Silent Action (1975) Sergio Martino, EuroCrime and the emergence of a fantastic new label (Review)

Among fans of European genre cinema of the 70s, Sergio Martino is best known for his killer run within the Giallo sub-genre: all the colours of the dark (1972), Torso (1973), Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972), The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1971) and the Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971). However, like many of his peers, he also made a name for himself working in a variety of genres from the blatant ripoffs that Italian cinema infamously produced to another subgenre of cinema that is equally as Italian as the Giallo but never enjoyed the same international fame – the Poliziotteschi, A.K.A. Euro Crime. Silent Action – the latest release from Fractured Visions is one such film from fan-favourite, Sergio Martino.

When you get a new label, one of the defining features is usually their lack of extras – I can confidently declare that Fractured Visions have no such issues. Even before you get to the extras, the film comes with a second disc – a CD with Luciano Michelini’s propulsive score that has more than a little Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai about it. Not that this is a problem, to have a sound akin to two of the greatest composers who ever lived is nothing to thumb your nose at. As impressive as that is, the on-disc extras are much more noteworthy; there is the usual array of interviews with actors, the director and the composer, but hidden away there is the innocuous-sounding “The Age of Lead: 1970s Italy”. Age of Lead is an incredible piece about an era of modern Italian history where domestic terror and violence was rampant. Including such a feature is a nice little added extra, but it has a greater significance – for me, it filled in the blanks of why Italian films of the era presented law enforcement as they were, it also provides all the context needed to understand the dramatic aspirations of the Poliziotteschi. Simply, it is an inspired inclusion.

Silent Action opens with a series of unexplained military deaths that vary from knocking someone out and faking suicide to fabricating a situation where someone is crushed by a train after being tied to the tracks – old western damsel-in-distress-style. With there being no material evidence, they are all ruled out as either accidental or the product of suicide, that is by everyone but police inspector Solmi (Luc Merenda) who suspects differently. After a murder committed by an escort events explode in the most dramatic way, incorporating a secretive plot of double agents, infiltrations and a secret society planning a major coup d’état. Many of the smaller narrative puzzle pieces – like the secret training camp – make the film feel remarkably modern or show that the more things change the more they stay the same. Pick whichever option depresses you the least.

Returning to the Giallo, those films were composed and elegant in their depictions of domestic violence – the Poliziotteschi are their opposite in so many ways. For starters, this isn’t a clean print that Fractured Visions have included, on the contrary, it’s full of grain and grime. If those imperfections were mastered away, it would get rid of the sense of danger that defined these films – much in the same way it defined the grime of 1970s New York Underground Cinema. You could dismissively call this “a bad print”, but I for one second don’t believe films like this can be defined in such black and white terms. In fact, that comparison to 1970s New York Underground cinema isn’t too far off the mark when discussing Silent Action. Martino’s film could easily be compared to the likes of French Connection, especially with this film also featuring a well-shot and put-together car chase only through the outskirts of Milan. It’s a riveting edge of the seat scene, the best the film gets, in fact.

Poliziotteschi can be defined by two words – raw anger, which also comes across in any of the action scenes with guns that have a quaint quality afforded by the relatively small budget such projects were made with. The anger, however, comes across in Luc Merenda’s leading man and many climactic revelations. I won’t spoil the later revelations as before this release, this has been one Martino movie that has been incredibly hard to track down – needless to say, it depicts a distaste for the police state and the system, depicting them as brutally violent sorts that aren’t to be trusted. That is also true for the lead man, (the classically handsome Italian leading man) Merenda often beats up men he is hunting, tortures them to get the information he needs, he is the archetype of a bad cop who breaks the rules to get the job done. He does have some relief in his character in the downtime he spends with his team and the time spent at home with his journalist girlfriend, Maria (the equally stunning, Delia Boccardo). He is an interesting character in a genre of cinema that, more often than not, followed the most hateful people on their violent vendetta on the streets of Italy. He could also be defined this way, but at many junctions, he can be found complaining about his lot – looking for a way out, and even idealising the easy lot that lawyers have compared to street cops.

I wouldn’t exactly call myself an expert on the Poliziotteschi on account of very few being readily accessible on the UK market, the two big ones that have seen release are Arrow Video’s Milano Cilabro 9 and Criterion’s landmark Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion. I have seen a few others beyond that too, most notably Enzo G. Castellari’s Street Law with Franco Nero. All three of which are classics of varying degrees and present a style of street cinema that just isn’t found elsewhere. Silent Action could be ostensibly be compared to a police procedural thriller but that doesn’t quite cut it, instead, Martino has crafted a ferocious example of this type of film that strays away from the uneasiness and sleaze that it has become known for post-mortem. More important than that, it’s entertaining in a way that only the best 1970s New York Grime was, plus you also get the second disc with a wonderful score. If that’s not a win-win, I don’t know what is. Long may Fractured Visions stick around.

Often accused of being pretentious, the Style Council chose to face down these allegations in 1987 by promoting their album The Cost of Loving with a non-linear musical satire on British identity in the age of Thatcherism, narrated by a pre-Reverend Richard Coles. Surprisingly, this did not stop people from calling them pretentious, and the resulting film JerUSAlem (it is our sad duty to confirm that yes, you saw what they did there) vanished from sight.

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Thanks for reading Rob’s review of Silent Action

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