Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion asks the question – “Are some people free from suspicion simply because of who they are and the rank they hold?”
When a police chief recently promoted to a special division kills his mistress and purposefully leaves behind clues that could incriminate him, he finds himself exempt from suspicion. Those who do question his connections to the crime find that the power he wields can quickly have them dismissed as fools, radicals, or criminals.
Scant time is spent exploring the unnamed police chief’s behavior. Does he want to get caught? Is he trying to see just how much he can get away with? Is he simply flexing his power? Was everything done simply to fix his fractured male ego, upset by finding his lover with a young political radical? Does it really matter what drives this one individual? Do all positions of power create a loophole of legality allowing some to operate free questioning; free from justice?
Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1971. Today, the film in unavailable on VHS or DVD in the United States of America. Whether or not the film is worthy of such a coveted prize is open to argument. It’s lack of availability is however, curious.
This means more than it may seem to. We live at a time when morning news shows are giddy with speculation about whether a cop in Chicago has been behind the deaths of two of his wives. While further up the legal ladder scandals erupt weekly from the White House. Be it the badge wearing detective to top members of the executive branch, we continue to find a questionable lot who pressume that their positions of power allow them to operate above the law. A film about a police chief who gets away with murder simply because he is above suspicion is as timely now as it was then, perhaps more so.
I gather that the lack of interest in this film that has kept it from the U.S. DVD market reflects the lack of interest most Americans have in knowing the truth about the Bush administration’s abuse of power. We do not want to suspect those sworn to protect us of being criminal, but it is this willful blindness that sits as the central theme of Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion. Even when the unsuspected suspect leaves behind a damning trail of evidence it is much easier to overlook and excuse than to accept the grim truth.
I do wish that I am merely ignorant of some company’s plans to properly release this picture stateside. I was rather shocked to discover that a film awarded an Academy Award would slide into oblivion. My first knowledge of the film came from hearing a rendition of the movies theme music. Written by the famous and prolifics composer Ennio Morricon the music for this film highlight the odd mix of political seriousness, sexual perversion, and unexpected humor that arises in the film. The movie’s look and feel, its energy and its attitude, thoroughly root it in the early seventies. Even with its plot tangled in sexual affairs, mod fashion, and youthful radicalism, the central philosophical question of the corrupting nature of power and a society’s need to suspect corruption are just a problematic today.
Accept Your Curse 