Original poster artwork · Great Cinema Master ListOscar · 1
Spoiler-free premise
A chief of detectives, homicide section, commits a murder and deliberately leaves clues to prove his own responsibility for the crime.
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On the day he is promoted, Rome's police investigation chief murders his lover Augusta and deliberately leaves fingerprints and evidence. He then oversees the case, testing whether his institutional status places him beyond suspicion even when he invites it.
Why it belongs
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion treats authoritarian impunity as grotesque procedural satire through planted evidence, bureaucratic ritual, Morricone, and Volonté's swaggering instability.
Read expanded why it belongsThe fuller editorial case+
Fingerprints, ties, photographs, police files, reenactments, modernist offices, and Ennio Morricone's mocking theme make guilt conspicuous. Gian Maria Volonté performs power as childish exhibitionism unbroken by institutional obedience.
