Fernando Di Leo's The Milieu Trilogy

Caliber 9 ("Milano Calibro 9" - 1972)
The Italian Connection ("La Mala Ordina" - 1972)
The Boss ("Il Boss" - 1972)
directed by Fernando Di Leo - The Criterion Channel

I hadn't even heard of these films before, so what exactly prompted me to spend five-and-a-half hours watching 70's Italian exploitation cinema? Well, I do love an exercise in cinema, and with the trio of films being added this January to the Criterion Channel as part of their ensemble of Di Leo's "Italian Crime Thrillers", being dubbed a trilogy, and, well, being cited as by Tarantino as influential to his career... yeah, I took the bait.  

At this point I need to realize that pretty much every movie that Tarantino ever saw was influential to his career, and that no single film or filmmaker is going to reveal any specific insight into what makes him the filmmaker he is.  It's the sum total of everything he consumed that does that, and the more time I spend with Tarantino's film criticism, from his new book Cinema Speculation as well as his podcast "Video Archives" (with Roger Avery), the more I see that he's just got a unique brain with a memory for film (shots, music, performances, lines, trivia, history etc) unlike almost anyone else on the planet.  He's just a hardcore nerd about these things, and his ability to dissect cinema into its subcomponents and tease out what may make a film unique from almost anything else of its ilk is a talent that may be uniquely his own.

And so watching these three films of Fernando Di Leo, I can absolutely see Tarantino totally digging these crime thrillers with an appreciation of the various performers, the director, the composers, knowledge of Italian cinema, and knowledge of Italy of the 70's (at least through the lens of cinema).  If I had all that stashed in my brain I might appreciate these films more than I do.  But honestly, coming out of a near 6-hour marathon, I felt like I could have put my cinematic viewing somewhere else, somewhere perhaps more rewarding (like the trio of Fritz Lang films added to Criterion Channel, or tackling some of the more intriguing films from various top ten of '22 lists).

But, some might say, every film viewed is a learning experience.  Of the "Milieu Trilogy", the first, Calibre 9, was the most interesting, and, at least to my eye, the most visually accomplished.  An intriguing, surprisingly, and unfortunately relevant subplot has a police chief and his new associate arguing over what manner of crime they should be focusing on. The chief is stuck in his old mindset of reactionary policing, busting up gangs and tamping down on the civic unrest (student protesters, reactionaries - of what, I'm not sure) whereas his new transfer wants to address the crimes of the rich, the withdrawal of wealth out of the country, and the abuses perpetrated on the working class.  It sounds like a very modern arguement.

There's equally an interesting conversation on the criminals' side where an old mafia don laments that there is no mafia anymore, just gangs fighting one another, stealing from each other, lacking the honor and respect of the old ways. There is an argument in Di Leo's third film, The Boss, made by a different police chief to his superintendent that at least the mafia used to maintain a sense of order, a sense of keeping everything in its place. These gangs, the protesters, all of it is just chaos.

Unfortunately, in Caliber 9, of these two topics of conversation, only the latter is actually of relevance to the story as it plays out.  It's really a tale of criminals and their distrust of one another, the lack of loyalty and honour that was supposedly found in the mafia is gone.  Here, $300,000 US of the Americano's money goes missing in an elaborate exchange. Most of the middlemen have been interrogated or killed but one is released from from prison 3 years later, and immediately the Americano's thugs are up his ass even though he professes no knowledge or involvement the theft. What follows is a spinning yarn of cops, thieves, mobsters, gangster and all the conniving and fighting that goes on amongst them all.

Gastone Moschin is a compellingly stoic lead, with a very Statham-esque aesthetic.  One wonders how a mug like that can pull the devotion of a beauty like Barbara Bouchet but that's all part of it.  There are a lot of great cinematic moments, some really neat scenes in Caliber 9, but the perhaps necessary dubbing of the entire film, some frequently poor lighting, an occasionally tonally out-of-step score, plus a few really hammy actors kind of bring an otherwise engrossing film down a peg or two.

