{"id":3675,"date":"2016-03-13T21:29:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-13T21:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3675"},"modified":"2016-03-03T22:01:53","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T22:01:53","slug":"elio-petri-we-still-kill-the-old-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/elio-petri-we-still-kill-the-old-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Elio Petri: We Still Kill the Old Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aka A \u00fan matamos a la antigua (Argentina), A chacun son du (France), Zwei S\u00e4rge auf Bestellung (West Germany), A ciascuno il suo (It)
\nItaly
\n1967
\nProduced by Giuseppe Zaccariello for Cemofilm
\nDirector: Elio Petri
\nStory: Based on the novel \u2018A ciascuno il suo\u2019 by Leonardo Sciascia
\nScreenplay: Elio Petri, Ugo Pirro
\nCinematography: Luigi Kuveiller {Technicolor}
\nMusic: Luis Enrique Bacalov, the song \u2018Pour r?ver l\u2019hiver\u2019, based on the text by Rimbaud
\nEditor: Ruggero Mastroianni
\nArt director: Sergio Canevari
\nCameraman: Danilo Desideri
\nRelease dates & running times: Italy (22\/02\/67), France (67, 93 mins), West Germany (22\/09\/67, 93 mins)
\nFilmed: Exteriors shot in Palermo
\nItalian takings: 497.000.000 lire
\nCast: Gian Maria Volont\u00e9 (Paolo Laurana<\/i>), Irene Papas (Luisa Roscio<\/i>), Gabriele Ferzetti (Rossello<\/i>), Mario Scacchi (Sant\u2019Amo curator), Laura Nucci (Paolo\u2019s mother<\/i>), Salvo Randone (Professor Roscio<\/i>), Luigi Pistilli (Arturo Manno<\/i>), Leopoldo Trieste (the communist deputy<\/i>), Giovanni Pallavicino (Ragana<\/i>), Franco Tranchina (Dr. Antonio Roscio<\/i>), Anna Rivero (Anna Manno<\/i>), Luciana Scalise (Rosina<\/i>), Orio Cannarozzo (a police inspector<\/i>), Carmelo Oliviero (the archpriest, Luisa\u2019s uncle<\/i>), Carlo Ferro, Tanina Zappala, Valentino Macchi, Michele Vannucci
\nUncredited: Al Cascino (a policeman<\/i>)<\/p>\n

\"We<\/a>
We Still Kill the Old Way<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After all the high-concept exuberance of The Tenth Victim, We Still Kill the Old Way<\/b> saw Petri move from sci-fi to the crime genre and, stylistically, marked a return to a more subtle, low-key approach.\u00a0 Manno (Luigi Pistilli), a pharmacist in a small Sicilian town, receives a series of anonymous death threats.\u00a0 He shrugs them off, but his nonchalance proves misguided when his friend Dr. Roscio (Franco Tranchina) and he are murdered whilst out hunting. It is assumed that the killer was an aggrieved husband (Manno had been a notorious philanderer) and before long the peasant brothers and father of his teenage mistress are arrested for the crime.<\/p>\n

His friend Paolo (Gian Maria Volont\u00e9), a professor who works in Palermo, is unconvinced.\u00a0 The three suspects are all illiterate, so how could they have written the death threats?\u00a0 He manages to convince a respected lawyer, Rossello (Gabriele Ferzetti), to act as counsel for the defence, and in the meantime starts investigating matters for himself.<\/p>\n

With the help of Rossello\u2019s sister, Luisa (Irene Papas), he gradually becomes convinced that Roscio was the actual target of the assassination, and that his friend was merely an unfortunate witness.\u00a0 The Doctor, it appears, had been compiling a dossier that would implicate a prominent (but unnamed) local figure in all manner of illegalities, including murder.<\/p>\n

