Illustrious Corpses
directed by Francesco Rosi
starring Lino Ventura, Max Von Sydow, Fernando Rey
Radiance Films
Francesco Rosi’s 1976 political thriller, Illustrious Corpses, fits in nicely with a similar vein of film from the US in the early to mid-1970s that includes Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View. All of these films involve men pulling at the threads of a possible conspiracy only to discover their paranoia was justified. Like its American counterparts, Rosi’s film is a highly intelligent, meticulous film that slowly burns with a paranoia that takes over the main character and the visual and audio of the film to subtle and unnerving effect.
During an investigation, what first appears to be a mafia hit on a judge quickly morphs into a lone gunman revenge plot by a wrongly convicted man seeking revenge against the tribunal that sent him to prison. Police inspector Rogas (Lino Ventura) isn’t satisfied with the narrative set down by his superiors and keeps investigating as more judges are killed. He is certain there is a conspiracy behind the killing of these judges, but he can’t make the pieces fit. Rogas becomes increasingly paranoid and driven to find the connective tissue linking all of these murders. But with his phone tapped and men following him, he is running out of people he can trust — and running out of time — as his quest for the truth hurtles towards its tragic and inevitable conclusion.
Italian born actor Lino Ventura had a long career in France, often playing similar roles of no-nonsense cops, including a turn as the beloved Inspector Maigret. Here, his working-man detective rides public transit and sports the most rumpled trenchcoat this side of Columbo, with more than a passing resemblance to Walter Matthau. Rogas isn’t a brilliant detective, but he is dogged and stubborn when the obvious solution doesn’t work. He is also a cop with scruples who tries to work within the law, so it pains him to have to go rogue, ultimately convincing a colleague to help him plant a bug on the chief of police, who he suspects is involved in the deadly conspiracy.
Architecture plays an important symbolic role in the film. The spaces inhabited by the powerful elites are all vast old buildings that tower over the actors. Everything on screen is made to make Rogas look small, and as the film and his paranoia continue, the spaces also physically close in on him. The lighting gets darker and he increasingly finds himself in narrow windowless corridors and underground parking decks, all places where the light of the truth cannot shine, but ironically also places where an assassin’s bullet cannot reach. It is in the end, when Rogas brings the truth into the literal and metaphorical daylight, that he is truly in the most danger. The closing line, “The truth is not always revolutionary,” crystallizes Rosi’s bleak worldview.
Half a century later, Illustrious Corpses still rings true: political and social turmoil is often engineered with notions of “left-wing” and “right-wing” used as tools to divide and control, while elites are united in the expansion of their power. Rosi’s film shows how the pursuit of truth is perilous and looking for justice within a corrupt system is futile.
Radiance Films’ Blu-ray release is based on a 4K restoration of the film by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata and The Film Foundation from multiple print and soundtrack sources and is a terrific restoration that doesn’t feel compromised by the state of the surviving elements. The disc has archival interviews with Francesco Rosi and Lino Ventura, a discussion of the film by Gaetana Marrone, author of The Cinema of Francesco Rosi, and a captivating audio commentary by director Alex Cox (Repo Man).
