Cosa Nostra: Three Mafia Tales
The Day of the Owl (1968) – released in the U.S. simply as Mafia – follows a game of cat-and-mouse between Captain Bellodi (Nero), an honest northern cop pitted again Don Arena (Lee J. Cobb), a beloved mafioso who literally gets away with murder. Fighting a losing battle against hired thugs and the tight-lipped locals (including Claudia Cardinale), Bellodi finds that justice in Sicily is not quite so black and white.
Echoing themes of one of Radiance’s earlier releases (The Iron Prefect) based on the brutal mafia clean-up efforts of Cesare Mori, Damiani’s film proves that, if anything, the crime families have become even more entrenched in government bureaucracy and everyday life. Bellodi’s efforts, however noble, are entirely wasted and unappreciated by those he’s trying to protect. Damiani sets us up for a successful police procedural, using Nero’s iconic “good guy” status as cynical sleight of hand. But it’s Lee J. Cobb, in an effortlessly threatening performance, who comes out the victor…if not quite the hero.
Things get even more cynical in 1971’s The Case is Closed: Forget It, a prison film that pokes more holes in bourgeois society than the criminal justice system itself. Here Franco plays an architect, Vanzi, sent to prison while awaiting trial for a hit-and-run. Once inside, his economic and educational status grants him a quick ascent in the crooked caste system in which money buys favors, women and influence. A mafioso on the inside seizes the opportunity to use their new recruit to get close to an important witness. But Vanzi waffles between his ethics as a human being and his desire to a quick release.
With all the usual pleasures of a prison film intact (beatings, knifings and petty conspiracies), Damiani’s film allows him to philosophize within familiar settings. Once again, Nero is propped up as a hero; morally outraged at the right moments and struggling to survive the next. But, from the outset, we suspect that Vanzi sees himself as a man apart. “When I’m in here, I’m one of them,” he tells the warden after refusing to rat out a fellow prisoner. That’s what makes the film’s gut punch of an ending so damn powerful.
With How to Kill a Judge (1975), Damiani takes a self-reflective dive into the complicated world of cinema and Italian politics. Giacomo Solaris (Nero) is a reactionary filmmaker whose latest work portrays a local magistrate as corrupt public figure tied to several organized crimes. It also shows his murder onscreen; which becomes more problematic when the judge is killed in real life. Guilt ridden that he might have inspired the act, Solaris attempts to convince the judge’s widow (Francoise Fabian) that her husband truly was involved in underworld plots…and perhaps uncover the murderer at the same time.
A bit talky and politically complex, How to Kill a Judge becomes more satisfying as a mystery as it moves along. The implications of an artist’s responsibility versus the right to free speech are still as relevant as ever. And Damiani pulls off a brilliantly balanced approach, juggling the bias of the press, dirty politicians and those really pulling the strings to craft a film that indicts all of us for selfishness in the end.
And that’s the beauty of Radiance’s three-film collection: finding the cinematic connections most of us an unqualified to search out for ourselves. These cherry-picked titles fit so well together it’s hard to imagine any fan of Italian cinema passing them up. The limited edition set features restorations from the original negatives, new interviews with Nero on each disc, video essays, archival interviews and documentaries plus a comprehensive 80-page book with writing on each film…all in one classy package.
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