It’s perhaps more than coincidental that Radiance have followed up March’s release of Duccio Tessari’s 1973 Mafia thriller Tony Arzenta with Fernando Di Leo’s The Boss this week. Not just because of the things that these films have in common – both were made in 1973, both are stories about a Mafia hitman, both co-star Richard Conte as a Don – but because of the things they choose to do and say very differently from one another.
The Boss is the third in an unofficial Mafia trilogy from Di Leo (the previous instalments being Caliber 9 and The Italian Connection) and stars Henry Silva as the robotic assassin Nick Lanzetta who we are introduced to in an explosive opening sequence – literally, he dispatches a porno-cinema full of the Attardi clan, Calabrian rivals to his boss, Richard Conte’s Sicilian Don Carrasco, with a grenade launcher! This ultra-violent act shapes the rest of the film as its sole survivor Cocchi (Pier Paolo Capponi) sets about reorganising the gang, recruiting street thugs, drug dealers and radical student activists to exact retribution from Carrasco and remain a player. To achieve this aim, he kidnaps Rina (Antonia Santilli), the daughter of Carrasco’s counselor Don Giuseppe D’Aniello (Claudio Nicastro), who was in line for the deceased Attardi’s business interests and had previously introduced Lanzetta to the ‘family’ when he was a young orphan.
An ultimatum is delivered to Carrasco; Rina will be brutally gang-raped and murdered unless D’Aniello give up his own life and the markets are returned back to Cocchi. D’Aniello is understandably desperate to get his daughter back safe and unharmed, but Carrasco is unmoved; “Nothing is yours, Don Giuseppe, not even your daughter. Not when she endangers the ‘family’ and the organisation“. It’s the Mafia family that comes first here, way before actual flesh and blood. Carrasco’s ruthlessness is further evinced when, upon learning that D’Aniello intends to pay a hefty ransom to get his daughter back, instructs Lanzetta to kill D’Aniello himself, before rescuing Rina from the clutches of her tormenters. Except that Rina is anything but tormented; confronted by a gang of men, she reveals her nymphomaniacal side, demanding sex and drugs. As a bloody gang war rages across Palermo, the police (led by Gianni Garko’s Commissioner Torri) seem beleaguered, at the mercy of whatever is politically expedient.
Whereas Alain Delon’s eponymous protagonist of Tony Arzenta operated on a moral code, however hypocritical it may appear to be, the protagonists of The Boss are not hindered by ethics or values. As Carrasco says, the ‘family’ is everything and if that means eradicating half of your own organisation to get what you want, so be it. Di Leo’s film is an ugly, ruthless one, devoid of feeling. It’s a movie in which decisions that result in someone’s death are relayed in blank messages via the telephone, where even a surrogate father (D’Aniello) can be murdered by his surrogate son (Lanzetta) with cold efficiency and without compunction; Di Leo shooting the sequence in a rapid, abrubt manner in which the only insight to Lanzetta’s internal feelings on the matter are a brief kiss to the cheek he grants the corpse. Henry Silva, a Hollywood veteran whose impassive features resembled an Easter Island statue, is perfect for this emotional void of a man.
The best I can say thing about The Boss is that it affords audiences a wholly unglamorous look at a life of crime. I can’t see anyone watching this thinking, ‘this is the life for me’ and that is its single most redeeming quality.
Whilst the decision to depict these protagonists as uncouth monsters, whose belief that life is cheap signifies how utterly lacking they are in morals and scruples, is undoubtedly a realistic one it doesn’t make for a particularly edifying or enjoyable viewing experience. Regular readers of my reviews here at The Geek Show will know that I have watched many 70s Italian crime dramas and really enjoyed them too but at times The Boss is a level too far for me. These films were always amoral and misogynistic, but I don’t feel that Di Leo can use the defence that he is simply portraying these criminals in an authentic light, not when it comes to the character of Rina. Portrayed by Santilli, a former adult model, Di Leo repeatedly shoots her with the male gaze; stripped down to her underwear (with the knickers purposefully pulled down low when shot from behind) as her gang of kidnappers, lascivious and intimidating men threaten her with rape. Perhaps Di Leo thought he was being progressive when he reveals that Rina is not the timid and angelic virgin that Cocchi and his men presumed, that she has long since been using sex as a weapon to undermine her hypocritical father, a man who professes to be a devout Catholic whilst profiting from sex and violence. But it’s not 1973 any more and that kind of thinking will not stand.
Di Leo wants us to believe that Rina turns the tables on her captors by requesting drink and drugs so that she can enjoy the sexual advances of these thugs. He wants us to believe that the subsequent three in a bed romps in which she laughingly chastises her kidnappers lack of sexual prowess and obvious appetite for her body is in some way empowering for her character, that it provides her with agency. It does no such thing. It is a misogynist’s portrayal of woman, one that reduces them to sexual playthings and Santilli is routinely depicted, nude, purely for the titillation of male audiences. Yes, I firmly believe that 1970s Italian Mafioso were misogynist. Yes, I believe a film should show that realistically. But ultimately, I don’t think that is what Di Leo is doing. I think that in this case his own film is misogynistic and exploitative.
Quite apart from the misogyny, The Boss is an ugly movie. It’s a film that revels in its violence, depicting the victims of the grenade launch attack in vivid detail as, what is left of them, lie on the mortuary slabs before wailing relatives and jaded policemen. The many executions are depicted with an authentic lack of compunction or ceremony and Di Leo shoots much of the film at night, where such evil is arguably best served. The film’s overall bleak and brutal tone is arguably amplified by virtue of the fact that there are no good guys on display here; every single protagonist is damaged, ruthless and mercenary. Even Garko’s policeman Torri is a brash fascist. This ugly tone is ramped up by Luis Bacalov’s bombastic Italian prog score – an acquired taste, and one I did not possess. Much like the film itself I guess. The best I can say thing about The Boss is that it affords audiences a wholly unglamorous look at a life of crime. I can’t see anyone watching this thinking, ‘this is the life for me’ and that is its single most redeeming quality.
As ever Radiance have packed this release with extras including an audio commentary by critic Rachael Nisbet, a new interview with Di Leo’s biographer Davide Pulici and an archive documentary looking at the making of the movie and including interviews with Di Leo, Garko and Capponi. There’s also the obligatory trailer and image gallery and a booklet featuring new writing by Italian crime expert Giulio Olesen and an archive print interview with Di Leo. The Boss is presented with a new 4K restoration in both its original Italian language theatrical release and the shorter, English language export cut.
The Boss is out now on Radiance Films/Raro Video Blu-Ray
