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Films

Murder Sicilian Style

Nevil Gibson

Italian director Elio Petri is something of a nonetity in New Zealand. His reputation seems to be based upon the science fiction thriller The Tenth Victim, which features, among other things, Ursula Andress socking it to em with bullets from the breasts. It is fairly certain that tin's film (1966) will soon be released here by NZFS. Meanwhile United Artists has acquired Petri's 1967 film We Still Kill The Old Way. which will be shown at the Princess in the near future (yon can never be quite sure what will turn up at the Princess next).

We Still Kill The Old Way is another Mafia drama though made before Martin Ritt's The Brotherhood, seen earlier this year. Both films display a different approach to the Mafia, though basically of course the Mafia.. is a bad thing. Where Old Way is superior to Brotherhood is that it doesn't have to strive for atmosphere. Its Sicilian locale, particularly the people and their faces, paint a whole society in a few frames. A deeper, more psyehological examination is more difficult, not only because of the dubbing but also because Old Way is primarily a thriller where Brotherhood was more concerned with character.

Another common bond between the two films is Irene Papas, the Greek actress who has featured in Electra and Zorba the Greek and has been wasted in minor films since then. In these Mafia films, to which she is hardly suited, she plays the willing widow or the suffering wile. At least in Old Way she emerges on top.

The outline plot of Old Way concerns a student (Gian Maria Voloute, the Mexican bandit in For a Few Dollars More) who attempts to track down those responsible for murdering his friend. As the Mafia dominates the town, indeed the whole society, he becomes caught up in a web from which there is no escape. The inevitability of his death is powerful element of suspense in the film, as we realise how deep the Mafia permeates the society. No one is free of it—like a virus disease. But how far is one warranted in painting this as a genuine examination of the Mafia's role, or is it just about the last secret society which everyone hates, thus saving us from the ridiculous descent to the Smersh substitutes? It is hard to say. But what Old Way does tell us, as do the Sicilian films of Pietro Germi, is that Sicily would be far better removed from the map and Italy improved for it. Which seems to point to some Italian hang-up about its destitute Mafia-ridden island.

Petri is most impressive in his ability to catch the pervading fear of the townspeople. There are no Mamma Mias raving on like Ugo Tognazzi and those other wretched Italians. They are a sullen, suffering lot. This patische of fear is supplemented by photography, mainly movement, which resembles the actions of a running man. The camera hardly pauses for breath and the audience is at a loss for a break in this highpowered lens swinging. The Italians seem to have made this technique one of their own since the invention of the handheld camera and the advent of Godard.

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Style is not an important consideration when it comes to filming something by Raymond Chandler, doyen of American crime writers. Taking the name of the Chandler's well known private eye Phillip Marlowe (immortalised by Humphrey Bogart) a certain Paul Bogart and others have horribly miscast James Garner, if one could ever cast him, in Marlowe (MGM). But in spite of Garner's stolid attempts to do otherwise Marlowe survives as basically tough yarn with plenty of twists. In true Hollywood fashion (the film looks like a TV pilot) it has been updated with the obligatory homosexual-lesbianism-strippertransvestite travelogue-type sub-culture which is meant to prove, I should imagine, very little, except that plenty of people can earn a living just being themselves. Gayle Hunnicutt provides one of the more pleasant sights in Marlowe, though she is a far from unblemished broad. A sadder appearance is Rita Moreno, who won an Academy Award for West Side Story and has been out of movies ever since, making her return as a stripper-cum-lesbian. Reversing the trend of many of today's films, the script is better than the performers and director Bogart moves things along at a cracking pace.

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Briefly: Watch for The Killing of Sister George at the Kings on Friday, and two good action shows coming to the St James, Madigan (Don Seigel's one before Coogan's Bluff) and the Jim Brown tribute to Siegel's Riot in Cell Block 11 simply entitled Riot and filmed in an actual jail with real live inmates (Big Jim, of course, is probably inside now as well judging by one scanty report).

La Notte: Antonioni's film returns soon to the Princess.