14-16 Cosa nostra: Franco Nero in Three Mafia Tales by Damiano Damiani

[domino harvey]

Finished the set and found the remaining two films about more or less on the same level as the first.

L'istruttoria è chiusa: dimentichi is a well-crafted prison melodrama, with Nero's bourgeois innocent discovering just how far his money will get him behind bars when he decides to turn to the joint's incarcerated mafia connection for assistance. Turi Ferro is particularly good as the lead guard, who convincingly argues with Nero in the film's penultimate scene that the two of them are on the same side, whether he wants to hear it or not. But while I enjoyed the film, I felt the same thing I identified in my previous post: that this film offers so few surprises in its approach to overly familiar material that it's a shame so many competently crafted working parts are being used in service of something every one of us has seen already.

Perché si uccide un magistrato is the scrappiest of the trio of films here. The film fails to fully exploit the intriguing idea of a political filmmaker depicting the death of a fictionalized standin for an allegedly mobbed-up politician who is soon similarly executed in real life. However, this tale of warring factions within the mafia trying to figure out who amongst them did the deed does do what I kept criticizing the other two films for not doing, and that's come up with a more novel idea than just depicting what we'd expect from such a set-up.

Spoiler

All three of these films end with what I'd call defeatism, not cynicism, but this one is the most perverse in that it forces Nero's hopeless idealist to admit that while the mafia are guilty of so much they'll never be punished for, they had nothing to do with the crime at the heart of the film.

[domino harvey]

One addendum: I forgot to mention, props to the subtitler in the last film sneaking in “Boom goes the dynamite”

[Drucker]

I enjoyed The Day Of The Owl and agree with Dom's reading of it mostly. It was also far less violent than I expected, given my (perhaps unfair) expectation around the kinds of films Radiance releases. My favorite moment in the film by far is when Nero's character exclaims that he is (paraphrasing):

Spoiler

Telling everyone what to say and do

as he builds a broader case against Cobb and his gang. I think the film could have spent more time with Nero going a little power mad, but the final reveal was really impactful.

[Drucker]

L'istruttoria è chiusa: dimentichi is a well-crafted prison melodrama, with Nero's bourgeois innocent discovering just how far his money will get him behind bars when he decides to turn to the joint's incarcerated mafia connection for assistance. Turi Ferro is particularly good as the lead guard, who convincingly argues with Nero in the film's penultimate scene that the two of them are on the same side, whether he wants to hear it or not. But while I enjoyed the film, I felt the same thing I identified in my previous post: that this film offers so few surprises in its approach to overly familiar material that it's a shame so many competently crafted working parts are being used in service of something every one of us has seen already.

Agree on how well-crafted and well done so many of the parts of the film were, but disagree with Dom about being slightly lukewarm on it. I found the film really gripping, especially the second half. At times the first half of the film feels bizarre and almost as if it's going for shock value above all else, with our protagonist in a Kafkaesque situation. The second half partially explains the first, or at least presents a paranoid point of view at least. Whatever the conspiracy at the heart of the film, the acting, especially from Nero, is powerful and visceral, and we see a very different character than in The Day of the Owl. I liked it a lot!

[Drucker]

The final entry, How To Kill a Judge is probably the one I like least, though to echo Dom's sentiment it does feel a little different, with an intriguing twist at the end. By this time we have gotten to know some of the beat players in Nero's troupe and the secondary characters are enjoyable and add a lot of flavor to the film.

BTW, was the English audio track messed up for everyone else? There are many instances where while watching the track it reverted back to Italian. Happened constantly, throughout the film. Were parts of the English audio track missing?

[domino harvey]

I think I watched it in Italian but generally when this happens in a dub it indicates that the English language re-edit cut that line/scene, I believe

[MichaelB]

BTW, was the English audio track messed up for everyone else? There are many instances where while watching the track it reverted back to Italian. Happened constantly, throughout the film. Were parts of the English audio track missing?

I can't speak for this specific film, but it's usually a by-product of the Italian cut being longer than the international cut and therefore only enough English audio being recorded to cover this shorter version.

In these situations, the distributor has two solutions:

1. Present each cut separately (either as separate encodes or, ideally, as seamless branching) so that the English dub runs the entire length of the film;
2. Fill in the gaps with Italian audio.

The most recent such example that I worked on was Patrick for Indicator, which included the Italian dub—which was historically interesting because the film had been completely rescored by local prog-rock band Goblin, replacing Australian composer Brian May's contribution in its entirety. At least one previous release of Patrick went for option (2), i.e. filling in the gaps with English audio, but the problem there was that it unavoidably involved putting chunks of Brian May's score back in, which sounded jarring in the extreme (especially in one instance when Goblin cut directly to May!), so we went for option (1) and reproduced the shorter Italian cut.

But whether or not this is feasible depends on disc space and whether seamless branching is an option—in the case of Patrick, we found that seamlessly branching the Italian cut was viable (which is why it's presented in full UHD alongside the full-length Australian cut), but it wasn't possible with a third, American-dubbed cut, as there were more than 150 differences (i.e. an authoring and QC nightmare!). So with that we ended up presenting a separate encode in plain HD only, as we didn't have enough space for another full-length UHD presentation.

As for the Damiani film, assuming you're correct in saying "many instances" and "happened constantly, throughout the film", it sounds as though this could well have been a situation where seamless branching wasn't a viable option. And since it's only a normal BD, it may simply not have been possible to include another full-length encode without compromising AV quality.

[Drucker]

Makes perfect sense. It was sporadic throughout the film, in the initial meeting where Nero is introduced, and then at a moment in the scene where he is introduced to the elected official who inspired his film. After that point I stopped keeping track. Appreciate the explanation!