The Case is Closed, Forget It: Another Damiani downer

The Case is Closed, Forget It aka L´istruttoria e chiusa: dimentichi (1971), Dir. Damiano Damiani, 106 mins, Blu-Ray

Right, back to that (pause for breath) Cosa Nostra: Franco Nero in Three Mafia Tales By Damiano Damiani boxset from Radiance, and its second film, the 1971 prison drama The Case is Closed, Forget It. Having now watched this and The Day of the Owl a few nights ago, its already now clear what kind of film-maker Damiani was- a very accomplished director with a very Western leaning in his approach, with an intense social conscience and interest in the Everyman. Someone quite willing to end his films with a cautionary, even defeatist approach- as I noted before, sometimes the bad guys win.

Franco Nero stars as Vanzi , a wealthy architect who is thrown in jail for a misdemeanour traffic violation to which he protests his innocence, while awaiting his case to be seen by a judge. His social standing and life of privilege is stripped away as he faces the grim reality of life behind bars. In many ways there is little unusual about the film, we see the usual prison drama tropes – incarceration in solitary, prison riot breaking out –  with the plight of the inmates, disenfranchised, some mentally challenged, but here the mafia openly controls corrupt prison officials. Again, there’s that theme of corrupt authority seen in The Day of the Owl.  Realising how things ‘work’ in prison,  Vanzi learns how he can use some of his money from ‘outside’ to ease his life while behind bars, such as the corrupt doctor who provides a hooker from the adjacent women’s wing to entertain Vanzi, and access to better food, but Vanzi soon runs foul of the wrong people who really run the prison and such privilege’s are stripped away, his life as a prisoner taking a distinct turn for the worse.

What pushes this film to a higher level is the climax- there is a moment of violence, a murder that has been built up to, that is truly horrifying,  a slow-motion murder that feels like a gut-punch. Its a really gruesome event that is very powerful. Even on top of that, and perhaps even more troubling, is the following coda in which Vanzi ‘sells out’, becomes a part of the injustice and corruption. As Franco Nero points out in an on-disc interview, Vanzi is a coward. He takes the easy way out, that costs him nothing (apart from maybe his soul). Yes, its another Damiani downer.  At least in The Day of The Owl, our handsome hero had a moral backbone and stood up for what he believed in. One wonders if Vanzi really believes in anything, other than his life of luxury outside. Perhaps Damiani is voicing some opinion of the upper-class elite- its noticeable that Vanzi’s wife is quite fine with the revelation that he slept with a prostitute, actually opining that perhaps she should thank her.

This Radiance boxset is turning out to be a very strong one- it just goes to show that a set of films one has never heard of, by a director unknown, can be very worthwhile. Maybe not essential, but it’s clear that there are some excellent films out there that we should have better access to or knowledge of and I count these among them. I watched the film in its original Italian, but there is an English option which I may try next time around. There is another frank (sic) and open interview with Nero, this time focusing on this film, alongside an archival documentary featurette about the making of the film, and a visual essay on the career of Damiani Damiani by critic Rachael Nisbet. Picture quality for the film itself is excellent and the subtitles very clear- another solid release by Radiance that serves this film very well.  As usual I haven’t dug into the book yet as I tend to wait until I’ve seen all the films in order to avoid spoilers.

I just fear that I need cheering up a little with something a little rosier and lightweight before tackling the last film in this boxset…

The Day of the Owl: Sometimes the bad guys win

The Day of the Owl aka Il Giorno Della Civetta/ Mafia (1968), Dir. Damiano Damiani, 109/103 mins, Blu-Ray

Here we go again- yes, another Radiance title, this time The Day of the Owl, from Radiance’s three-film boxset Cosa Nostra: Franco Nero In Three Mafia Tales By Damiano Damiani- bit of a mouthful of a title that. Its a set I’d had my eyes on for awhile but finally bit the bullet when it was reduced in price and declared 95% sold out (at time of writing this, its still available). It does seem clear that I’m branching out into world cinema a lot more this year, and Radiance single-handedly undoing my intent on reining in my disc buying. As usual with Radiance, its a very solid set- I hadn’t seen any of these three films before, but the extras are plentiful, and the box includes a 120-page book, so its certainly good value for money at the reduced price I bought it… well, if the films are enjoyable, anyway. Blind buys can be tricky, sometimes (can’t say I was really enthused by a spaghetti western Sartana boxset from Arrow that I bought early last year- I have yet to finish watching all the films in it)

It would appear though that Italian crime films were of a higher calibre (sic) than the Spaghetti western genre films. I certainly enjoyed Sergio Solima’s Revolver and Lenzi’s The Tough Ones last year. Well, it looks like this set is a winner, at least on the evidence of this first film- The Day of the Owl is absolutely brilliant. Franco Nero stars as Carabinieri  captain Bellodi, an honest cop in a distinctly corrupt Sicilian town whose attempts to bring Mafia boss Don Mariano (Lee J.Cobb) to justice are repeatedly thwarted by an at best indifferent, at worse outright criminal, populace and a political system that seems rotten to the core (indeed, in some ways I suppose this film could almost be considered neo-noir, it is so nihilistic).

This is an extremely well-crafted film. Shot on location in a provincial town baking under the hot Italian sun, it feels authentic, there’s absolutely a sense of a grittily real place. It is tense, with a twisting script offering a few surprises and very well acted with an excellent cast (screen icon Claudia Cardinale has a meaty role to get into, rather than just serve as eye-candy).  This is one of those films which is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much faultless. The sense of time and place, the idyllic beauty of the Italian town masking intrinsic corruption, is perfectly realised, peppered with interesting, and convincing characters on both sides of the law- indeed very often the cast look and sound like real people, not actors at all.

Its interesting that this film predates by Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather (published in 1969) and Francis Ford Coppola’s film of 1972, because it reminded me so much of Coppola’s film. Cobb is terrific as the Mafia Don, and physically his presence and intensity  isn’t too far from that of Brando, and the film’s music score by Giovanni Fusco is so close to the score of Coppola’s film…. well, lets just say if it was the other way around, and this film had followed Coppola’s film,  I would have likely considered it an obvious knock-off. Surely Coppola had watched this film before making his own Mafia opus?

I watched the (slightly longer) Italian cut of the film- the Radiance disc includes an English-language version which I sampled afterwards, which noticeably benefits from Cobbs own voice completing his performance (he’s dubbed by someone else in the Italian cut). I think I’ll watch this English version next time if only to get a fuller representation of Cobb’s performance- Cobb was such a great actor and he’s very good in this anyway, even dubbed by someone else, which shows what a physical presence he had. There are some very good video featurettes on the disc- including a frank and entertaining interview with Franco Nero that was done for this release, as well as an archive one, an archive interview with Claudia Cardinale from 2011 that has moments of surprise (albeit I’m not at all sure she’s being entirely honest sometimes) and a video essay about Italian crime cinema by Mike Molloy. There’s also a thirty-minute video essay about Lee J Cobb that I haven’t watched yet, and of course the book’s essays on the film that I haven’t read yet so as to avoid spoilers, so yes, its a brilliant package for a great film. As usual regards Radiance, I think it could have done with a commentary track, and if I were being really greedy, I’d have loved to have seen one of those ‘then and now’ featurettes where someone goes to the locations that the film was shot in and compares areas to how they look now-  the town was such a character in the film, I would have found something like that fascinating, I’m sure.