Exploitation Movies Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion

And the enigmas which-desire seems to pose for a "natural philosophy" -its frenzy mocking the abyss of the infinite, the secret collusion by which it obscures the pleasure of knowing and of joyful domination, these amount to nothing more than that derangement of the instincts that comes from being caught on the rails-of metonymy. Wherefore its "perverse" fixation at the very suspension-point of the signifying chain where the memory-screen freezes and the fascinating image of the fetish petrifies.

HOLLYWOOD has recently discovered that politics can be used to spice up perversity (and vice versa) in catering to mass consumer cravings: pushing old commodities in new packaging. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion works out quite skillfully this newly elaborate and sophisticated formula. Directed by Italian Elio Petri-if not for exclusively American capital (Euro International), at least with U. S. distribution (Columbia) ever in mind-the production won an Academy Award last week for the Best Foreign ( sic ) Film of 1971. Which is a pretty good tip-off that no matter how "controversial" its politics, this pictures poses no political threat to anybody's system. Jean-Luc Godard recently said: "If movie makers were building airplanes, there would be an accident every time one took off. But in the movies, these accidents are called Oscars." Instead of meditating/postulating/lauding on the Artist's manifold intentions, et cetera, since his rudimentary competence is now established, perhaps we should ask the larger question about why such films are so highly rewarded, about what they are built-objectively designed-to do. To go someplace? Or simply to parade prettily around the runway?

If you insist, I'll first provide the usual collection of mindless quotables, the film-reviewer's homage to the system that supports him:

"a shocking treatise on the psycho-sexual basis of Authority."

"a brilliant performance by Gian Maria Volonte as the tough Roman cop who slits the exquisite throat of his mistress to test his own power against the State's justice."

"lush, exotic, sensual camerawork."

"a style that's perfectly integrated with the subjectivity of the Fascist mind."

"If you liked Z, you'll love..."

All these descriptions are, I suppose, more or less accurate. But instead of fleshing out the artistic context, I'm going to relate them to the objective, functional (and inevitably political) use-value of the "trend" film as a cultural commodity.

Petri's portrait of Authority remains just that: the poetic evocation of images from murky psychic depths and from a conception of the authoritarian mentality as an autonomous entity. It remains stagnant, detached from the dynamic politico-economic context that created it. This is not to say, however, that Volonte is "unconvincing" in the realistic portrayal of an individual pig-figure. His characterization is in fact masterful in embodying the all-important humanist absolute, Ambiguity, as he transforms the cop smoothly, almost imperceptibly-within single shots-from an archetypal tyrant to a snivelling child. It is the very wholeness of his self-contradictory nature that precludes our connecting him concretely to other aspects of reality, i.e. perceiving political signification. Petri uses this character, an integral part of the System, to replace the System as a whole (metonymy)-a substitution structurally comparable to fetishism in Lacan's psychopathology-instead of creating conceptual signs (metaphor) with which to analyze the power structure.

The ambiguity of his visual expression reveals an anarchic temperament (to be distinguished from an anarchist politics ). Petri shifts rapidly between shots of rich chaos and those of extremely centralist organization, both invested with a dazzling immediacy. On the one hand he presents vast spatial compositions of dramatic confusion-interrogation theatres, modernist offices often shot through glass. Venetian blinds, bars, iron grates, cocktail glasses-creating an atmosphere of energetic but menaced licentiousness. On the other hand he devastates his defenseless audience with huge, authoritarian close-ups and compositions organized metonymically, transforming objects, into fetishes, frozen fascinations that dominate the image.

PETRES anarchic vacillations and Volonte's schizophrenia both fuse contradictory elements rather than separate them conceptually, and hence should not be confused with the method of dialectical opposition, which is essential to scientific political analysis. The visual tendencies of chaos and centralism are often married within a single shot, and cutting tends to minimize confrontations rather than emphasize them, on both image and narrative levels. Internal contradictions remain implicit and unarticulated dualities, emotional more than rational. The illusion-reality double ending is perhaps the film's ultimate equivocation, refusing to make even one unambiguous political statement on the crude level of extending the corruption of one cop to encompass his buddies on the police force as well. The film signifies nothing political, but leaves us with a single fascinating freeze-frame fetish to perceive however we wish.

Investigation does function politically, however, as the direct consequence of its "apolitical" stance. As a consumer-item viewed in a dark theatre by a passive, alienated mass, film already constitutes a mystical, reified object, a spectacle that obscures the conditions of its production: that it is man-made, that it isn't a Larger-than-Life-Reflection-of-Reality, that it is merely a celluloid construct. The Hollywood artistry Petri employs, and the Ideology of Ambiguous Truth he promotes, reinforce the perverse relation between the audience and their fetishized entertainment commodity, his film becomes an exciting, confusing, reassuring, self-inclusive Reality: an Artistic Whole, fascinating, hence demobilizing. Investigations of a Citizen Above Suspicion, with its metonymical distillation of the Power Structure into the isolated (and questionable) stereotype of the "Authoritarian Personality," dismisses practical ways of dealing with that structure politically, and-like Z-it breeds in us a self-righteous self-satisfaction with our own uncommitted brand of anti-Fascism. Our passivity is transformed only to the extent of our exploitation, as we thrill freely to the perverse in all its frozen detail.