Property Is No Longer a Theft

A bank clerk called Total is allergic to money: it raises a rash when it touches his hands. He quits his job and makes a decision. He will live by stealing, but he will not steal money. The man he picks is the bank's most respected client, the Butcher. Total takes his knife, then his hat, then his mistress. The aim is not to get rich but to destroy the man by stripping him of what he owns. The film does not build a realistic story. Characters turn to the camera and speak, scenes are staged like theatre, and the whole question of property is addressed straight to the audience. Petri's object is an argument, not a plot. Elio Petri directed. Ugo Tognazzi plays the Butcher and Flavio Bucci plays Total. It is counted as the last part of Petri's trilogy of neurosis: after Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion on the neurosis of power and The Working Class Goes to Heaven on the neurosis of work, the subject here is the neurosis of money and the destruction of being for the sake of having. Who it is for: anyone who likes seventies Italian political cinema and Brechtian storytelling. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism. The film is artificial by design, the playing is broad, and the argument sometimes stands in for the characters.