We Still Kill the Old Way

It’s a paranoid murder thriller without shoot-outs or car chases. The ‘we’ administer an entirely corrupt system of law and justice that has held for hundreds of years. And heaven help those that rock the boat. Gian Maria Volontè’s academic seeks the truth about his two slain friends, but is distracted by his attraction to the new widow, Irene Papas. Elio Petri’s unnerving movie plays out beneath the bright Sicilian sun. Co-starring Gabriele Ferzetti; the extras have a wealth of in-depth interviews.

We Still Kill the Old Way
Region B Blu-ray
Radiance Films
1967 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 99 min. / Street Date September 9, 2024 / A ciascuno il suo / Available from Radiance Films / £19.95
Starring: Gian Maria Volontè, Irene Papas, Gabriele Ferzetti, Laura Nucci, Mario Scaccia, Luigi Pistilli, Leopoldo Trieste, Giovanni Pallavicino, Tanina Zappalà, Luciana Scalise, Orio Cannarozzo, Anna Rivero, Salvo Randone.
Cinematography: Luigi Kuveiller
Production Designer: Sergio Canevari
Costume Design: Luciana Marinucci
Film Editor: Ruggero Mastroianni
Music: Luis Enrique Bacalov
Screenplay by Ugo Pirro, Elio Petri from the novel by Leonardo Sciascia
Produced by Giuseppe Zaccariello
Directed by Elio Petri

Our ongoing education in Italian movie entertainment proceeds apace!  The fine writer-director Elio Petri consistently examined Italian society in the 1960s, more than once succeeding with deglamorized looks at the Mafia. He wasn’t happy with his highly successful 1965 Sci-fi satire  The 10th Victim, which brought back Marcello Mastroianni from his first feature  The Assassin, a twisted study of a man accused of murder. Horror fans also value Petri’s harrowing horror picture about artistic alienation,  A Quiet Place in the Country.

Petri’s masterpiece  Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion would follow in 1970, and politics became even more central to his  The Working Class Goes to Heaven and  Property Is No Longer a Theft. The thriller Todo Modo (1978) merged with the political chaos it chose to satirize — it lampooned the leader of Italy’s dominant Christian Democratic Party … two years before the Party’s real leader, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped and murdered by Red Brigade terrorists.

Petri’s go-to actor was the committed Gian Maria Volontè,  ↗  who often starred in leftist films for others —  Sacco and Vanzetti,  Christ Stopped at Eboli. The first Petri-Volontè collaboration was 1967’s  We Still Kill the Old Way, from a novel by Leonardo Sciascia, one of Italy’s most celebrated literary figures. The book’s title A ciascuno il suo derives from a scrap newspaper clipping, and means  ‘To each his own.’  The English language title comes from another line of dialogue. Besides being a better fit commercially, it may have been chosen to avoid confusion with a well-known  Olivia de Havilland film from the 1940s.

Ugo Pirro is a key player here as well, as the writer of most of Petri’s political thrillers. Two of his pictures won Best Foreign Film at the Oscars.

In seaside Cefalù, an hour from Palermo, a small group of professionals breakfast together in a plaza behind the pharmacy of Dr. Antonio Roscio (Franco Tranchina), who likes to go hunting with Arturo Manno (Luigi Pistilli). When a brutal double murder occurs, most of the group take the news in stride — one of the victims was a serious womanizer, so it is assumed that a cuckoldrd husband is responsible. University professor Paolo Laurana (Gian Maria Volontè) isn’t satisfied when the police arrest two farmers. One of the victims was receiving frequent death threats, assembled from words cut from a newspaper … and the two suspects are nearly illiterate.

Paolo won’t drop the subject, and investigates on his own. He finds that the civic and church authorities would prefer to let the case drop. Paolo asks his good friend, a government deputy in Palermo (Leopoldo Trieste of  Don’t Look Now)  ↑  to investigate, but the deputy doesn’t want to get involved in such ‘sordid’ business. He’s a communist, so who will listen to him? Paolo’s breakfast colleague, the attorney Rosello (Gabriele Ferzetti of  Once Upon a Time in the West) sees Paolo’s concern, and offers to defend the two farmers, who he claims can be easily exonerated. Paolo can’t figure out some of the shady characters with whom Rosello associates, like a mustachio’d man (Giovanni Pallavicino) he notices hanging around more.

Paolo might not be so persistent, were he not falling in love with a woman widowed by the murders. In her mourning blacks, Luisa Roscio (Irene Papas) asks what progress Paolo has made, and gives mixed signals about their possible relationship. Avvocato Rosello at first encourages Paolo, and then warns him off: Rosello and Luisa were once an item, before their romance was broken up because they were first cousins.

Surrounded by indifference and confused by his attraction to Luisa, Paolo doesn’t stop snooping, even after receiving his own death threat letter with words clipped from a newspaper.

Paranoid thrillers are so common now that audiences may miss the best qualities of We Still Kill the Old Way, which was made when Italian pictures about the Mafia were either exaggerated comedies or glamorous romantices. Author Leonardo Sciascia’s book took place on the Italian peninsula. The presumption is that extra-legal power structures have quiet control of everything, and that individuals that butt up against the status quo are asking for trouble. Sciascia demonstrates that the real power in Sicily resides with a quiet system of agreements that have been in place for hundreds of years. The book assumed that the whole system was corrupt. The dominant political party and the Church colluded with The Mafia, forming a unified front. Nobody showed their cards, or allowed disruptive issues to be examined in courtrooms, official inquiries, or the press.

