Directed by: Lina Wertmuller
With: Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato
Duration: 129 mins

Winner – Best Actor – 1973 Cannes Film Festival.

Italy in the 1930s: during the high days of fascism. A humble and mild mannered peasant-activist named Tunin is entrusted with the dangerous political mission of killing Benito Mussolini. Once in Rome, Tunin takes up reseidence in the city’s most decadent and sumptuous brothel run by Salomè (Mariangela Melato), another anti-Mussolinite. His resolve to carry out the assassination is soon weakened by his love for one of Salome’s prostitutes, Tripolina, as well as his own essentially gentle nature. Even so, the film ends with a burst of violence, motivated less by politics than by personalities.

Passion, in its various forms, does not mix with politics; and nowhere is this clearer than in Wertmuller's marvelous study, a giddy and incisive portrait of human emotions that builds to a fever pitch.

Digital Presentation
Not screening in Canberra