Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the '70s

Excellent documentary, beautifully structured thanks to the engagingly presented graphics, which we don't often see in documentaries. At the beginning, you will learn that between the 1950s and 70s the Italians became (in)famously known worldwide as the ones who copy film genres that are currently trending in America and the Western market. So, Hollywood westerns were replaced by spaghetti westerns (ask Sergio Leone o the countless clones of Django that later became an inspiration for Tarantino), the sword-and-sandal films of the 1950s were copied in a genre called peplum (all those Hercules, etc.), which were followed by giallo, and in the early 70s, as a response to Coppola’s The Godfather and The French Connection, the Italians came up with a fashionable genre called Eurocrime, also known a s poliziotteschi. All the major films are mentioned, such as Execution Squad and High Crime with Franco Nero, whose huge success kick-started the genre's production machine (poliziotteschi films can be counted in the hundreds). It explains the social background of that success, when in Italy in the 70s there were about 13,000 cinemas and 400-500 films a year, which were in demand, because Italian TV was closed to the world (there were no satellites and VHS yet), it had only two national channels that broadcast only two premieres a week. Going to the cinema thus became a social phenomenon, with the average Italian going four or five times a week. It introduces the biggest stars of the genre of the time (Franco Nero, Henry Silva, Richard Harrison, Tomas Milian, Lee Van Cleef and also Maurizio Merli, the biggest star after Nero, who resembled him in his appearance and in the way he imitated him in everything), the important directors (Ferdinando Di Leo, Enzo Castellari, Sergio Martino) are also mentioned, of whom Umberto Lenzi, the most successful poliziotteschi director of the time, gets the most space. The distinctive aspects of the genre are clearly explained, i.e. social criticism (Italy in the 70s was a pretty wild place, in 1977 alone there were 2080 terrorist attacks, whether by fascist militia or the Red Brigades), the long fingers of the mafia, and all of this under the sign of Violence (unlike Hollywood, the Italians were not afraid of anything, e.g. dead children, mutilated genitals and torture and rape of women was nothing exceptional). Italy in the 70s was a macho society, so the women in the films were mere victims, raped, beaten and only rarely took the law into their own hands. There are also mentions of Italian stuntmen, who surpassed those from America in terms of skill, and it’s interesting that the main stars did not let themselves be replaced, following the example of Belmondo, popular throughout Europe. The account concludes with the fact that with the advent of VHS and better TV antenna technology (and thus a wider range of offerings) cinema-going ceased to be a social phenomenon in the late 1970s, more than 10,000 cinemas closed in Italy and the poliziotteschi genre slowly died out. (16.09.2017) (mniej) (więcej)