Radiance Films: Confessions of a Police Captain (1971) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Radiance Films

Radiance Films have been doting a lot of love over the past few years on sardonic Italian crime thriller maestro Damiano Damiani, from their Cosa Nostra trilogy box of films with Franco Nero, Goodbye & Amen and most recently A Man on His Knees.  A celebrated auteur whose work is only catching wind in the West now, Damiani’s tenure within the crime cinema subgenre began with his debut film Lipstick in 1960. 
 
Following films within the giallo or the western, Damiani began more urgently moving towards a kind of Poliziotteschi film or Italian crime film drifting between action and/or drama during a period of sociopolitical turmoil known (and chronicled on film) as the Years of Lead.  With his last crime thriller The Day of the Owl done in 1967 and covered in Radiance’s Cosa Nostra box, Damiani was ready for a full return to the poliziotteschi picture and in 1971 with his Golden Prize-winning Confessions of a Police Captain he perhaps delivered one of the very best possible examples of the subgenre. 
 
1972 Sicily, Police Captain Bonavia (Martin Balsam of Psycho) one morning ventures to an insane asylum looking for a disturbed inmate to release back into the free world with the intention of settling a score with a ruthless construction magnate named Ferdinando Lomunno (Luciano Catenacci).  What turns out to be a murder plot backfires when Lomunno is tipped off and three of his henchman end up taking a bullet for him in addition to taking out the assailant. 
 
Meanwhile District Attorney Traini (Franco Nero) a by-the-book believer in the power of the law is tasked with handling the case where he discovers Lomunno not only holds a monopolizing grip on the construction industry in the area but further investigation points to none other than Captain Bonavia as the instigator of the failed murder plot.  Key to this saga is the disturbed inmate’s sister Serena Lipurna (Marilù Tolo) who was not only once romantically involved with Lomunno but eavesdropped on many of his private conversations with government officials, pointing to an even grander conspiracy shooting all the way up to the highest levels of power.  Very quickly, the hunter becomes the hunted as legalities force the Captain out of office and he arms himself before attempting to take the last remnants of the law left into his own hands.

 
Full of luminous, split-diopter heavy camerawork by Claudio Ragona and a sizzling sinister score by legendary Cannibal Holocaust composer Riz Ortlani, Damiano Damiani’s Confessions of a Police Captain represents a masterful return to the genre he would eventually make his trademark style of output.  Though violent with some particularly brutal murders and methods of disposing of the body of evidence like hiding it in a cement block, primarily this is a dialogue and politics driven character and social study.  Something of a continuation of the Cosa Nostra series which ruminated on the rise of fascism in Italy and the inseparability of sociopolitical machinations with the mafia, it easily informs later works such as How to Kill a Judge and The Case is Closed, Forget It for its somber but wise regard for how these kinds of embattlements play themselves out. 

 
A stark, sobering antidote to some of the more fantasy heroic poliziotteschis which see the bad guys getting their just desserts as justice, law and order prevails, Confessions of a Police Captain while an ensemble piece essentially boils down to Martin Balsam and Franco Nero.  Nero who was a mainstay in Damiano’s films as the idealistic attorney who doesn’t know the full extent of corruption Balsam’s beleaguered cop is privy to.  Balsam, a recurring face in Hitchcock and Cape Fear, makes an excellent (albeit Italian dubbed) turn as the Captain who at first seems conniving and nefarious until over time we (the audience) slowly come to understand his position. 

 
Making its US Blu-ray disc premiere via Radiance Films following some scant and slipshod DVD releases over the years, now restored in 2K digital with optional original Italian or English dubbed audio, Confessions of a Police Captain comes housed with new interviews with actor Franco Nero and Michele Gammino with editor Antonio Siciliano.  There’s an interview with film score expert Lovely Jon ruminating on Riz Ortolani’s pulsing score, reversible sleeve art with original Italian posters, a limited-edition booklet with archival interviews with Damiano Damiani and the time-honored OBI spine on the Radiance amaray case. 

 
For those who already have Cosa Nostra and A Man on His Knees, this is a most welcome addition to the poliziotteschi fan’s ever-expanding library and Radiance Films have once again assembled a wonderful, comprehensive Blu-ray package for newcomers and those well versed in the Italian director’s canon.

--Andrew Kotwicki