TSPDT

Key Production Countries: Italy, France
Key Genres: Drama, Thriller, Satire, Crime, Psychological Drama, Political Drama, Mystery, Comedy
Key Collaborators: Ruggero Mastroianni (Editor), Luigi Kuveiller (Cinematographer), Salvo Randone (Character Actor), Ugo Pirro (Screenwriter), Ennio Morricone (Composer), Gian Maria Volontè (Leading Actor), Marcello Mastroianni (Leading Actor), Tonino Guerra (Screenwriter), Flavio Bucci (Leading Character Actor), Orazio Orlando (Leading Character Actor), Piero Piccioni (Composer), Sergio Canevari (Production Designer)

"Petri used stylish visuals and a knack for finely paced storytelling to communicate his pointed social and political satire. His best films include The Tenth Victim (1965), a futuristic fantasy in which men and women are trained to kill each other for sport; Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970), an Oscar-winning parable about a Fascist police chief; and Lulu the Tool (1972), a complex and absorbing account of a factory worker's political awakening." - The Virgin International Encyclopedia of Film, 1992

"One of the most politically charged filmmakers to emerge in the European cinema of the 1960s, Elio Petri has often been overshadowed by such contemporaries as Bertolucci and Pasolini. Ripe for reexamination, his sleek oeuvre bears witness to a rare melding of Marxist ideology and cinematic sophistication. Beginning his career as a film critic for the communist newspaper L’Unità and a screenwriter and documentary maker before turning to feature films, Petri became both a master of dry, caustic humor and political outrage. Managing to craft films that were both wildly entertaining and harshly critical of modern capitalist society, he sliced deep into the heart of the Italian zeitgeist and of universal human psychology." - Harvard Film Archive, 2003

"In his brief career, Elio Petri became renowned as one of the major political filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s. He was also among the directors who achieved an international stature for the Italian cinema for the third time in its history. From his first feature, an original variation on the police thriller, he maintained a consistently high quality of style and poignant subject matter. Even with the bitterness, grotesqueness, and complexity of his films, many of them achieved a huge commercial success… Two common themes running throughout Petri’s work have been the alienation of modern man and investigations of the socio-political relationships between an individual and his/her society. Petri usually employs a highly stylistic form which he often describes as expressionist." - Elaine Mancini (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 2000)

"For Petri cinema was a tool to critique power and the structures that wield it, whether it be the police, the factory, religion, politicians, or, at times, the entire concept of capitalism and the modern Italian state." - Jason Sanders (BAMPFA, 2002)

"His nine films mainly reflect the political and social climate of industrial, middle-class Italy in the 60's and early 70's. The Assassin (1961) and Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) are the most successful, being criticisms of society by representing a corrupt police force, although they suffer from a flashy style, insistent symbolism and a superficial reading of Kafka." - Ronald Bergan (A-Z of Movie Directors, 1983)