L'istruttoria e chiusa: dimentichi
Directed by:
Damiano DamianiCinematography:
Claudio RagonaComposer:
Ennio MorriconeCast:
Franco Nero, Georges Wilson, John Steiner, Riccardo Cucciolla, Turi Ferro, Corrado Solari, Claudio Nicastro, Patrizia Adiutori, Francesco D'Adda (more)Plots(1)
Franco Nero stars as an architect thrown in jail for a misdemeanour. Inside, he sees the grim reality of life behind bars, faced with corrupt guards and a prison yard ruled by the mafia. Damiano Damiani continues his exploration of mafia stories with this gritty prison drama. Nero gives a sympathetic performance as the honest man, while support is given by noted character actors including Riccardo Cucciolla as another innocent and John Steiner as a psychotic killer. With Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and Damiani’s own Confessions of a Police Captain, this exploration of authority and corruption was as critical as the era’s finest work and ranks alongside the best Italian genre films of the 1970s. (Radiance Films)
(more)Reviews (2)
The Italians never had a problem shooting into their own ranks. During the previous regime, Italian political and crime thrillers were widely shown in cinemas and television, because they were said to hold up a mirror to the rotten capitalist establishment (which the TV presenter never failed to point out before each screening). Among them stood out the works of Damiano Damiani, whose Confessions of a Police Captain and this film in particular, full of murders, corruption, organized crime and mafia plots, is one of the best crafted. The fingers of both hands might not be enough to count the number of screenings on the then 2nd programme of Czechoslovak Television :o)
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With Franco Nero's filmography, it's like riding a roller coaster. A charismatic and talented actor of his caliber theoretically could choose, but Nero took everything that came his way, and not just at the beginning of his career. However, collaboration with Damiani is one of those projects that he can be proud of in retrospect. This prison drama about a visitor from a different social "universe" who is faced with a serious moral dilemma - to help a fellow prisoner and bring revenge upon himself by members of organized crime, or to be a coward and quickly return unscathed to the safety of an exclusive upper-middle-class position - still holds up several decades later and is better than the series of quick-paced genre films made for effect. Perhaps only the level of naivety of the architect, who has an irresistible ability to act like an elephant in a china shop in crucial moments, is somewhat higher than appropriate. That fact costs the film one star. Overall impression: 85%.
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