Beretta 70: The police stop, the law juzga/Il big racket, the poliziottesco as Enzo G. Castellari. Action, politics and sensationalist journalism, the ages of the genre

I return to the poliziottesco chemically purely across one of his more emperrados cultivators, this stonecutter of the camerawoman that was Enzo G. Castellari pillar of an industry (it bore even the most third-world years of the dirt post-apocalítica) supported by the hormigueante activity of the popular movies of the age of the joint productions. A hyperproductive, shameless substratum, intermitentemente brilliant and immodestly money-grubbing that allowed, not only the existence of an unforgettable epoch for the genre but the possibility of the splendor autoral during more than two decades in general Europe and in the Italy of the “economic miracle” in particular. So a memory and a gratitude for the services given across this double meeting that rescues two works of his in the territories of the police action (along with the spaghetti-western - that one abstract, symbolic and medievalizante frenzy that was Keoma in 1976, for example - the place where it left his the best effort) with The police stops the law judges and big Il racket, movies that represent the shining splendor and degradation of the transalpine police movies, from the frantic denunciation to the action donkey in only three years. And it is that encore” an intensive time lives through the “movie theater.

149 minutes of interview to Enzo. Castellari in the program of radio Sunset Boulevard in Artegalia

The police stop, the law judges (The polizia accuses the legge assolve)

Year: 1973

Country: Italy

100 min.

It photographs: Alejandro Ulloa

Music: Guido and Maurizio De Angelis

Script: Enzo G. Castellari, Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino and Leonardo Martín

I distribute: Franco Nero, James Whitmore, Delia Boccardo, Fernando Rey, Duilio Del Prete, Silvano Tranquilli, Ely Galleani The police detains, the law judges still it is near to the subject-matter and the spirit of the spaghetti-denunciation that Damiano Damiani was inaugurating with Confessions of a commissioner in 1971, a political movies that was using the popular force of the genre, his codes and his esthetic rudeness. Castellari contributes then one of the seminal qualifications of the current, personalized with his frantic habitual style, replete with camera in hand and assembly to blows with an axe.

The history perspires an undeniable realism born of the capacity (quite it demagogic that loves) to translate in images and drives the pathos of the Italian society of the epoch. That is to say that the authenticity of this movie does not meet only in his urgent cinematic form in the sensational use of the Genoese, perfect geography his complicated paved streets ready for the frantic pursuits and the round action to the rhythm of Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, but in this primary dramatic, so schematic heart, amarillista and tremendista as it seems, the everlasting history of the complete man faced top forces, dark governmental powers that prevent from coming to the truth. Role that relapses on a Franco Nero turned already into inseparable presence of the sub-genre, always sufridora but inflexible double embodiment, on the one hand the average citizen faced the axes of the corrupt "System", for other this figure of “commissioner I gave it ironed” like last safe-conduct, an archetype that Maurizio Merli would take up to his grotesque entire reduction and that here is humanized by his devotion towards his daughter.

Beyond this capacity, with complete certainty unpremeditated or born of a will purely economic of aprovecahmiento of a sociological phenomenon that it had to the violence and to the fear in his epicenter, the history is complicated and more confused than dense, to what it is necessary to add that the political criticism never overcomes the thick line. But this way the bases of the poliziottesco setentero have just sat down. A few characteristics to which it is necessary to add the character (or to remain because it does not stop being a problem) derivative of the whole invention, a cheeky exploit (of course, re-turned quickly into a typically Italian product by means of insuflar a non-transferable screaming personality and a charismatic horterez) of The French Connection of William Friedkin (why of the pursuits, in this one and in others, also it is there) that even appeals Fernando Rey so that again he dresses himself of elegant and sibylline criminal, in this case a veteran I geld the one that the young generations try to withdraw and that will help interesadamente the commissioner protagonist.

In any case a movie to be born in mind, so much if the same (it is entertained and shining, it never loses the rhythm and gives everything who promises) as for being this reflex in dirty of the Italian reality from the perspective of a knowing popular movies of that “the message” (although it is ambiguous and slippery) strains better with fireworks, careers, shots and nudes.

