Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental

Does the name Susy Lion ring a bell? Probably not.
In 1973, Susy was part of an obscure band called "Susi and Guy", picked up by Guido & Maurizio de Angelis for a couple of songs included in their soundtrack for Milano Trema: la polizia vuole giustizia (Violent Professionals - Sergio Martino).
On the B-side of their 45 rpm, Susy sings in Italian a nice, lighthearted yet melancholic song called "And life goes on".

A memorable scene from the film opens on a lovely sunny morning, with Susy singing about her lover who has gone. The camera embraces a vast place in the center of Milan. Traffic is fluid and nice colourful cars zoom through the frame.
A taxi stops. An elegant middle-aged man gets off.
A few yards away, a woman walks up the stairs out of the tube station. She's carrying a shopping bag with fruits and vegetables. Before crossing the street, she puts her hair back in place.
Opposite the street, another woman is looking at a bakery's window while eating an ice cream.
Further down the street, a guy is sitting on a bench, reading the newspaper.

The guy who had got off the taxi now crosses the street. He knows where he's going. He is il comissario Del Buono. We know this from a previous scene in the film. And this police inspector is on a serious case, close to solve a big investigation.

As the love song goes on, we see a few kids cycling amongst the shadows of a building's pillars, in the background.
The man with the newspaper has left the bench. We follow him walking swiftly through the street.
Cut to inspector Del Buono, walking in the opposite direction. They're going to cross each other.
Kids in the background, woman with her shopping bag, the inspector's face, close up on the guy with the newspaper, close up on the newspaper hiding a gun, Del Buono's face, the guy with the paper shoots the gun as Del Buono walks to him, bang bang, woman screams and drops her shopping bag, Del Buono falls down on the pavement, a guy is running to help him, the newspaper man jumps into a car and in a second, he's gone.
Woman screaming. Guy bending over the body of inspector Del Buono. A few fruits roll out of the shopping bag before slowly coming to a stop.
Del Buono is lying on the ground. Dead.

Susy goes on singing about her lover who has gone.



This was Sergio Martino's personal take on the real murder of Inspector Luigi Calabresi in 1972, in the aftermath of the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan.
Of course it's not meant to be historically exact, but it is an obvious example of the fact that "Violent Professionals", like most polizieschi, was built on the particular context of the Italian "anni di piombo" ("years of lead"). Another example is the key role of a publisher (played by Richard Conte) in subversive activities in the film: a striking connection with the real publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli who participated in radical left-wing activism in those days.
Although often simplistic, Poliziesco was definitely a political cinema genre.

Anni di piombo

"Romanzo Criminale" - 2005

"Le anni di piombo" ("the years of lead").
This decade during which, between december 12, 1969 and August the 2nd, 1980, Italy saw its foundations crumble under left and right-wing terrorism in what is referred to by historians as "a low intensity civil war".

Strange coincidence, 30 years after, three Italian films released this year are looking back at this troubled period of their country: Michele Placido's 'Romanzo Criminale' (based on judge Giancarlo de Cataldo's eponymous novel), Nanni Moretti's 'Il Caimano' and Michele Soavi's 'Arrivederci amore, ciao' - the latter being well know from giallo fans for his 'Dellamorte dellamore' (1994).

Romanzo Criminale is probably the most spot on as it directly addresses the political events of the 1970s, building on the true story of a Rome gang which took advantage of the political mess to rise and conquer the city. Their path often crosses history, highlighting the ambiguous relationship between criminality, politics and terrorism during these years, until the Bologna railway station massacre in 1980.
Historically accurate, with a good cast and an efficient soundtrack, Romanzo Criminale is a must-see for anyone interested in understanding better what Italy was like in those days (not to mention the "poliziesco" style of the film).

As if it was a follow up to this first film, Arrivederci mi amore, ciao is the tale of a former political activist coming back to Italy nowadays, after years spent hiding in Latin America. Also adapted from a book by Massimo Carlotto, it depicts a pretty dark reality, showing how a man initially in search of starting a normal life is finally falling back into the dark side.

Finally, Il Caimano. Beyond the political statement about Berlusconi, this is a beautiful film about Italian genre cinema and its decline (when private TV rose in Italy, during the 80s).
It's also an emotional story of a family broken up by a divorce, as the main character, a has-been film director who used to be successful with B-movies during the 70s, progressively realises that his wife is walking away from him and his fantasies.
In order not to sink, he throws himself into a seemingly impossible project: making a movie denunciating the unclear origins of Berlusconi's overwhelming political and economical power. Somehow, an allegory about how cinema can still be a subversive power, and how genre cinema used to fulfill this role thirty years ago.

Overall, Moretti doesn't sign a movie directly about the anni di piombo, but certainly raises questions about the new powers which rose after the 70s and their consequences on the current Italian political structure - On a lighter note, but not to be missed, is the hilarious tribute to genre cinema in a memorable scene where an evil food critic is being murdered in a restaurant he had criticised.

Three films, three angles to reach a similar conclusion: not only have the mysteries of 1970s Italy not been completely elucidated, but they still have a strong influence on today's Italian society.