The second film of the triology, The Italian Connection, largely dispenses with the social commentary.  Here, a pair of American hitmen are assigned to take out a pimp in Milan to send a message to the local mob. The local mob leader also send their men after the pimp. The pimp is completely in the dark as to why he's being hunted so, but he quickly learns nowhere is safe, no one can be trusted, and his only defense is to go on the offensive.

Without the social commentary of Caliber 9, this entry in the trilogy feels like a huge step down from what came before.  There are more internationally recognized actors (including Henry Silva, Woody Strode, Adolfo Celi, and Luciana Paluzzi, the latter two both prominently from Thunderball) so it does feel like the talent pool has gone up, and Mario Adorf is a lot less hammy promoted to lead here (he was as a secondary villain in Caliber 9).  But it's all a bit of a mess (so much of the Italian dubbing is clearly over English dialogue, there's a really muddled focus for the first hour, a lot of leering and gratuitous nudity, plus some really crummy dialogue), especially for an action-oriented thriller. The characters don't really pop like they probably should (Silva and Strode were apparently the inspiration for the hitmen of Pulp Fiction but beyond being a 70's black-and-white odd couple, I don't see it), and the fighting looks quite silly most of the time. There is a good, propulsive chase sequence to close out the second act, which comes close to redeeming the film (if Adorf were Jackie Chan, it'd be a completely different story, as appealing a performer as Adorf is in a Bruce Campbell kinda way, he's not much of an action star).  A great jazz funk score from Armando Trovajoli though, is the best part of the film (both Caliber 9 and The Boss are scored by Luis Bacalov, who pulls elements from the former back into the latter, and the score works much better with The Boss, where it's also a highlight)

 

The third act of this trilogy, The Boss, seems thinly drawn when in its wake has come so many epic tales of mobsters, gangsters and the mafioso. The intention of the film is clearly to show the breakdown in the organization of crime in Italy at the time, as well as to heavily implicate government, police and institutional corruption in the current state of the country.  Like Caliber 9, we spend many asides with the police, who are just as ineffective here as the were in the first part of the trilogy.  Hamstrung by corruption both within their forces and the systems of government above them, they hope that the criminals effectively "take care" of each other, doing what they cannot.  In this film, for sure, it's all out war between different mobs, fuelled by Henry Silva's enforcer's over-the-top actions in taking out one branch of the local mob.  This leads to a revenge kidnapping, and then a lot of tit-for-tat, before Silva, as our main character, decides to just liberate himself from all of it.

An undercurrent in all three of these films is the student protests, and I don't know enough about Italy circa the early 1970's to know what the students were protesting.  In The Italian Connection, there's talk of Maoism and a very confusing statement about "Where will we put 600 million Chinese people when they come?"  Are the protestors anti-communism or supporting communism?  Whatever it is, the message is clearly of its time and place, and whatever influence it has on the story seems trapped there.

All three of the films, but The Boss especially have a particularly difficult time with women. Mainly leered at as sex objects, they're also slapped around, beaten and killed off quite callously.  In The Italian Connection, Paluzzi plays guide to the hitmen, capably navigating the streets and the people, only to be dragged to a meetup by the hitmen to draw fire.  Also in the Italian Connection are a lot of sex workers who seem to garner no respect (though I think we're to think that Adorf's pimp treats them respectably...for a pimp, making him sort of a good guy, at least comparatively).  In The Boss, pretty much the only female character is the mobster's daughter Rina (Antonia Santilli) who gets kidnapped, but turns out to be a "drug addict nympho" who doesn't seem to mind at all sleeping with any of her captors, and seems to not be fussed being slapped around alot.  She also spends most of the film in some form of undress. The misogyny is always the worst part of exploitation films, but films in recent years have trained me to wait for the turn in these characters, something to draw them out of the exploitation, and very much it's waiting here for something that never comes.

While perhaps not a complete waste of time, but it also wasn't that rewarding watching these.  Caliber 9 is the most interesting and has the most to say, while there are action films far better than The Italian Connection and mob war movies far better constructed than The Boss to partake in.