Castellari directing big secondary James Withmore during the shooting of The police detains, the law judges

Big Il racket (Outlaws 77)

Year: 1976

Country: Italy

104 min.

It photographs: Marcello Masciocchi

Music: Guido and Maurizio De Angelis

Script: Enzo G. Castellari, Massimo De Rita y Arduino Maiuri

I distribute: Fabio Testi, Vincent Gardenia, Renzo Palmer, Orso Maria Guerrini, Glaucous Onorato, Marcella Michelangeli, Romano Puppo

Big Il racket or Outlaws 77, is an already very different thing. At this point the political component was so diluted and one had turned in so extremely demagogic that it looks like already a caricature. The social intentions have happened to be one more coloristic layer (that in case earlier they it were not also, although not in such a clumsy way), ideology slides for suspicious slopes and what stays in this copy of the “second age of the eurocrime” is a disfrutable ration of action without complications.

Certainly Castellari was never a thin stylist but he always managed them to leave unforgettable moments in his taste for the impossible framings (included his fixation in spite of fitting across circles: tubes, holes, …) and the esthetics between stylish and brutota that here is a fantastic sample in the pompous scene in which, the car of Fabio Testi, with Fabio Testi inside, is thrown by a terrace turning. All this filmed from within, with camera and actor subject to the seats and reproduced to “super-slow motion“ with an effect alucinatorio of pendent time and floating glazing (is not going to believe Guy Ritchie or Zack Snyder who have invented anything).

The history does not give for very much and this archivist (inflexible police officer and of slightly orthodox methods, if Harry the dirty one is another key movie in the sub-genre as it is not difficult to foresee, faced to a savage gang whose advances are constantly obstructed from "above"), but the director in a curious feature that looks like a responsibility, he manages them to derive it towards one of his favorite areas: the heterogeneous group assembled by the force of the circumstance and forced to collaborate. Favorite topic of Castellari treated with many fortune in qualifications as the marvelous eurowestern Kill them and turn (1969) led by Chuck “The man of the rifle” Connors or now very famously That damned armored train of 77 (whose kinship with the Damned Bastards tarantinianos does not go beyond the wink to his title anglo and a pair of cochairs here or there, however much many unoccupied juntaletras has been in charge of proclaiming it to voices like a literal remake and not like an inspiration / wink / homage), one of scarcely qualifications salvables (of shameless and bad-tempered cigar) of between the little fish of the Nazi - western (or spaghetti-war, as it is preferred).

This way the final third supposes a long climax of primary action where the hero recruits to a mixed number of harmed (a veteran pickpocket whom the excellent secondary North American Vincent Gardenia interprets, a mafiosote fallen from grace and forced to take a metallic corset, a professional killer now between grills, the father of a violated and murdered young woman turned into a psychopath and an Olympian shooter whose woman was humiliated and burned because he helped the police during an affray). A particularly brutal scene that certifies the enormous increase of the graphic violence and progressive brutalización that esclerotizó, not only to the poliziotteschi, but to the whole movie theater encore) for the villains to face them in a desperate action, taking the justice where the law does not come, in a definitive showdown full of slow camera and impacts in the first plane that does not give truce and almost influential John Woo prefigures the eternal shootings of the heroic-bloodshell hongkones become fashionable for, in times.

Certainly it is not at a height of more elaborated works as The police stop, the law judges or even the later one The route of the drug (1977), but it is a craft to complete letter, a work of professional who does not cheat anybody and gives all that he announces: action in abundance, music fardona, populism and lead for the villains. Milan trembles the police asks for justice

Milan odia:la polizia odd puo sparare

Rome to hand armata

Filed bajo:70's, action, Enzo G. Castallari, Eurocrime, Union of craftsmen, big Il racket (Outlaws 77), Italy, The police detains the law judges, Thriller Tagged: 70's, action, craftsman, murder, big racket, movie theater encore, city, commissioner say to the Italian that it ironed, crime, degardación, Enzo G. Castellari, Eurocrime, Fabio Testi, Forajo, Franco Nero, genres, gone 77, big Il racket, The police detains the law judges, pursuits, poliziottesco, blood, sex, sordidness, spaghetti-denunciation, Thriller, shots, revenge, violation, violence