{"id":4721,"date":"2014-07-08T09:13:07","date_gmt":"2014-07-08T08:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=4721"},"modified":"2014-09-27T06:12:44","modified_gmt":"2014-09-27T05:12:44","slug":"the-assassin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2014\/07\/08\/the-assassin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Assassin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Assassin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> Dual Format (DVD + Blu-ray)

\nRelease date:<\/B> 21 July 2014

\nDistributor:<\/B> Arrow Academy

\nDirector:<\/B> Elio Petri

\nWriters:<\/B> Elio Petri, Tonino Guerra, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa

\nCast:<\/B> Marcello Mastroianni, Salvo Randone, Micheline Presle

\nOriginal title:<\/B> L\u2019assassino<\/i>

\nItaly 1961

\n97 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There is a small scene in Elio Petri\u2019s The Assassin<\/i> (L\u2019assassino<\/i>), which is set on a grey, miserable day in Rome. Two police officers, drenched from the rain and their shoes splattered with mud, enter a house in search of a man who has become the main suspect in a murder case. As the two men walk up the staircase, the concierge shoots out of her flat and scolds them, \u2018Hey you, where are going, you\u2019re making everything dirty\u2019. In 1961, shortly before the premiere of the film, the authorities insisted on having this particular scene removed on the grounds that it represented the police in a negative way \u2013 according to the censors, the police would never make a hallway dirty.<\/p>\n

This review is part of our KVIFF 2014 coverage<\/a>.<\/div>\n

The scene, as minor and negligible as it might seem, not only nearly led to the banning of the film but perfectly illustrates the climate in which Petri shot his impressive and still potent feature debut. Airing his resentment of the moral decay of early 1960s youth and the corruption of Italian society, the film is riddled with a refreshing irony that bears comparison to Kafka and Camus.<\/p>\n

Dazzlingly intercutting police interrogation scenes and flashbacks to the night of the crime, The Assassin<\/i> follows the investigation concerning Alfredo Martelli, a cunning thirty-something Roman antiques dealer accused of having murdered his former business partner and long-term mistress, the wealthy socialite Adalgisa de Matteis (Micheline Presle). As unscrupulous as he may be, Martelli (played by the brilliant Marcello Mastroianni) doesn\u2019t understand what is going on as he is taken to the police station, and any attempt to find out more is met with icy disdain by the officers on duty. When he eventually learns what he is suspected of, he desperately tries to prove his innocence to the equally corrupt inspector in charge (Salvo Randone). With the subtle noir<\/i> style of its plot and music, combined with Petri\u2019s assured direction, The Assassin<\/i> plays out as a smartly paced, deftly twisted cat-and-mouse tale that sees Martelli progressively losing his dandy manners as the police\u2019s unorthodox methods grind him down. <\/p>\n

Luckily, the above mentioned scene was never cut from the film because Goffredo Lombardo, one of the producers – he remembers the circumstances of the release in the documentary Elio Petri: Notes about a Filmmaker<\/i> (2005), an extra on the Criterion edition of Investigation<\/i> – told the censors that he would remove it but then released the film in its original version under the assumption that \u2018the authorities would never go to see the film in the cinema anyway.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Pamela Jahn<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elio Petri\u2019s 1961 debut feature is a cleverly structured ironic noir<\/i> tale about the corruption of Italian society.
\nReview by Pamela Jahn<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[173,794,747,745,746,832,95],"class_list":["post-4721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-check-it-out","category-dvds-and-blu-rays","tag-1960s-cinema","tag-1960s-film","tag-elio-petri","tag-italian-crime-film","tag-italian-thriller","tag-marcello-mastroianni","tag-noir"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/purUP-1e9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4250,"url":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2014\/04\/01\/the-10th-victim\/","url_meta":{"origin":4721,"position":0},"title":"The 10th Victim","author":"Pam Jahn","date":"April 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"At times it resembles a demented Bond movie where the set designers have taken control, at others it's like a futuristic offshoot of La Dolce Vita. 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