Tag Archives: franco nero

Cosa Nostra: Franco Nero in Three Mafia Tales by Damiano Damiani is the Pick of the Week

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franco nero in three mafia tales

As I return from my vacation my mind once again turns to this blog. I really don’t know what I’m doing with it anymore. I love the idea of it being this eclectic pop-cultural thing where I share shows, review movies, talk about books and music, give details on upcoming Blu-ray releases and tour dates, and whatever else I find interesting. But that takes quite a bit of time to do and I don’t always have time, or I’m too tired to do anything, or I’m just lazy. So, it winds up being this really weird hodge podge. Which is maybe ok. But for now, I’m gonna make an effort to write about a lot of stuff.

Franco Nero is an Italian actor who has been in over 200 films in his long career. He is best known for playing Django in the classic spaghetti western from 1966, but he’s performed in just about every genre ever. Django was more or less a remake of Sergio Leonne’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) which itself was more or less a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), which if you want to get technical about it was more or less an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s novel Red Harvest.

But I digress.

With his rugged good looks and his pale, blue eyes Nero made an excellent leading man in all sorts of Italian genre films throughout the 1960s and 1970s and beyond. I’ve only seen a handful of his films but I’m always excited to see his name in the credits. Radiance Films is putting out a three-film collection that stars Nero and was directed by Damiano Damiani entitled: Cosa Nostra: Franco Nero in Three Mafia Tales by Damiano Damiani. The three films in question are: The Day of the Owl, The Case is Closed, Forget It, and How to Kill a Judge. I don’t know a thing about the films except they all were made in the late 1960s to the early 1970s, are Italian, and fall loosely into the poliziotteschi genre of Italian crime films (and of course, they star Franco Nero) and that’s enough for me to make this set my pick of the week.

Also out this week that looks interesting:

Shaw Brothers Classics: Volume Two: I’ve written about the Shaw Brothers before in these pages. I’m a huge fan of their kung fu films. Shout Factory is releasing its second set of films from the studio. It contains 12 films (Lady of Steel / Brothers Five / The Crimson Charm / The Shadow Whip / The Delightful Forest / The Devil’s Mirror / Man of Iron / The Water Margin / The Bride From Hell / Heroes Two / The Flying Guillotine / The Dragon Missile) and is chock full of extras.

Asteroid City: Wes Anderson’s latest is possibly the most Wes Anderson film Wes Anderson has ever made. It is a movie within a TV show within a play, or something like that. It is weird, funny, and moving in the way his films usually are. It has a huge and magnificent cast. I can’t wait to watch it again. His movies usually (eventually) come out in deluxe sets from the Criterion Collection so I’ll probably wait on that, but it is worth checking out if you haven’t already.

Is Paris Burning?: Rene Clement directs this World War II story from a script by Gore Vidal, Francis Ford Coppola, and Marcel Moussey about a Nazi general who is given orders to destroy Paris if the Allied troops make it into the city. It is chock full of stars (Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, etc., etc., etc.) but didn’t receive particularly great reviews.

The Lincoln Lawyer: Season One: I really enjoyed the Bosch television series and I’ve been enjoying the book series it was based on. The writer, Michael Connelly, also wrote the books this series is based on and that alone is enough to make me intrigued.

Audie Murphy Collection III: Audie Murphy was one of the most decorated war heroes to come out of World War II. After the war, he become a film star. He made a lot of different movies but is best known for his westerns. Kino Lorber is releasing three more of his films (Showdown, Hell Bent for Leather, and Posse from Hell) in this regular collection of the actor.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Pope’s Exorcist (2023)

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I love going into a movie completely blind. Not knowing anything about a film before watching it can lead to beautiful surprises. It can also lead to utter befuddlement and disappointment.

The only thing I knew about The Pope’s Exorcist before watching it tonight was that it starred Russell Crowe. Well, I knew it was a horror movie, and I was pretty sure it was going to involve some exorcism, but that’s it.

