Illustrious Corpses

Rosi’s high-style exercise in paranoia ranks with Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View as one of the best political conspiracy films of the 1970s. The “illustrious corpses” of the title are some of Italy’s most prominent jurists, who are mysteriously turning up dead. Idealistic police inspector Rogas (the excellent Lino Ventura) is scrambling to find out who is responsible. Gangsters? A lone maniac? Leftist terrorists? Or is something even more sinister and far-reaching afoot? An unnerving indictment of a poisonously corrupt society, Rosi’s film opens spectacularly, chillingly, amongst mummified human remains in an ancient catacomb; it then unfolds amidst monumental modernist set pieces and bold geometrical visual compositions. “Rosi shows such a majestic, ominous spatial sense in this movie that at times it seems to be an architectural fantasy about a country of the dead. . . Illustrious Corpses is his most elliptical and abstract film — a political spectacular on the theme of conspiracy” (Pauline Kael). “This is probably Francesco Rosi's greatest film and one of the most unsettling political thrillers ever made in Europe" (British Film Institute). Colour, 35mm, in Italian with English subtitles. 120 mins.