"One judge's murder is a crime, but four is political!"
Francesco Rosi crafts a politically-charged whodunnit with Illustrious Corpses (1976). Fairly typical of its era, pitting an honest investigator against a murderous Establishment, its slow, meticulous storytelling makes it worthwhile.Someone murders three judges in Sicily. Inspector Rogas (Lino Ventura) is assigned to investigate the killings, encouraged to unmask the killer and solve the case quickly. Rogas discovers that the victims were all entangled in political corruption, from Mafia ties to wrongful convictions to repression of leftists. Rogas finds his investigation hamstrung by authorities, from his Chief (Tino Carraro) to a government Minister (Fernando Rey) and an obsessive Chief Justice (Max Von Sydow), who blame the murders on Communists. He nonetheless keeps investigating, finding the conspiracy spreads far deeper than he imagined.
Based on a novel by Leonardo Sciasca, Illustrious Corpses examines corruption in Italy's judicial system. As Rogas conducts his investigation, the murders grow less important than the venality they expose. Mob ties, personal corruption, even provocation of Communists into protests and terrorism justifying brutality. The Chief Justice adopts an air of papal infallibility, comparing law to religion and himself to a priest, pompously announcing that "judicial errors don't exist." With the connivance of business and politicians more terrified by radical activism than judicial abuses, they erode the rule of law while invoking it as a defense. Nor do the Communists come off well, their leader justifying his abetting state crimes with a bastardized Gramsci quote.
Rosi's docudrama approach mashes with weird cutaways: Zapruder-style murder flashbacks, a photograph of one victim coming to life, a cat's grisly death (the second-worst feline fatality in an Italian film from 1976, after Novecento). Such Costa-Gavras flourishes don't always work, with Rosi faring best in his usual element. The long opening of a judge examining a crypt, then being shot, is a masterful exercise in suspense, with no music or dialog and close-ups of cadavers alternating with Pasqualino de Santi's sumptuous long takes. Other scenes make similar use of spacial arrangement: a cavernous prison cell, an all-white surveillance room, the Chief Justice's ornate, tomb-like office, a creepy party where reactionaries rub shoulders with revolutionaries.
Lino Ventura plays a dogged straight man who mostly reacts and investigates. He's effective, if one-note in a role with few surprises. Better roles lie on the margins, with international stars like Fernando Rey, Renato Salvatori and Alain Cuny providing colorful character turns. Tina Aumont has an engaging part as a snide prostitute, while Luigi Pistilli plays a Communist reporter who assists Rogas. But Max von Sydow steals the show: despite limited screentime, his quietly menacing fanatic dominates every scene, a marked contrast to the oft-caricatured Rightist villains in Italian cinema.
Illustrious Corpses may lack the immediacy of Rosi's masterworks Salvatore Giuliano and The Mattei Affair, based on real-life scandals. While Corpses relies on fictional contrivance, it's nonetheless effective both as thriller and political expose. The movie ends with a cold-blooded shocker reminiscent of The Parallax View, affirming that even the most dogged investigator has limited recourse against a system rotten from the top down.
