Poliziotteschi

Italian crime films of the 1970s, made during the anni di piombo, the Years of Lead, when political bombings and kidnappings were ordinary news.

The word poliziotteschi means something like "police-y things". No filmmaker ever used it. Critics applied it later, and it stuck.

The shape

Italian producers watched Dirty Harry and The French Connection and concluded the problem with both was restraint. What came out: a detective who has abandoned procedure, a city that has abandoned him, chases through live traffic, and an ending that fixes nothing.

The texture

Shot fast, on location, often without permits. The stunt driving is real and frequently looks like a mistake. The politics do not cohere. These films are angry at the state, nostalgic for authority, and contemptuous of the public all at once, sometimes within a single scene. That confusion is the most interesting historical record they leave.

The people

Fernando Di Leo wrote the best of them. Umberto Lenzi and Enzo G. Castellari shot the fastest. Maurizio Merli supplied the moustache, Tomas Milian played either a hippie or a psychopath, and Henry Silva was flown in for a week at a time.

Where to start

Milano calibro 9 is the best written. The Italian Connection has the single best chase in Italian cinema, on foot.