21 MAY 1977, Page 27

Cinema

Corrupt faces

Clancy Sigal

Illustrious Corpses (Gate, ABC Fulham Road) The Lost Honour of Katherina Blum (Paris Pullman, Phoenix E. Finchley)

'Only a maniac would go around killing judges,' complains a corrupt Italian magistrate, terrified of being the fourth on the madman's list. Only a maniac — or right-wing plotters high up in the government who want to use the murders as a pretext for a coup d'etat against the left. It takes a while for a plodding but honest policeman, austerely played by Lino Ventura, to deduce that he's dealing with a major political conspiracy and not just a lone, crazed killer. Alarmed, he reports his suspicions to his police superior, who simply stares blankly at him and in front of his very eyes tears up evidence the detective has uncovered of the murdered judges' dishonesty. For it is vital to the conspirators, including the police chief, that the magistrates be held up as honourable martyrs slain by wild leftists. At the last moment, and against all his training and instincts, the apolitical detective confesses his doubts to the Communist opposition leader — and both are assassinated in the middle of tbeir talk.

Francesco Rosi's skilfully crafted study in paranoia, Illustrious Corpses (A certificate), is almost more like American conspiracy thrillers such as The Parallax View and The Conversation than his own previous semi-documentaries, Salvatore Guiliano and The Nlattei Affair. Perhaps because Rosi for the first time derives his material from a novel rather than actual events, there is a tendency for him to become preoccupied with atmosphere, with (literally) the furniture of conspiracy rather than its causes and effects. His camera lovingly plays in and out of those huge, baroque Italian apartments, lingers over catacombs filled with almost beautifully desiccated corpses, suggestively brushes up against towering closets and lush drapes. It's almost as if Rosi is involved more with the physical geometry of intrigue than with the human personnel caught in the web. The emphasis on style lends itself to a metaphysics of fear, to a vaguely brooding anxiety rooted in our (and the detective's) not knowing from quite what quarter the danger arises. But, while allowing Rosi to explore (with great visual flair, I admit) the solemn mechanics of Italianate corruption, this abstracting of politics from its specific context tends to diffuse rather than strengthen the warning which the director wants us to take to heart.

That said, Illustrious Corpses is an extremely polished and effective thriller.

Anyone who has even a smattering of Italian politics will instantly understand what Rosi really is talking about, despite his disingenuous claim that the film is 'set in an imaginary country'. Power has the same ugly face everywhere, he said in a recent interview. And the lone, honest fighter against its abuses doesn't stand a chance, his film goes on to imply. The most frightening thing is not only that the detective is murdered because he has stumbled on the truth, but that even the Communist politician refuses to take appropriate action for fear of provoking a civil war —or is it fear of disrupting the profitable alliance with the Christian Democrats?

Italian society stinks with the putrefying odour of 'illustrious corpses' — its judges, generals and senators — whose power is never greater than when their murders can be exploited to strengthen, and even take over, the state. Is this Rosi's warning to the gunmen of the revolutionary left? Or is it the elegant despair of a film-making intellectual torn between anguish at the impotence of good men in a rotten, closed society and the potential victim's paralysed fascination with the actions of his tormentor?

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (AA certificate) is also steeped in politics, this time the German public's excessive fear of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Unlike Rosi's allusive, often subtly ironic film, this one goes slam-bang after the cops and gutter press who collude to crucify an essentially innocent girl who's made the mistake of falling in love with an army deserter guilty of nothing more serious than robbing his regimental safe. Ludwig, the deserter, had badly timed his AWOL to coincide with mass hysteria about terrorists. Katharina, an almost nun-like divorcee, becomes the scapegoat. In a clinical-looking headquarters the Cologne police, pushed by the government to catch Ludwig, 'operate' on Katharina with their questions like sadistic surgeons, until she almost goes mad. After Ludwig is captured, she takes revenge for her humiliation by shooting the reporter who has hounded her.

This stark and over-drawn film, directed by Volker Schlondorff and his wife Margarethe von Trotto (who plays Katharina with quiet force) is based on a novel by Heinrich Boll. Several years ago Boll apparently was badgered by the right-wing Springer press because he pleaded for a fair trial for the BaaderMeinhofs, and his novel — and this film — is an angry response to the treatment he received. Katharina (i.e. Boll) gets obscene phone calls, threats, constant police and newspaper harassment. Her killing of her vilifiers is justified only by Schlondorff's implausible portrayal of them. I'm sure there are lots of beastly cops and ruthless journalists in West Germany; the problem is to convince us dramatically. There is an implied defence of violence 'in a good cause' — Katharina's revenge murder — which, given the source, makes me distinctly uncomfortable.