The “poliziottesco all’italiana” is a particular crime movie-genre of the Italian film tradition of the seventies. This film-genre is a cross-over between the American Western tradition, the French genre of Noir and Polar and the famous gangster-movies. In the title of many of these movies there is an explicit reference to some Italian cities: for example Milan in Milano calibro 9 [Caliber 9, 1972], Naples in Napoli si ribella [A Man called Magnum, 1973], Rome in Roma a mano armata [Rome Armed to the Teeth, 1976], Turin in Torino violenta [Double Game, 1977], and many others. The cities are the real protagonists of these criminal stories and the setting where you meet corrupt cops, bad criminals, solitary judges and private executioners. These cities – with the sprawl of suburban streets and areas, the new architectures of social control, the contrast between the buildings of justice and the public violence – are also the real ill bodies in this genre and in the legal-political Italian reality of the seventies. In this paper, I will focus on the link between the representation of the city and the rise of anti-juridical justice such as private justice, vengeance, and popular justice. In this case, the illness of the city is the crisis of political institutions and legal order.

The City Armed to the Teeth: Bending the law in the Italian crime Movies tradition

Guglielmo Siniscalchi
2019-01-01

Abstract

The “poliziottesco all’italiana” is a particular crime movie-genre of the Italian film tradition of the seventies. This film-genre is a cross-over between the American Western tradition, the French genre of Noir and Polar and the famous gangster-movies. In the title of many of these movies there is an explicit reference to some Italian cities: for example Milan in Milano calibro 9 [Caliber 9, 1972], Naples in Napoli si ribella [A Man called Magnum, 1973], Rome in Roma a mano armata [Rome Armed to the Teeth, 1976], Turin in Torino violenta [Double Game, 1977], and many others. The cities are the real protagonists of these criminal stories and the setting where you meet corrupt cops, bad criminals, solitary judges and private executioners. These cities – with the sprawl of suburban streets and areas, the new architectures of social control, the contrast between the buildings of justice and the public violence – are also the real ill bodies in this genre and in the legal-political Italian reality of the seventies. In this paper, I will focus on the link between the representation of the city and the rise of anti-juridical justice such as private justice, vengeance, and popular justice. In this case, the illness of the city is the crisis of political institutions and legal order.
2019
9781138337619
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11586/228743
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