{"id":3683,"date":"2016-11-20T21:19:07","date_gmt":"2016-11-20T21:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3683"},"modified":"2016-11-21T20:40:32","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T20:40:32","slug":"elio-petri-property-is-no-longer-a-theft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/elio-petri-property-is-no-longer-a-theft\/","title":{"rendered":"Elio Petri: Property is no Longer a Theft"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Property<\/a>
Property Is No Longer Theft<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aka La propriet\u00e9, c\u2019est plus le vol (Fr), La proprieta non e piu un furto (It)
\nItaly \/ France
\n1973
\nProduced by Claudio Mancini for Quasars Film Company (Rome), Labrador Films (Paris)
\nDirector: Elio Petri
\nStory & screenplay: Elio Petri, Ugo Pirro
\nCinematography: Luigi Kuveiller {Eastmancolor}
\nMusic: Ennio Morricone, conducted by Bruno Nicolai
\nEditor: Ruggero Mastroianni
\nArt director: Gianni Polidori
\nCameraman: Ubaldo Terzano
\nRelease dates & running times: Italy (03\/10\/73, 125 mins), France (16\/10\/74)
\nFilmed: Rizzoli Film Studios
\nItalian takings:
\nCast:\u00a0 Ugo Tognazzi (the butcher<\/i>), Flavio Bucci (Total<\/i>), Daria Nicolodi (Anita<\/i>), Luigi Proietti (Paco aka \u2018The Argentinian\u2019<\/i>), Mario Scaccia (Alessandro Marzo aka Albertone<\/i>), Orazio Orlando (Inspector Pirelli<\/i>), Julien Guiomar (the bank manager<\/i>), Cecilia Polizzi (Mafada, the fence<\/i>), Jacques Herlin (a bank employee<\/i>), Gino Milli (Zagane<\/i>), Ettore Garofalo (Bocio<\/i>), Ada Pometti, Luigi Antonio Guerra, Pier Luigi D\u2019Orazio<\/p>\n

If The <\/b>Working Class Goes to Heaven <\/b><\/a>was a pretty idiosyncratic affair, Petri\u2019s next film, Property is no Longer a Theft<\/b> (La propriet\u00e0 non \u00e8 pi\u00f9 un furto, 73<\/i>) is simply bonkers.\u00a0 An ungodly mix of crime film, comedy and experimental theatre, large stretches of it are \u2013 quite frankly – incomprehensible.\u00a0 Total (Flavio Bucci) is a bank teller who has the unfortunate affliction of being allergic to money; especially money that\u2019s being paid in by a particular wealthy butcher and property developer (Ugo Tognazzi).\u00a0 One day the bank is attacked by armed robbers and, although the raid is unsuccessful (the bank has a hidden vault full of assault dogs that can be set free in case of just such events (!)) it has a profound effect upon the humble accountant.<\/p>\n

Deciding that all possessions entrap their owners, he resigns his job and embarks upon a new career as a \u2018Mandrakian Marxist\u2019: a robber who only steals to free his targets from the tyranny of being beholden to their assets.\u00a0 For some reason he also becomes fixated upon the aforementioned butcher – who seems to symbolize all that\u2019s worst about the capitalist greed for \u2018things\u2019 – and sets about tormenting him in a doomed attempt to prove the error of his ways.<\/p>\n

This harassment begins with the theft of the butcher\u2019s trusty knife, progresses to stealing his favorite trilby (a fun sequence set in a porn cinema) and eventually finds Total stealing his girlfriend\u2019s jewelry and, it is implied, affections.\u00a0 However, although all this annoys and frustrates his victim, they don\u2019t seem to dent his appetite for consumption.<\/p>\n

Total enlists the help of transvestite thief Albertone (Mario Scaccia) as a reluctant accomplice and they break in to the butcher\u2019s architectural nightmare of an apartment.\u00a0 Things go wrong, however, when his contempt for money means that the two wannabe revolutionaries fall out, and Albertone reports his former accomplice to the police.\u00a0 It all, of course, ends in tragedy.<\/p>\n

