a shooting similar to his on-screen avatar.

Wracked with guilt, Solaris tries to work with Traini’s wife, Antonia (Françoise Fabian), to help catch the murderer. She is resistant to help though and, as Solaris looks into the mafia connections he’d uncovered during his film research, he digs himself ever deeper into his own hole.

Damiani doesn’t let his standards slip, delivering yet another classily-produced, engrossing crime drama. Making it particularly interesting is the fact that it’s a self-reflexive film. It was inspired by the actual murder of a magistrate by the mafia, an act that ended up boosting the popularity of Damiani’s film Confessions of a Police Captain. The shock and guilt felt by this spurred the director on to make How to Kill a Judge.

As such, the film thrives on exploring the complex morality of its story. This gives Nero yet another meaty role to chew on and he delivers one of his best performances in my opinion. There’s another strong female character too, this time in the form of Antonia, played by Françoise Fabian. As before, this strength is countered by an underlying fear and vulnerability to give depth to the character.

As with the other films in the set, corruption is everywhere, at each level, and the mafia is linked with both the law and the media. [*SPOILERS*] Surprisingly though, a final twist reveals something altogether different is behind the core mystery. This doesn’t negate the damning portrayal of Italian society explored earlier in the film though, instead offering up a powerful moral dilemma.

This ending proved controversial, with many feeling it was a cop-out. I can see that and, I must admit, it felt like an uncharacteristic stumble at first but, once the shock of the twist subsided, I grew to appreciate the extra layer of depth the finale added. [*END OF SPOILERS*]

How to Kill a Judge is, perhaps, slightly less stylish than the other films in the set (other than the enjoyably over-the-top film-within-a-film which is given a giallo-parodying treatment), but this helps you focus on the fascinating subject matter. The writing, performances and intellectual depth are all still present too, capping off a wonderfully consistent set of top-drawer mafia movies.

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