‘Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion’ or — Italian Psycho?

“How are you going to kill me this time?”

At the start we’re utterly confused. A man walks into a woman’s apartment and murders her by slitting her throat. We don’t know why but it has the feel of a sex game gone wrong. Yet something else is also obviously wrong as he is now both covering his incriminating tracks whilst leaving deliberate new ones. We are baffled as to why.

What’s even more baffling is we soon discover this man is a distinguished police inspector who has just been promoted to head of the political division. Here he’ll have access to the division’s vast array of computers, files and phone-tapping systems for monitor homosexuals, Communists and other opponents of order. So why has he committed murder and left evidence that will, as he of all people should know, incriminate him?

I won’t reveal this man’s reasons but when we discover them, around halfway through, it’s quite the shock. The guy is, obviously, a psychopath and a fascist (he claims to be a socialist and maybe he is) but is this his nature or maybe he’s the product of the system (this machine produces fascists?)? How can he find out? Is he caught in a Kafka-esque nightmare or is he the embodiment of one?

So, without giving too much away, Gian Maria Volonté’s police inspector in Elio Petri’s ‘Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion’ (1970) feels like a close cousin to ‘American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman in that he’s the embodiment of murderous psychopathology yet seems stuck in this role because the system is unable, or unwilling, to recognise this fact. Indeed, in this respect, the two films are almost identical. It is in this tension between this individual and the system he inhabits that Petri and Volonté find so much of the film’s drama and power.

And Volonté brings a HUGE amount of power to his role switching from fanatical outbursts to confusion to impotent rage and even warped heroism (we want to see him get away with it and what are the implications if he doesn’t?) with precision and skill. He is fascinating to watch on screen and he is, gloriously, constantly on screen for every single minute.

Behind the camera Petri demonstrates his typical black humour along with a tendency to give his films an almost sci-fi or slightly futuristic feel. The setting is (sort of) current day Rome but with events set almost entirely underground amongst endless rows of bureaucratic equipment and machinery the vibe is closer to Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’ (1985) with a touch of Godard’s ‘Alphaville’ (1965) — (and do you not think Volonté looks quite like Godard himself when he wears those dark glasses?). It gives everything the sense of an unnerving dream where waking is impossible; the striking production design, colour palette and cinematography ramping up this sensation of claustrophobia till you feel your chest tighten.

The implications of an ‘Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion’ are devastating and a damning critique of Italian society, past and present. Dictators, those corrupted, childish impotents, are a definite threat but they all need a complicit society in order to succeed. In fact, the society doesn’t even need to be complicit, just compliant or silent.

I was expecting ‘Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion’ (it’s all there in the title) to be excellent and it not only didn’t let me down but blew me away more than I could have hoped. It’s remarkable in its power and energy. Petri’s film has the feel of nitro sweating on the cusp of exploding; the pacing never drops and, if anything increases in a nightmare of delirium as it all builds towards its conclusion. Volonté completely inhabits his character and in such total control it feels down to the atomic level.

‘Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion’ is, quite simply, phenomenal.