Everything plays out in a relaxed, fairly informal environment. Rosello introduces Paolo to a number of prosperous local businessmen (?), all of whom are outwardly friendly. One even tells Paolo  ‘our politics are different but we can be good neighbors.’  None act suspicious, although Rosello does hesitate to identify the man with the mustache. The only outwardly hostile gestures come from various drivers and operatives that flash angry ‘devil horn’ hand gestures. We know where this is going, but Paolo continues on his little quest. We become anxious every time he is offered a car ride.

We Still Kill the Old Way is a prestige item, not a genre thriller with specific commercial expectations. Elio Petri called it an ‘anti-thriller.’ The acting is impeccable. Gian Maria Volontè delivers a nuanced, specific performance, making Paolo a highly intelligent and thoughtful, yet blind to what everyone else sees from the start.

Sophisticated corruption doesn’t reveal itself with a ‘tell,’ like a bad poker player. We know actor Gabriele Ferzetti mainly as a cultured crook ( On Her Majesty’s Secret Service). Hearing him speak with his own voice gives him a manner that’s more ambiguous. The system may be corrupt, but Attorney Rosello is natural at all times, giving little away. Rosello is perfectly at ease with himself, and his confident air is much more than a façade.

Irene Papas is excellent as the properly guarded and outwardly formal Luisa, whose neutral, unreadable beauty Paulo interprets as interest. She makes a few moves that the susceptable professor takes as encouragement. For him the encounter is love at first sight … or is he just fooling himself?  The murk of ‘unknowability’ in relationships is bad enough normally, but Paolo’s judgment is further clouded by his interest in Luisa.

←  An actor that casual Italo movie fans might recognize is Luigi Pistilli, a familar face from a pair of Sergio Leone films. He’s a henchman in  For a Few Dollars More and cornered a plum role in  The Good, The Bad and The Ugly as the brother of Eli Wallach’s brother, a priest. Given featured billing is Salvo Randone as the elderly father of one of the murder victims.

The crime thrillers of Elio Petri and director Francesco Rosi generally don’t end with anything solved … the implication being that the mess of politics and crime in Italy puts every outcome in doubt and renders the truth unknowable. Meddling investigators, reporters and politicians don’t get very far. Rosi’s  Cadaveri eccelenti presents The Mafia as an impenetrable fortress, capable of suppressing the truth about all kinds of crimes. It was shocking in 1975, before mainstream American thrillers decided that outlandish conspiracies had to be part of every non-comedy TV entertaiment. The special quality of We Still Kill the Old Way is that its ‘conspiracy’ is that it is woven into the fabric of everyday life, that it’s invisible. An individual is either connected to power or is not, and one must accept reality as it is defined by the ‘responsible’ people that do have the power.

Elio Petri’s movie may be an ‘anti-thriller,’ but we can still relate to its story and characters. It is more accessible and more involving than some intriguing art thrillers by notable talents like  Marco Ferreri and  Liliana Cavani.

Radiance Films’ Region B Blu-ray of We Still Kill the Old Way is a very handsome, well-appointed release. The disc encoding is billed as a ‘2K restoration of the film by Movietime in association with Museo Nazionale del Cinema Torino.’  It looks very good. The aerial scene behind the credits is a slightly more grainy optical, but the rest of the film is razor sharp with excellent color.

The main encoding is the Italian version and carries the original title A ciascuno il suo, but a menu choice allows one to view the show in English with an alternate title sequence. Yes, Gabriele Ferzetti in English sounds more like his ‘Draco’ and ‘Morton.’  This is a UK Radiance release, making it an import restricted to Region B. Our plain-wrap screener came with no insert booklet.

The audio is crystal clear. Luis Enrique Bacalov’s active music is a little repetive, and not tightly scored to the action on screen. The romantic main theme alternates with a suspense cue and a Latin rhythm piece. The music serves well enough, even if it is not as strong as some of the better Ennio Morricone soundtrack scores.

Because we received only a check disc we can’t report on the essays in the insert booklet, but the video featurettes are up to Radiance’s fine standard. We’re given one older half-hour interview documentary, and several new video interviews that are almost as long.

The extras begin with a fine video essay by Roberto Curti, a critic who knows his subject well, and tells the story behind the film’s production in great detail. We learn that Elio Petri was very unhappy on The 10th Victim because the producer Carlo Ponti held control during filming; on We Still Kill Petri had a new producer who let him make the movie as he pleased. The ‘anti-thriller’ aspect is well explained: We Still Kill is not a satire, yet its infeffective amateur investigator seems to be the one person in Sicily who doesn’t know what’s going on.

The film received the Italian equivalent of an ‘adults only’ recommendation, but we are told that its original poster was pulled, rejected as too suggestive.  ↗  As the poster is not that scandalous, it is suggested that the ban was interference motivated by politics.

An older interview piece begins with some film clips of Leonardo Sciascia, and then interviews writer Ugo Pirro and Elio Petri’s widow. Pirro describes the filming as very pleasant; Gian Maria Volonté surprised Petri by showing up early on location and hanging out for a few days to hear how the locals talked.

Another viewpoint on director Petri comes from his grandson Fabrizio Catalano, and makeup man Pier Antonio Mecacci relates his personal story and some of the personalities involved in the making of the movie.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

We Still Kill the Old Way
Region B Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Interview featurettes:
With writer Ugo Pirro, composer Luis Bacalov and Paola Petri (32 mins)
With make-up artist Pier Antonio Mecacci (2021, 29 mins)
With Roberto Curti, author of Elio Petri: Investigation of a Filmmaker (2021, 23 mins)
With Fabrizio Catalano, grandson of Leonardo Sciascia (2021, 31 mins)
Trailer
Booklet with an essay by David Melville and a statement by director Petri.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: August 24, 2024
(7185kill)