Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion

The setup inverts the detective film. The man who commits the murder heads the unit investigating it. He kills his mistress and deliberately leaves evidence pointing at himself; the aim is not to be caught but to prove that he cannot be. When director Elio Petri and screenwriter Ugo Pirro screened their final cut privately for colleagues, the reaction was enthusiastic and alarmed at once; they were told they would end up in prison. That did not happen, and the film was released uncensored. But police attending the Milan premiere denounced it as an insult to the forces of law and order. It closes on a quotation from Kafka's The Trial: whatever he may seem to us, he is yet a servant of the Law; he belongs to the Law and as such is set beyond human judgement. Gian Maria Volontè leads. The score is one of Ennio Morricone's best known: short, insistent and deliberately irritating. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Who it is for: viewers who like political cinema and satire built on the immunity of power. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a realistic police film. It is not realistic but deliberately grotesque, and the protagonist's scenes of sexual violence are disturbing.