As a murder mystery, it\u2019s not too hard to work out exactly who the guilty party is here.\u00a0 It\u2019s far harder to figure exactly what\u2019s going on most of the time, with the whole plot becoming extremely convoluted as everything progresses.\u00a0 However, Petri isn\u2019t overly concerned with the thriller aspects of the story.\u00a0 He is more interested in examining the way that the unstated Sicilian \u2018customs\u2019 succeed in maintaining the status quo by ensuring that the powerful remain untouchable.\u00a0 As is often the case with filmmakers of strong convictions, his message does get in the way of the narrative flow.\u00a0 This shouldn\u2019t be overplayed, however, and in many ways We Still Kill the Old Way<\/b> remains one of his most effective films.<\/p>\n

It is fantastically made.\u00a0 Luis Enrique Bacalov\u2019s soundtrack is superb, despite there being one particularly cheesy upbeat ditty that seems to appear every time something depressing happens.\u00a0 Luigi Kuveiller\u2019s cinematography is first class, and the opening sequence – in which the camera prowls over the imposing cliffs and down into the town square – is literally awesome.<\/p>\n

For those who are more familiar with Gian Maria Volont\u00e9\u2019s villainous turns in Leone\u2019s Fistful of Dollars <\/b>(Per un pugno di dollari, 64<\/i>) and For a Few Dollars More<\/b> (Per qualche dollaro in pi\u00f9, 65<\/i>), his performances in this and subsequent Petri films will come as something of a revelation (6). \u00a0He plays a timid character, someone who doesn\u2019t really understand the place in which he grew up because his \u2018head was always in the clouds\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s always the feeling, however, that below this civilized veneer hides a distinctly less cultivated animal \u2013 as becomes especially clear in the scenes in which he assaults the unwilling Irene Papas.\u00a0 Another Leone actor, Gabriele Ferzetti, who played the crippled railway man in Once Upon a Time in the West<\/b> (C\u2019era una volt ail West, 68<\/i>), also turns in an impressive performance.<\/p>\n

\"Irene<\/a>
Irene Papas in We Still Kill the Old Way<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(6)\u00a0Milanese actor Gian Maria Volont\u00e9 began his career in the theatre as a member of the Accademia d\u2019Arte Drammatica in the early 1950s.\u00a0 After receiving huge acclaim for his performance in an adaptation of The Idiot in 1959, he also started appearing on television and in films ranging from Cottafavi\u2019s fun peplum Hercules Conquest of Atlantis<\/b> (Ercole alla conquista di Atlantide, 61<\/i>) to Nanni Loy\u2019s critically respected The <\/b>Four Days of Naples <\/b>(Le Quattro giornate di Napoli, 62<\/i>). It was in Spaghetti Westerns, though, that he first found fame, appearing in classics of the genre such as Leone\u2019s Fistful of Dollars<\/b> (Per un pugno di dollari, 64<\/i>) and For a Few Dollars More<\/b> (Per qualche dollari in pi\u00f9, 65<\/i>), Sergio Sollima\u2019s Face to Face<\/b> (Faccia a faccia, 67<\/i>) and Damiano Damiani\u2019s A <\/b>Bullet for the General<\/b> (Quien sabe, 66<\/i>).\u00a0 This success allowed him to cherry-pick roles more attuned to his political convictions, and it wasn\u2019t surprising that he gravitated to Petri\u2019s orbit.\u00a0 In the late sixties and seventies he also appeared in many other classics of European cinema, including Carlo Lizzani\u2019s Bandit\u2019s of Milan<\/b> (Banditi a Milano, 68<\/i>), Jean-Pierre Melville\u2019s The <\/b>Red Circle<\/b> (Le cercle rouge, 70<\/i>) and Francesco Rosi\u2019s Christ Stopped at Eboli<\/b> (Cristo si \u00e8 fermato a Eboli, 79<\/i>), before his death in 1994.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After all the high-concept exuberance of The Tenth Victim, We Still Kill the Old Way saw Petri move from sci-fi to the crime genre and, stylistically, marked a return to a more subtle, low-key approach. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1212,8],"tags":[68,906,994,844,1126,233],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3675"}],"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=3675"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4253,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3675\/revisions\/4253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}