{"id":3667,"date":"2015-05-25T21:05:11","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T21:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3667"},"modified":"2015-07-27T12:35:46","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T12:35:46","slug":"elio-petri-the-assassin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/elio-petri-the-assassin\/","title":{"rendered":"Elio Petri: The Assassin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Assassin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aka L\u2019assassin (Fr), Trauen Sie Alfredo einen Mord zu? (WG), L’assassino (It)
\nItaly \/ France
\n1961
\nA Franco Cristaldi production for Titanus, Vides Cinematografica & S.G.C. (Paris)
\nDirector: Elio Petri
\nStory: Antonio Guerra, Elio Petri
\nScreenplay: Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa, Elio Petri, Tonio Guerra
\nCinematography: Carlo Di Palma
\nMusic: Piero Piccioni, the song \u2018Rose\u2019 by Salvador & Michel, \u2018Come sinfonia\u2019 by Pino Donaggio and sung by Mina
\nEditor: Ruggero Mastroianni
\nArt director: Carlo Egidi
\nCameraman: Dario Di Palma
\nRelease dates & running times: Italy (01\/04\/61), France (63), West Germany (05\/10\/62, 97 mins), UK (63, 105 mins), US (61)
\nFilmed: Titanus-Farnesina Studios
\nItalian takings: 251.000.000 lire
\nCast: Marcello Mastroianni (Nello Poletti<\/i>), Micheline Presle (Adalgisa De Matteis<\/i>), Cristina Gajoni (Antonella Nogara<\/i>), Salvo Randone (Commissioner Palumbo<\/i>), Andrea Checchi (Morello<\/i>), Giovanna Gagliardo (Rosetta<\/i>), Carlo Egidi (Nello\u2019s friend<\/i>), Paolo Panelli (Paolo<\/i>), Toni Ucci (Toni), Marco Mariani (Commissioner Margiotta<\/i>), Franco Ressel (Dr. Francesconi<\/i>), Franco Freda (a tramp<\/i>), Mac Ronay (a suicide<\/i>), Max Cartier (Bruno<\/i>), Francesco Grandjaquet (an old man), Corrado Zingaro, Ubaldo Mecacci, Loris Bazzocchi, Giuliano Montaldo, Lucia Raggi, Lina Ferri, Silvio Bastionelli
\nIMDB also credits: Bruno Scipioni, Eugenio Maggi, Enrico Maria Salerno (uncredited), Corrado Zingaro (uncredited)<\/p>\n

After making two shorts, Nasce un campione<\/b> (54) and I sette contadini <\/b>(59), Petri made his full debut with The Assassin<\/b> (L\u2019assassino, 61<\/i>), based on a script co-written with Tonino Guerra (with whom he would later collaborate on several films) (3).\u00a0 The Assassin<\/b> is a small-scale, jazzy little number that bears some debt to the French new wave films that were being produced by Jean-Luc Godard, Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut and so on.\u00a0 It is also, like the following year\u2019s I giorni contati<\/a><\/b>\u00a0(62), very much an intimate tale; the story of a man trying to do something a little out of the ordinary, and the profound effect – or lack thereof – that it has upon his life.<\/p>\n

The \u2018hero\u2019 of the piece is Alfredo Martelli, a moderately wealthy playboy who runs a dodgy antiques business. Martelli is hardly the most sympathetic of leads, but as played by Marcello Mastroianni he certainly looks cool.\u00a0 The plot kicks of when his wealthy mistress and benefactor, Adalgisa (the striking Micheline Presle) is found murdered.\u00a0 The evidence all points to him as the killer: he was the last person to see her alive, owed her a large amount of money and, most damning of all, is all set to marry the much younger, much richer and much dumber Nicoletta (Cristina Gajoni).<\/p>\n

Arrested by the police and questioned by the dogged Commissioner Palumbo (Salvo Randone), Martelli claims that Adalgisa had been content with their casual relationship and had even gone so far as to suggest the marriage to Nicoletta as a way of prolonging their affair.\u00a0 On that last night he claims that they made love and then he left her.\u00a0 If that is the case, though, just who killed her?<\/p>\n

\"Marcello<\/a>
Marcello Mastroianni faces up to the Italian justice system in The Assassin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite the synopsis, Petri isn\u2019t really interested in the giallo element of the plot \u2013 indeed, when the murderer is finally unmasked the revelation is entirely understated.\u00a0 The mystery is simply a hook by which he can address his main concern: the protagonist\u2019s unwavering egoism.<\/p>\n

Flashbacks show a variety of ways in which Martelli treated other people badly.\u00a0 He buys stolen goods from a desperate housebreaker for a meager sum, selling them on to shallow aristocrats at a vastly marked up price.\u00a0 He taunts a drunkard trying to pull an insurance scam, causing the man to kill himself in a fit of depression.\u00a0 He fools a shy maid into taking off her clothes by persuading a lecherous friend to pose as a doctor.\u00a0 He, and this is the crunch one for an Italian audience, treats his mother with disrespect.\u00a0 After each instance he\u2019s shown to be momentarily regretful, only to carry on doing exactly the same things.\u00a0 It is suggested that after the trauma of being imprisoned he will just go back to his old ways, and even use the temporary discomfort and notoriety (of being \u2018The Lady Killer\u2019) to further extend his selfishness.<\/p>\n