It seems that these films are not that easy to get to watch beyond Italy and France - apart from "Il Caimano", which was presented in Cannes this year. A shame as they're very insightful for anyone interested in the strong connections between Italian genre cinema and the history of the country in the 1970s.

What is the police doing?

Police inspectors at work in Strip Nude for Your Killer.

Institutions falling apart - an underlying topic of Italian genre cinema, especially in Giallo and Poliziesco.

In Giallo, the police is either non-existent, like in Martino/Gastaldi's movies (The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, Case of the Scorpion Tail, Your vice is a locked room...), or ridiculously incompetent, like in the caricatural Strip Nude for Your Killer (A. Bianchi - 1975), or even evil and corrupted, like in Aldo Lado's Short Night of the Glass Dolls (1971).
In the best case scenario, it is so inefficient that it needs an outsider's help to do most of the job (like in Dario Argento's animal trilogy).

The figure of the stranger who happens to take the biggest part in the plot's resolution - the "hero by accident", which is already present in the very first giallo La Ragazza che sapeva troppo by Mario Bava - is so recurring that it's like an acknowledgement of a society which has completely lost faith in itself:
Good things can only come from outside of a deeply corrupted community.


More from this blog on Giallo's questioning of Italian institutions here.

1978

A poster from the PCI (Italian Communist Party)
about Aldo Moro's kidnapping - Rome, 1978

A red Renault 4 parked via Caetani, Roma. 9th of May, 1978.
Inside the car's trunk, the lifeless body of Aldo Moro, President of Democrazia Cristiana (DC, the biggest Italian political party at the time).
Moro, kidnapped and murdered by the "Brigate Rosse" (The Red Brigades), a left-wing terrorist group which was very active in Italy's 1970s.

During the three months of his detention (from March the 16th to his death on May the 9th), Aldo Moro wrote dozens of letters, to fellow politicians or adversaries, to his friends and family, even the Pope. Writing to keep hope, writing to maintain the dialogue, writing to remain alive. Writing to open doors and break walls, he who was locked in a Roman flat's small room for weeks.

Writing to keep on doing politics in a paralyzed political sphere.

Through his letters, it's an amazing personality which shapes up before our very eyes: as death is getting closer everyday, he never surrenders, trying all possible means to stop the irreversible, demonstrating immense humanity, empathetic for the ones he loves, convincing with the politicians, confident yet scared; all his energy is focussed on getting the different parties involved to start a dialogue, to get to a compromise that would both save his life and demonstrate what the word "politics" really means.

In vain. The Red Brigades' blind ideology and the inflexible position adopted by the democratic parties, refusing to negotiate whatsoever, had already sentenced him to death from the start.
As much as the Red Brigades, it's Italy's complete political and social sclerosis which killed Aldo Moro in 1978.


Learn more about Aldo Moro here. His correspondence while in detention was recently published in France in an excellent book, that you can find there.

Aldo Moro's tragic fate gives even more strength to Aldo Lado's political allegory in his great giallo "Short Night of the Glass Dolls", where a man locked in a lifeless body ends up being buried alive. Read more from this blog here.

A serious problem of faith

The 1970s will remain a dark decade for Italy. Shaken by scandals, corruption and terrorism, the country went through a deep and long-lasting crisis. The Italian society's fundamental pillars themselves were questioned and sometimes rejected.

Beyond the aesthetisation, beyond the twisted plots and the originality of the genre, the major earthquake of the Italian society's crisis is clearly showing through in Giallo.
On this particular subject, again there are strong links between two gialli I talked about previously: Who saw her die? (Aldo Lado - 1972) and The Bloodstained Shadow (Antonio Bido - 1978).

The first one was opening the decade by casting a dark light on Religion - an essential and untouchable element of Italian society -, through the terrifying example of a schizophrenic queer priest.
The second one was closing the 70s going even further in skepticism and nihilism, by frontally attacking both Religion and the ultimate Italian institution: La Famiglia (Family).
Both films share a similar disturbing ending symbolically picturing the inevitable fall of these institutions to their death.

By the time it reached the 80s, it looks like Italy had completely lost faith in itself.

More from this blog on these two films here, here and there, and a reflection about Italy's fall at the end of the 60s through the analysis of "Il Sorpasso" (The Easy Life, 1962 - Dino Risi).

Buried alive

"La corta notte delle bambole di vetro" can be considered as the first political giallo.

Most reviews stress the fact that it's a vibrant allegory about repression in communist dictatorships. It is probably true considering the very obvious (almost "in-your-face") symbols Aldo Lado is using:
it is set in Prague (just after the "Prague Spring" in 1968) and tells the story of how Gregory Moore, an American journalist, and his girlfriend called Mira Svoboda - which means "freedom" in Russian -, are becoming preys of a secret society.

But in the Anchor Bay DVD, there's an interview of Lado where he says the idea actually came out of the Italian news: a judge who was getting close to unveil political scandals was suddenly transferred to some remote town in the south of Italy in order not to cause any trouble.

When you become a threat to the power in place, you are literally buried alive.
This idea just reveals the extreme tensions existing in Italian society and politics in the early 70s.

More about "Short night of the glass dolls" from this blog here, and a good article about it from braineater.com there.