Assassin [L’Assassino] (Arrow Academy) (DVD / Blu-Ray Combo)

THE LADYKILLER OF ROME

 

Released within months of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Antonioni’s La Notte, Elio Petri’s dazzling first feature The Assassin (L’Assassino) also stars Marcello Mastroianni, this time as dandyish thirtysomething antiques dealer Alfredo Martelli, arrested on suspicion of murdering his older, far wealthier lover Adalgisa (Micheline Presle).  But as the increasingly Kafkaesque police investigation proceeds, it becomes less and less important whether Martelli actually committed the crime as his entire lifestyle is effectively put on trial.

 

Best known for Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and The Tenth Victim, Petri was one of the finest and yet most underrated Italian directors of the 1960s and 70s.  Highly acclaimed on its original release but unjustly neglected since, The Assassin is a remarkably assured debut from one of the cinema’s sharpest chroniclers of Italian social and political realities.  Petri said that he wanted to reflect the changes wrought by the early sixties, and to examine “a new generation of upstarts who lacked any kind of moral scruple”.

 

Arrow Academy is proud to present The Assassin in a gorgeous high-definition restoration created by the Cineteca di Bologna.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

2K digital restoration from the Cineteca di Bologna
Uncompressed Mono 2.0 PCM Audio
Elio Petri and L’Assassino, an introduction by Italian cinema expert Pasquale Iannone
Tonino Guerra: A Poet in the Movies: Nicola Tranquillino’s documentary about the great Italian screenwriter
Theatrical Trailer
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw

 

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Booklet featuring writing on the film by Petri expert Camilla Zamboni, Petri’s own critical analysis of 1950s Italian cinema, plus a selection of contemporary reviews

 

Region: A/1

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 97 mins

Language: Italian

Subtitles: English

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Audio: Mono

Colour

Discs: 2