World Noir Vol. 5 – Post War Italy in Crisis (1946, 1950 & 1951)

A friend of mine, who is becoming an avid film fan and physical media collector, was asking me about Radiance Films. He said that their stuff always looked good but he had next to no knowledge about any of it. This is where my face lit up. That’s the beauty of them. I love to discover. Yes, their catalogue includes famous films, revered filmmakers, and the like, but it’s also full of hidden gems I’d have never watched if it wasn’t for their curation. In their latest World Noir boxset, the label presents newly restored versions of The Bandit, Against The Law and Four Ways Out for the first time on home video outside of Italy. It’s particularly interesting to see the way in which Italy’s neorealist movement intersected with the more recognised elements of American noir. All three films investigate the economic consequences of post-war Italy, where desperate people are forced to make desperate choices. 

In The Bandit (1946), Ernesto (Amedeo Nazzari, Nights of Cabiria) arrives home from the war penniless without any family to welcome him. Finding that his sister now works in a brothel, he clashes with her pimp in an altercation that leads to both his sister and the pimp getting shot. Ernesto flees from the police and falls in with Anna Magnani’s (Rome, Open City) gang of hoodlums. Ernesto works his way up the ranks, but comes into conflict with other gang members when he starts giving their profits to the poor. The opening of Alberto Lattuada’s film is incredibly strong, a vivid and immediate picture of soldiers returning to post war Italy in a sense of disassociation. Lattuada captures Ernesto’s sense of alienation, showing him aimlessly wandering the streets encountering people making a living in any way they can — he comes across gangsters, street hustlers and sex workers. He also rages against the state after they refuse to payout benefits to a veteran who didn’t have the correct papers, exploring the difficulties soldiers faced in assimilating back into society. The rest of the film can’t match that brilliant opening half an hour, despite a dominating performance from Anna Magnani, who steals every scene. The Bandit becomes a more familiar gangster picture and an enjoyable watch, but I found the opening half an hour so captivating I thought it might end up being even more. 

In Flavio Calzavara’s Against The Law (1950) Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni, in one his first roles), a middle class man laundering money for the mob to make ends meet, witnesses a murder and is wrongly held accountable by the police. With the help of his girlfriend Maria (Fulvia Mammi), he sets out to clear his name and find the real perpetrator. It’s always fascinating to watch big stars starting out. Marcello Mastroianni is understandably quite raw in Against the Law, but he’s channeling a young, restless energy that has moments of real feeling in it. While I can’t say I always got swept up by the film, there’s moments between Mastroianni and Mammi that are scratching the itch of good melodrama and the whole thing is given a spark of life by a knowing Tino Buazzelli inspector performance. This feels like an essential watch for fans of Mastroianni, a rare opportunity to see an iconic actor in his formative years. Even if the film didn’t have me by the scruff of the neck, I’m always thankful to enjoy a piece of film history, especially one restored with such care. It’s fascinating that while the Noir movement in America had everyone operating in the shadows, all three films in this set had every crook hiding in plain sight. 

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Four Ways Out (1951), also known as The City Defends Itself, was my favourite. Four ordinary men steal two cases of cash from a football ground, before splitting up to evade capture, where we follow each character separately. Pietro Germi’s neorealist noir is absolutely worthy of re-discovery. Co-written by Federico Fellini, the film explores how Italy’s post war economic situation turns formerly honourable men to the world of crime. The eye-catching opening heist ends with one of them walking through a street still defined by its missing buildings. This is a perfect example of how the film effectively uses location shooting to show our leads being haunted by their environment. There’s great shot choices, thoughtful uses of architecture and a visual eye that really hits thanks to the new restoration. As with stories which become fragmented, some sections are better than others. I particularly liked the train sequence and the finale because Germi expertly marries emotional melodramatic highs with bubbling tension to thrilling effect. The screenplay is economical, building a bigger picture by giving us a spread of defined characters, slowly revealing their different motivations and seeing who crime corrupts and how. 

I’m yet to check out Radiance’s other volumes of World Noir, but after this experience I’m keen to. I never take for granted the opportunity to discover films that could otherwise be lost to film history, or less dramatically, would simply never find their way to me. Each of these three films has something special going for it. I’m particularly impressed by the way the curated set investigates the consequences and ongoing scars of the World War through a genre lens, painting a picture of how the trends of a national cinema responds to the feeling of the moment. The set is packed full of Special Features — interviews about the films, filmmakers and actors which help give greater context to the films. It also comes with a limited edition 80-page bound book including new writing from Roberto Curti, Pasquale Iannone, Beatrice Loayza and Farran Smith Nehme, plus archival writing from Mary P. Wood. 

JIMMY’S ARCHIVE – WORLD NOIR VOL. 5