Elio Petri
Indagine Su Un Cittadino Al Di Sopra Di Ogni Sospetto

Assassin, doctor. Doctor and assassin, he has no identity. He remains an undefined mask, a performer from a Pasolini-style variety show, moving against a backdrop of human frenzies, cops and robbers, the powerful and revolutionaries. No one really worries about him, while he has a sort of obsession with himself. So much so that he kills when this self is challenged by a free, liberated, open woman. No one seems to listen to him, take him seriously; he's just a dark and violent man to be feared, needed, and given reverential and parasitic respect. And amidst these people, ordinary citizens and policemen, passersby offering to buy thirty ties of the same color, and lower-ranking colleagues in a police station forced to serve and bow to him, he feels like a sovereign, an emperor. Only three, three throughout his life, manage to stand up to him, to lower his tones: his excellence, the police chief, only because he is more powerful than him; the revolutionary, because he is his moral and political opposite, adversary and enemy, lover of the same woman; and finally, the woman herself, who annihilates his pride, his persona, his sexuality. In front of these figures, the king appears really small. A miserable subordinate of a rich and superior man; the murderer at the top of the palace and blackmailed by a simple companion; an infantile lover. This is his whole world, a closed box where he endlessly bangs against the walls. There is only one way to overturn his routine: kill and experiment with his unsuspectability. And so he seizes upon the playful encouragements of his lover, who explicitly invites him to do her in. Even her ghost, appearing to him in a dream shortly before the end, seems to approve of his act.

Of Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, a masterpiece of Italian cinema, much has been said, even here on DeBaser. I hope that this my brief insert can suggest some alternative reflections. I thank zotter for pushing me to take up again a certain type of film which perhaps, too often, I have snubbed out of laziness and dullness.