We Still Kill the Old Way

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.