Film Forum

Through Thursday, October 21 (except Sunday, October 17)
12:15   2:50   5:30   8:10

Sunday, October 17
1:00   3:30   6:00   8:30

(1976) “The truth is not always revolutionary.” Slow opening: amid the strikes and demonstrations of Italy’s “Years of Lead,” Judge Charles Vanel (Wages of Fear and Guinness for history’s longest film career), emerging from an eerie tour of Palermo's Convento dei Frati Cappuccini, with its crypt of 8,000 skeletons and mummified bodies, is shot dead in broad daylight. But as inspector Lino Ventura (hardest of France’s hommes durs — in a rare instance, here acting in his native language) is on the case; and as the judges keep dropping—one in a building with Ventura—he sees a pattern: judges all acquainted, “botched” cases. Could this be a railroaded man’s vengeance? Or is it something more? And after demotion and his own wiretapping, Ventura confronts the startling philosophy of Supreme Court judge Max von Sydow, and… From the novel by Leonardo Sciascia. New 4K DCP. Approx. 120 min. In Italian with English subtitles.

Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

A PARK CIRCUS RELEASE.

Reviews

“MUST-SEE ITALIAN CINEMA! This is grown-up filmmaking of a now unfamiliar strain: ominous, oblique, unrushed, and altogether grave.”
– Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
Read the full review.

“AN ASTUTE ANALYSIS OF CORRUPTION… AN ABSORBING, RESONANT, AT TIMES NEAR MAJESTIC WHODUNIT… the Italian analogue to Watergate-era conspiracy thrillers like The Parallax View and The Conversation.”
– J. Hoberman, The New York Times, October 7, 2021
Read the full review.

“ELEGANTLY COMPOSED, BREATHLESSLY PACED.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“A dazzling example of fashionably radical Italian filmmaking— photographed in the beautiful, drained colors of a landscape in mourning for the sun.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“What impresses most are scenes displaying Rosi’s bravura: an obsessive judge shot in his tomb-like mansion; a party calculatedly shocking in its lavishness; Ventura alone in his flat when the horror of his discovery hits him. The photography serves perfectly the growing sense of unease, and Ventura is as quietly excellent as ever.”
– Chris Petit, Time Out