Honestly, I kind of thought it was going to be about the Pope getting demon-possessed and Russel Crowe was going to save him. I didn’t really think about the details of how that might work – how the head of the Catholic Church could get possessed – but it sounded kind of cool. It still does.

But no, the title refers to the fact that Russel Crowe’s priest – Father Gabriele Amorth, who was a real person – was hired directly by the Pope and would, in fact, be his personal exorcist were he to be possessed. But that doesn’t happen here. Instead, a demon possesses a little boy (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney).

Though Amorth was a real person and he was the official exorcist for the Diocese of Rome, the actual story is completely made up. Although one could easily argue it was mostly stolen from The Exorcist (1973). The boy does all the things demon-possessed kids do in these types of movies. He curses, he blasphemes, he sexualizes his mother, turns crosses upside down, etc.

There is also a mom (Alex Essoe) and an older sister (Laurel Marsden) and a tragic backstory (the dad was killed in a car accident, the boy saw it happen). But all of that is very bland and the film doesn’t really care about any of it.

Russel Crow plays Amorth like a jokester who carries a lot of pain. His performance reminded me of his character in The Nice Guys (2016). He periodically, though not often enough, lays down these great little sly jokes. I wish they’d leaned into that aspect a lot more. I rally wish I’d watched The Nice Guys again, that movie is terrific. Mostly this film is a very serious slog.

They don’t do anything new with the possession angle, but do spend a lot of time having Amorth and his newfound buddy Priest Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto) dig up the church’s sins (the Spanish Inquisition and the child abuse scandals) and blaming them on the devil.

It all concludes in a big sloppy, CGI mess that is as incoherent as it is dumb.

Westerns in March: Django (1966)

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As the popularity of westerns began to wane in America, the Italians picked up the mantle and ran with it. A number of westerns had been produced in Europe before Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars in 1964 but it was that film that is generally credited as the first Spaghetti Western. With its distinctive visual style, unusual score by Ennio Morricone, and iconic anti-hero played by Clint Eastwood, A Fistful of Dollars set the template for all the Spaghetti Westerns to follow.

It was a huge success and naturally, numerous films came out soon after, that aped its style and tried to cash in on its success. Perhaps the most successful, both financially and artistically, was Sergio Corbucci’s Django. It was also a big success. It launched the career of Franco Nero and spawned some 30 different sequels (most of them unofficial).

It begins with our hero, Django (Nero), a former Union soldier walking alone in the wilderness somewhere along the US/Mexican border, dragging a coffin behind him. It is a magnificent image to open a film on, one of the all-time great opening images in fact. The movie ends with another indelible image, one that I won’t spoil, but it, too, is an all-timer. The film that happens in between those fantastic moments is also quite good.

Django stumbles upon a prostitute (Loredana Nusciak) about to be literally crucified upon a burning cross by some racist Red Shirts. Django shoots the men and offers the woman protection.

The two walk to a nearby town, half-deserted save for a bartender named Nathaniel (Ángel Álvarez) and a handful of prostitutes. Nathaniel tells them that the townspeople have mostly been killed off due to the feud between the Redshirts and some Mexican revolutionaries.

The plot, with Django working both sides of the fight, is very similar to A Fistful of Dollars (which itself was inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which in turn was inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s novels The Glass Key and Red Harvest.)

But first, there is a lot of discussion as to just exactly what is in that coffin he’s been dragging around. Most seem to think it holds an actual body which produces a lot of signs of the cross. His enemies often joke that he’s just being helpful, bringing his own coffin along as they are about to kill him.

But friends, and this does count as a spoiler, that thing holds one big ass machine gun. When the Red Shirts come down he hauls it out and mows them down in glorious fashion.

He works with the Mexicans for a time, but he has no interest in their politics. Like Eastwood in those Leone films, Django is a man on his own. It is frequently violent, periodically hilarious, and always cool.

It isn’t quite as stylish as Leone’s Dollars Trilogy but it is still pretty darn great. Franco Nero is terrific as Django and the score from Luis Bacalov is fantastic. It makes a terrific way for me to end my Westerns in March series.