I’m really enjoying everything Elio Petri stands for as a filmmaker, and I’m excited to continue to dig through his filmography.

This is his Palme D’or winner (or Grand Prix as they called it back then) and even though is not as good as “Investigation”, it’s still a great, political and electrifying little film with a lot on its mind.

It’d have been very easy for this film to fall into the “propaganda” realm, but Petri is too smart for that. He gives his characters nuances, contradictions and problematic ideologies, even to the kind he stood behind in real life. It’s an impossible clusterfuck of a broken system, for which the film gives no real solution.

Also, Gian Maria Volontè is a god.