Radiance Films: Illustrious Corpses (1976) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Radiance Films

Italian writer-director and Palme d’Or winner Francesco Rosi of 1972’s The Mattei Affair was already an accomplished and studied master of neorealism having won the Golden Lion for Hands Over the City in 1963 as well as the David di Donatello awards for Best Director in 1965 for his bullfighting drama The Moment of Truth and again for Best Picture for his 1976 political murder mystery thriller Illustrious Corpses.  Initially a police procedural that takes a gradual turn for sardonic political allegory ala the works of Damiano Damiani such as The Case is Closed, Forget It or How to Kill a Judge with just some hints of hopelessness near the end in the vein of Luis Buñuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid, Illustrious Corpses is a quietly mannered exercise in nebulous encroaching dread.  Presented in a new 4K restoration created from multiple CRI elements with two 35mm prints serving as color reference points as the original negative remained missing and licensed to Radiance Films by Amazon MGM Studios, Francesco Rosi’s most incendiary crime epic since Salvatore Giuliano comes to Blu-ray disc for the first time in a deluxe limited special edition.

 
In Palermo, Investigating Judge Vargas (Charles Vanel of The Wages of Fear) is gunned down amid an already tense politicized atmosphere divided between the Left and Christian Democratic, sparking demonstrations and rioting while veteran Inspector Rogas (Lino Ventura) is tasked with solving the case.  As Rogas is about to begin, two more judges are bumped off mysteriously with it coming to light those who have been killed served together on numerous cases.  His findings point towards preexisting government corruption surrounding the slain judges, something his superiors urge him to ignore in favor of finding the ‘lone gunman’.  Believing the murders to be retaliatory over wrongful convictions, he interviews a number of formerly accused and tried persons which lead him down an increasingly dark and treacherous path of political intrigue, institutional power and a snapshot of the lineage between the government and the mafia lurking behind closed doors and concrete interiors. 

 
Produced by Alberto Grimaldi and based on the novel Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia, Illustrious Corpses is a formally brilliant mixture of neorealism, symmetry ala exquisite framing and a deft interplay between handheld and mannered tracking photography by Romeo and Juliet Oscar winner Pasqualino De Santis, a mercurial and subdued score by recurring Francesco Rosi collaborator Piero Piccioni.  A subtly confrontational masterwork of neorealist Italian politicized crime cinema spoken of the same breath as the aforementioned Damiano Damiani with the freeform elliptical editing structure of Salvatore Giuliano which also saw the losing battle of the Italian populace against the indefatigable machine of the government and police forces, the film from start to finished is an elegantly constructed and timed expression of quiet, muffled horror.  As we bear witness to political chicanery and criminal injustices with no other power but to recognize the overarching aura of danger in a steadily growing fascism, the film becomes a somewhat sardonic nerve wracking slow burn as our Inspector Rogas finds himself taking on a nebulous implacable empire far bigger than he (or we the film viewing audience) are fully are of. 

 
Navigating this Hellscape brilliantly is Lino Ventura of Le Deuxieme Souffle, a regular face of Jean-Pierre Melville crime thrillers with his worn and weary but wise eyes knowing the dragon’s den he is entering in investigating these murders but cannot help but walk through the burning doors anyway.  In addition to the aforementioned Charles Vanel in the beginning, the film is a cacophony of cameos and bit parts of familiar faces including but not limited to Fernando Rey of The French Connection, The Exorcist legend Max von Sydow, La Dolce Vita actor Alain Cuny and even Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom actor Paolo Bonacelli show up in it.  Rey as always exudes a kind of bourgeois air of sophistication which points to his role in The French Connection as all time pitch-perfect casting while Max von Sydow though overdubbed in Italian also has memorable screen time as a conflicted judge vaguely aware of the danger he’s in while shrugging it off as malarkey.  Paolo Bonacelli as Dr. Maxia with exception to his glasses looks as though he walked across the set of Pasolini’s timeless shocker over to Rosi’s crime epic without changing his wardrobe attire whatsoever.

 
Released in 1976 in Italy and France before being screened out of competition at the Cannes and later the New York Film Festivals, the David di Donatello Award Winner for Best Film and Best Director was not without its backlashes or controversies.  Vincent Canby of the New York Times reviewed it unfavorably while the film’s coded interpretive coda generated a great deal of controversy over the closing line ‘Truth is not always revolutionary’.  Nevertheless, the film gained considerable attention for its interpretive title and the opening montage of well-dressed decaying corpses paraded across the dollying camera followed by an off-screen shooting committed by an unknown assailant we think we know but aren’t completely sure of.  Rosi was a master of the neorealist exercise as well as absorbing aspects of the elliptical nonlinear editing germane to the French New Wave style of storytelling, a progenitor of the docudrama approach that would take greater shape amid the birth of the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s.  Radiance Films’ deluxe blu-ray special edition is marvelous and points to an underrated example of masterclass Italian crime cinema featuring one of the greatest Italian faces of the French crime thriller Lino Ventura in one of his most nuanced and subtle performances.

--Andrew Kotwicki