Italy / France,
1974, 118 min
Shown in 1997
CREDITS
- dir
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Francesco Rosi
- prod
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Francesco Cristaldi
- scr
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Francesco Rosi, Lino Jannuzzi, Tonino Guerra
- cam
-
Pasqualino de Santis
- editor
-
Ruggero Mastroianni
- cast
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Gian Maria Volonté, Edmund O’Brien, Charles Siragusa, Rod Steiger, Vincent Gardenia
- source
-
Cinecittà International, Via Tuscolana, 1055, 00173 Rome, Itoly. FAX: 39-6-722-862-33
-
COMMENTS
Francesco Rosi was the recipient of the Akira Kurosawa Award. Rosi appeared in person.
OTHER
A cubist Godfather, an abstract mobster ballet: The intertwining of men in high places is so thorough as to make the distinction between G-men and hit-men impossible in Rosi’s powerful indictment of the collusion between CIA and mob heroin-mongers during and in the years following World War II. Lucky Luciano, like most of Rosi’s films, is centered around a real-life protagonist who remains something of a mystery, but whose power is manifest—and power (male power, money power, capitalist power) is the film’s true subject. Luciano (Gian Maria Volonté) is a character who never develops, in the dramatic sense, but rather materializes in a New York bistro and then slowly disintegrates in exile in Sicily, from where he apparently masterminds the international drug trade. Rosi’s confusion of beefy men is heightened by a media-rich, journalistic and ultimately Marxist layer of information that is exquisite to watch. A highlight is squealer Gene Giannini (Rod Steiger), whining and dining in red pajamas, living in the cleavage of his buxom lover and crawling between back-alley garbage cans to nestle and die.
FACTOID #97
Actor Franchot Tone, the former husband of Joan Crawford, was the master of ceremonies at the first festival in 1957.
