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Elio
Petri was born in Rome on January 29th, 1923 into a modest family,
his father being a coppersmith. As only son, he grew up in the working-class
area of the city before attending school where he was noted for
his intelligence.
After
being expelled for political reason from San Giuseppe di Merode,
a school run by priest on Piazza di Spagna, he embarked on a career
combining political militancy, film-journalism and the coordination
of cultural activities for the youth organization of the italian
communist party. He wrote for Unita' and for Gioventu' nuova as
well as for Citta' aperta. He left the party in 1956 after the Hungarian
rising. A friend of Gianni Puccini, he was introduced through him
to Giuseppe De Santis and became Assistant to the director of Bitter
Rice.
He
collaborated, without being credited for it, on Rome 11 O'Clock
(1952), carrying out the preliminary inquiry among the real-life
protagonist of the drama. The inquiry was published in book form
in 1956.
There
followed the collaboration with De Santis, both as script-writer
and as director's assistant, on La Fille sans homme (1953), Jour
d'amour (1955), homme et luops (1956), La strada lungo un anno (1958)
and La Garconniere (1960). During the period, Petri also wrote scripts
for Giuliano Puccini, Aglauco Casadio and Carlo Lizzani. Nevertheless,
it was his collaboration with the film-director from Fondi which
was decisive when it came to learning the tools of the film-directing
trade as well as developing an autonomous cultural and political
outlook.
All
his life, Petri remained deeply attached, both politically and personally,
to 'Beppe' De santis. After two shorts, Nasce un Campione (1954)
and I sette contadini (1959), which gave him the opportunity to
broaden his knowledge of film-making 'on the job' as was the usual
course in those days, Petri made his debut as a director with
L'assasino (The lady killer of Rome) based on a script co-authored
with Tonino Guerra in 1961. Already in this film, Petri's gift for
portraying alienated characters, for conjuring up a Kafkaesque thriller
mood, is evident. I giorni contati (1962),
his second film, again co-authored with Tonino Guerra sets the pattern:
Petri's filmic world is political by allusion and dominated by the
themes of exclusion and divided lives. |
With
A quiet place in the country, the last of his film to be co-authored
with Guerra, he tackles the subject of solitude and the artist's
romantic agony. He then directed four film which showed that he
was one of most acute, lucid and despairing analysts of the schizophrenia
of our time. These films constitute, as it were, a portrait of
all the facets and contradictions of italian soociety:
Investigation of a citizen above suspicion (1970), the subject
of which is the police-force; The working
class goes to heaven (1971), on the worker's condition; Property
is no longer a theft (1973), about the role of money in our
society and how power destroy the individual: Todo
Modo (1976) adapted from the homonymous novel by Sciascia
is about the warped psychic structure of the power moguls among
the Christian Democrats.Pointing out as it does all the danger
of conformism in politics, culture and communications technology,
Petri's work increasingly came up against production obstacles.
The ideological
violence of Investigation of a citizen above suspicion almost
caused the film to be definitely banned.
In 1978, putting
aside those topics that were direct reflections on contemporary
italian society, Petri directed for the television a remarkable
version of Sartre's play Dirty Hands, in which, once again,
Marcello Mastroianni gave an exceptional performance. For the
reason of copyright the film has not been released outside Italy.
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With Buone
Notizie (1979), which Petri himself produced together with
Giancarlo Giannini, the main character in the film, Petri reached
an impasse: the joint inability of the artist and his character
to convey their suffering and dismay. At a time when sociopolitical
and psycoanalytical methods were converging in an attempt to better
define the crisis in western societies, Petri tries to interpret
the field of the unconscious. More in the line of Freud and Reich
than Marx, he is one of the directors who have done most to renew
the political approach to man's problems, to his social insertion.
Ranging from neuroses to schizophrenia, Petri's world is one of
the most coherent and stimulating where a film-director's commitment
to his implicit audiences is involved. The work, however, took
its toll on Petri.
Like his own
characters, he was a constant prey to existential doubts and anguish.
The last years of Petri's life were overshadowed by the difficulty
he experienced in getting a new film-project under way, and by
the onset illness. In 1981, Petri went to Geneva to produce Arthur
Miller's new play The American Clock. It was to be his sole incursion
into the theatre domain. Work on another film, Chi illumina la
grande notte was well advanced: the takes were scheduled for September
1982 and Marcello Mastroianni was to play the leading role. But
his illness too was far advanced: Elio Petri died prematurely
of cancer on November 10th, 1982. He was 53 years old.
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