Word: elio
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HOLLYWOOD has recently discovered that politics can be used to spice up perversity (and vice versa) in catering to mass consumer cravings: pushing old commodities in new packaging. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion works out quite skillfully this newly elaborate and sophisticated formula. Directed by Italian Elio Petri-if not for exclusively American capital (Euro International), at least with U. S. distribution (Columbia) ever in mind-the production won an Academy Award last week for the Best Foreign ( sic ) Film of 1971. Which is a pretty good tip-off that no matter how "controversial" its politics, this pictures poses...
Kafka's observation provides a fitting epilogue to a brilliant, complex and vagrant film, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion. Can a police chief -or any official with direct power -commit any atrocity that piques his fancy and get away with it? Italian Director Elio Petri (The Tenth Victim, A Quiet Place in the Country) raises a disturbing question that seems to defy satisfactory answer...
...next sequence, though rather narrative and naturalistic, continues to mingle objects and images in such a way that every object demands to be read as if it were a statement. Elio Petri, the director, staged this scene in a studio furnished in modish plastic furniture and embellished with useless toys, so that the sequence builds very cleverly on the aesthetic presumptions of pop art: each object, even pieces of furniture, is a statement the way a painting is a statement: it has been designed and it signifies. Vanessa Redgrave, not quite fresh from her role as one of the objects...
...Elio Petri's A Quiet Place in the Country is a fine, unsettling ghost movie. But the spooks in this story are made of neuroses, not ectoplasm, and they haunt the mind, not the attic. Petri is crafty enough not to explain his spirits away, but clever enough at the same time to provide a rational explanation of all the freaky goings...
...film her new ghost-chiller A Quiet Place in the Country, was far from quiet. In fact, there seemed to be more shades underfoot than on the windows, which mysteriously slammed shut while chairs rattled unaided across floors, drawers floated out of place, and cameras smashed inexplicably. Director Elio Petri swore he bumped into-or through-a long-deceased ancestor of the villa's owner on the staircase one night. All those unnerving incidents soon had the stagehands muttering, and production lagged five days behind schedule until Vanessa and Co-Star Franco Nero, her constant companion since they made...