User Reviews

I really miss those years when I was a teenager (mid 70s - mid 80s) and Canada's French-speaking TV networks, both public and private, were running dozens of Italian movies every week.

Thank God, this time a VHS of the French-dubbed version was released and I am glad to have it here, even though it is in a rather sorry state, as one more piece in my beloved Cinecittà Forever! collection.

Il delitto Matteotti is not at all a masterpiece. Nor can you classify director Florestano Vancini among the better-known "great directors" such as Francesco Rosi, Gillo Pontecorvo and Elio Petri who, in the early 60s, initiated Italy's rich tradition of the political/historical drama/thriller. Vancini, like Damiano Damiani, Giuliano Montaldo or Francesco Maselli, mostly followed in those prestigious steps in the early seventies, as the genre was reaching the peak of its popularity in Italy and abroad. (Yet there was at least one masterpiece directed by Vancini : don't miss his first movie, La Lunga notte del '43, directed in 1960 !)

Quality is everywhere in this movie : in the fine acting, in the dramatic orchestral music by Egisto Macchi (which sounds like trying to outscore Ennio Morricone on his own turf !) and of course in the highly competent historic reconstitution, something that in my view Cinecittà was always better at than Hollywood, at least prior to the 80s crisis. But the first and most important quality of Il delitto Matteotti is, of course, to be an account of the Matteotti affair. So far there has been no other movie about this crucial historic moment, apart from a short documentary/archive film directed by Nelo Risi in 1956.

In 1924, socialist member of Parliament Giacomo Matteotti was kidnapped and later murdered by the Black Shirts after a no-nonsense, straightforward speech at the Chamber in which he called the new government's bluff and the systematic use of terror, violence and treachery during the electoral process. At this point though, fascism had not completed the transformation of the Italian State into a totalitarian Leviathan. Justice, for one, was still operating outside of fascist control and despite many difficulties and attempted intimidation, the investigation of the murder, led by judge Mauro Del Giudice, came circle by circle dangerously close to Benito Mussolini's immediate entourage. Mussolini's own press attaché, Cesare Rossi, was eventually heard by the judge who managed to get a full confession of Rossi's participation in the kidnapping and murder of Matteotti. But King Vittorio-Emanuele III, disregarding the insistence of liberal-to-conservative politicians such as Giovanni Amendola (later murdered), count Carlo Sforza and the Association of War Veterans, refused even to READ the famous Rossi memorandum, even if it was published in the press (which, like justice, was not yet fascistized, or at least not completely). And then, on January 3, 1925, in a sadly famous speech, Mussolini let the mask(s) fall and claimed for full responsibility - thus establishing an open dictatorship.

I couldn't help, while I was watching Il delitto Matteotti once again after all those years, to get the goose bumps during the famous Matteotti speech that opens the film. Franco Nero as Matteotti does a fine job, it is true. And in front of him at Parliament, actor Mario Adorf composes an excellent Mussolini - typically very different in private than in public appearances. But the goose bumps simply come from the facts themselves, for the speech is exactly the one delivered in 1924 by MP Matteotti, minus the "Er"s and the "Um"s. At some point the President of the Chamber, who is a fascist, says : « Mr. Matteotti should express himself more prudently ! » to which comes the famous answer : « I do not wish to speak prudently nor imprudently, but parliamentarily ! ».

There is (and if it wasn't there we would be disappointed !) a left-leaning bias in Il delitto Matteotti, as in most and maybe all Italian political thrillers of the times. Except it doesn't really get in the way. Let's say that the "bias" here is perceptible mostly in the words at the beginning of the film and in the few scenes where appears communist leader Antonio Gramsci (played by the nevertheless excellent Riccardo Cucciolla). It is even funny, the way the filmmakers apparently can't help but depict Mr. Gramsci as a kind of laïc saint, with an aura that says "I'm mister right!". But that's only for a total of, say, 5 minutes in a two-hour flick! Frankly, are we to look a gift horse in the mouth? For there is also a real, genuine effort to neutrality in the plot, also very perceptible in the fact that all anti-fascist forces are present and have their say : from Conservative MP Giovanni Amendola to Christian Democrat leader Don Luigi Sturzo to liberal-radical Piero Gobetti. Hey, they even manage to mention the small Sardinian Action Party in the dialog ! Good effort ! And most important, the whole chronology of the affair, with all its intricacies and sub-plots, is there for the spectator to see. As in many Italian political/historical thrillers of the Golden Age, facts, not ideology, get the upper hand, thanks to a solid tradition of realism at the movies. All in all, Il delitto Matteotti is a very good account of what happened during those days of anguish and wrath. At the end of the film I found myself standing in front of my TV, ashen and abashed, knowing only too well that no Superman, no Bruce Willis would stop the bad guys and that Mussolini would win. I may be born a quarter of century after his death in 1944, but gee! do I hate this guy !