‘The Case is Closed: Forget It’ or — Nero’s Finest Hour?
It wasn’t until I was halfway through Damiano Damiani’s ‘The Case is Closed: Forget It’ (1971) that I finally felt I had somewhat of a grip on the plot, what it was potentially about and where it could all possibly be going. It’s not that what had came before wasn’t engaging, interesting or riveting (it all most certainly was) but it’s only as the film progresses that we start to realise a carefully constructed game has been going on without us quite noticing. Uh-oh. Are we being set up here?
Franco Nero plays Vanzi, an architect imprisoned for a hit-and-run accident he claims he’s innocent of. As he awaits sentencing we observe Vanzi as he navigates life inside a brutal Italian prison filled with violent cellmates, corrupt guards and a dehumanising system impossible to reason with.
What’s interesting is that this initially appears to be all there is going on, that it’s nothing more than an expose of the power dynamics inside a broken institution. After all, we never see Vanzi pushing hard for his release or attempting an escape so there doesn’t seem to be much dramatic thrust. Instead, as with Damiani’s ‘The Day of the Owl’ (1968), the concentration is on character, texture, location and the structures and organisation of power.
And it’s genuinely fascinating watching these men in this isolated environment create their own society, and their attempts to fit within it, away from the external world of “normalcy”. This is a world of absurd rules, so absurd it’s frequently darkly hilarious (“If I hear another ‘In the name of the Italian people’ then no film club tomorrow!”), yet also so absurd that any potential narrative can be constructed to suit those in control.
It’s only when Vanzi is moved to another cell, on his insistence, that suspicions start thrumming away at the antennae of our qualms, yet by the time our brain has registered those warning signals we suspect a trap has already been set and that everything we’ve seen until now, all that we might have dismissed as either background noise or ignored as the random hum of prison life, has contained a clear direction and purpose.
It’s how these encroaching suspicions are played with that allows Damiani and his writers to create an environment and atmosphere of building tension (it’s like waiting in a darkened prison cell with its door left slightly open and you have no idea what may be about to enter or what it’s going to do to you) that really keeps you on your toes, something greatly enhanced by Franco Nero’s performance which could easily be the best he’s ever given with his typically icy cool demeanour gradually broken down and stripped away.
Damiani also toys with the subjectivity of the camera, something which increases that unnameable unease, an unease that’s more than just the claustrophobic incarceration we’re experiencing but also a sensation of possible manipulation. When everything does becomes clear it’s too late, protestations not only futile but self-destructive and the truth must be obliterated by those who have yearned for it most.
‘The Case is Closed: Forget It’ is excellent. It’s not just a prison drama but an energetic examination of the power of available narratives, the corruption of systems and how these can be not only used against us but also trick us into unwitting collusion. Innocence is no protection against collaboration, and that’s a truly frightening message.