Good God, where to start?\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s get the genre references out the way.\u00a0 With it\u2019s emphasis upon crooks and jailbirds this obviously borrows some ideas from the Poliziotteschi is as helmed by Lenzi, Castellari et al., an influence played up in several sequences (such as the bank raid, which could have come right out of an Inspector Belli film).\u00a0 Most of the characters, particularly Flavio Bucci\u2019s perpetually goggle-eyed, twitching idealist and Mario Scaccia\u2019s strangely dignified transvestite housebreaker, seem to have walked straight in from a comedy.\u00a0 Interspersed with all of this you have a series of direct-to-the-camera eulogies from the main protagonists that look to have come from some kind of avant-garde revue.\u00a0 This is especially true of Daria Nicolodi\u2019s talking head moment, in which she sits spread-eagle upon a chair and talks about being a object (eat your heart out Lydia Lunch).<\/p>\n

All of this is stirred into a story that is meant to illustrate the argument that you don\u2019t simply own possessions, you are also owned by them.\u00a0 The butcher (who remains unnamed throughout) attempts to stop the bedevilment by offering to buy his tormentor a shop of his own, but Total turns it down as he realizes that to do so would be to surrender his freedom.\u00a0 It all closes with the funeral of Albertone, attended by a whole raft of petty pilferers (all of whom wear sunglasses).\u00a0 Here \u2018The Argentinean\u2019 (Luigi Proietti) gives a very amusing speech arguing that thieves are an essential part of society as they cement the relationship between the non criminal civilians and the products that keep them happy\/subdued.\u00a0 Of course, the trouble is that thieves are, by their nature, as much in thrall of possessions as their targets.<\/p>\n

\"Flavio<\/a>
Flavio Bucci in Property Is No Longer Theft<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It has to be said that Property is no Longer a Theft<\/b> is pretty hard going.\u00a0 It\u2019s way too long, and even more self-indulgent than most of Petri\u2019s other films.\u00a0 On the other hand, this heavy-handedness is tempered by some lighter moments that again indicate a fine comic sensibility.\u00a0 For some reason it made me wish that Petri (a filmmaker whose hypotheses obstruct his narratives) had made a collaboration with Umberto Lenzi (whose narratives wouldn\u2019t know a hypothese if it came up and kicked them).<\/p>\n

Technically there isn\u2019t anything that can possibly be faulted.\u00a0 There\u2019s another superb Morricone soundtrack and Petri uses the sets and locations with his customary zeal.\u00a0 He creates such a lush visual landscape that you can easily forget that you\u2019re being intellectually hectored.\u00a0 The performances are all eminently capable (particularly Scaccia and a surprisingly straight turn from comedy star Ugo Tognazzi).<\/p>\n

A couple of other things need to be mentioned.\u00a0 Considering that this wasn\u2019t an exploitation film, there is an awful lot of strange sexual hi-jinx \u2013 nipple tweaking, voyeurism, porn cinema handjobs, attempted rape – going on for a 1973 film.\u00a0 Daria Nicolodi features in most of these and is happily decked out, for most of the running time, in a skirt that\u2019s short enough to show her knickers.\u00a0 She would go on to contribute to the script for Dario Argento\u2019s Suspiria<\/b> (77), which also featured Bucci as a blind piano player who has his throat ripped out by his guide dog. There\u2019s also a fun sequence in which the butcher and Luisa visit a security showroom in which the impregnability of the goods are demonstrated by having a body-stocking clad cat-thief attempt to break into the \u2018Diabolik proof doors\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If The Working Class Goes to Heaven was a pretty idiosyncratic affair, Elio Petri\u2019s next film, Property is no Longer a Theft (La propriet\u00e0 non \u00e8 pi\u00f9 un furto, 73) is simply bonkers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[1140,68,1141,233,234],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683"}],"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=3683"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4510,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683\/revisions\/4510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}