As Petri explained: \u201cIt was the boom years of easy and quick enrichment, and my protagonist was a working class man who, in order to \u2018arrive\u2019, has abandoned his moral scruples.\u00a0 The inquiry he undertakes is an examination of his own conscience, because the morals that he mimes he doesn\u2019t have any more, and that\u2019s because they weren\u2019t present in the society he was bought up in and that \u2018produced\u2019 him.\u00a0 I was much influenced in that period, and perhaps still am, by existentialist philosophy, and I believe you can see this in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite a strong start, The Assassin<\/b> does go off the boil in the second half, especially once the investigation decamps from the police station to the seaside hotel at which Adalgisa had lived.\u00a0 Considering that it was his debut, however, Petri\u2019s direction is remarkably assured \u2013 and is greatly aided by the capable work of his regular editor, Ruggero Mastroianni (3).\u00a0 Mastroianni recalled: \u201cPetri and I gave all of our films a diverse rhythym and we adapted a totally new technique for editing The Assassin<\/b>, just like Godard was doing with A Bout de Souffle<\/b>.\u00a0 Because we hadn\u2019t seen his film, though, we were only able to compare them later.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Marcello<\/a>
Marcello Mastroianni comes across a victim of The Assassin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As with all of his films there are some great comic moments, especially the sequence in which Palumbo watches his increasing nervous suspect from behind a two-way mirror.\u00a0 Another nicely played moment finds Martelli attempting to prove his innocence by demonstrating that his dog wouldn\u2019t bark at him under any circumstances; an exercise that is staggeringly unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

Despite its eventual success, The Assasin<\/b> actually had a somewhat difficult production history.\u00a0 Originally intended as a star vehicle for Nino Manfredi, it was close to being shelved until Mastroianni stepped in.\u00a0 Having previously worked with Petri on projects such as Giorni d\u2019amore<\/b>, he used the fact that he was at the end of a low paid contract with Titanus Studio Chief Goffredo Lombardo and producer Franco Cristaldi in order to fight off attempts to have someone with more experience bought in as director.\u00a0 \u2018I had absolutely no hesitation in working with [Petri]\u2019, he has said, \u2018I\u2019m glad that I didn\u2019t, because The Assassin<\/b> was very well made and had considerable success.\u2019<\/p>\n

There were also considerable problems with the censors, who had several major issues with the film, mainly to do with alleged misrepresentation of the police.\u00a0 These included: the scene in which Martelli is held in a police cell along with an informer, who is there with the sole purpose of entrapping him; the police being protrayed as speaking with Neapolitan or Sicilian accents; and a sequence in which a policeman, after muddying some stairs with his dirty shoes, calls upon a caretaker to clear them up.\u00a0 Petri wasn\u2019t happy with this: \u201c…I argued that it was impossible to cut anything, but it was my first film and I wanted it to come out at Pasqua, so I just did as much as I could, and was very active arguing my case with journalists.\u00a0 I regret very much having accepted these conditions now, and perhaps if it had been three years later I wouldn\u2019t have done so.\u00a0 But if, at the time I\u2019d stamped my feet, I know the film would have been blocked.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Marcello<\/a>
Marcello Mastroianni looks customarily cool in The Assassin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(2)Tonino Guerra stands as one of the key postwar Italian scriptwriters, having worked with just about every reputable European director since emerging in the late 50s (including non-Italians such as Theo Angelopoulos and Andrei Tarkovsky).\u00a0 Born in 1920 in Sant\u2019Arcangelo, he began his career by writing novels and poetry before working on his first screenplay.\u00a0 As he recalls: \u201cI often came to Rome.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t go to Rimini for my holidays, but Rome, about once a year.\u00a0 I\u2019d become very good friends with Vespignani [painter Renzo Vespignani], who I\u2019d met and we liked each other very much.\u00a0 And one time when I came to see him there was a group of people from Portonaccio.\u00a0 There was Petri, Fulci, and many others, a group of Romans who were also well known in Santarcangelo.\u00a0 When [Aglauco] Casadio was due to make his debut with Un <\/b>ettaro di cielo <\/b>(59), they needed someone to work on the script with Petri.\u00a0 Since they knew my poetry, they asked me if I fancied contributing, so I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petri & Guerra formed a close working relationship, writing more films for Giuseppe De Santis (The <\/b>Year Long Road<\/b> (La strada lunga un anno, 58<\/i>) & La <\/b>gar\u00e7onniere<\/b> (60)) as well as The <\/b>Assassin<\/b>, The <\/b>Tenth Victim<\/b> & A <\/b>Quiet Place in the Country<\/b>, all of which were directed by Petri.\u00a0 Still busy today, Guerra has been Oscar-nominated three times (for Casanova \u201970<\/b> (65), Blowup<\/b> (66) and Amarcord<\/b> (73)).<\/p>\n

(3)Despite being regularly associated with Antonio Guerra, Ugo Pirro and Ennio Morricone, Petri\u2019s key collaborator was actually Ruggero Mastroianni, who acted as editor on all of his films.\u00a0 One of the key exponents of an underappreciated \u2013 and often ignored art \u2013 Mastroianni was born in Rome in 1929 and was the younger brother of the much better known Marcello.\u00a0 After serving his dues as an assistant editor in the late 1950s, he assembled well over 150 films including Fellini\u2019s Satyricon<\/b> (69), Visconti\u2019s Death in Venice<\/b> (Morte a Venezia, 71<\/i>) and Rosi\u2019s Chronicle of a Death Foretold<\/b> (Cronaca di una morte annunciate, 87<\/i>).\u00a0 A busy fellow, he was also happy to wield his scissors on a variety of more populist fare, working on several spaghetti westerns and crime films.\u00a0 He died in 1996.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After making two shorts, Nasce un campione (54) and I sette contadini (59), Petri made his full debut with The Assassin (L\u2019assassino, 61), based on a script co-written with Tonino Guerra (with whom he would later collaborate on several films).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1212,8],"tags":[1125,1127,68,421,150,1126],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3667"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4017,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667\/revisions\/4017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}