Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the '70s

EUROCRIME - The Italian Cop and Gangster Movies that ruled Italy all through the 1970's was also a decade known for real life terrorism in Italy, especially with the creation of LA BRIGADA ROSSA. ( The Red Brigade ), let alone the existence of many branches of the MAFIA, GOMMORAH or COSA NOSTRA! The Country was in turmoil all augmented by a proliferation of every type crime/gangster film one could get on the silver screen.

After the death of the SPAGHETTI WESTERN, Italian cinema (aside its very outstanding world cinema which won Italy 23 Oscars for Foreign Film) started to concentrate on any and all genre of "cops and robbers" films, crime wave movies that were hardly the refined films that were coming out of Hollywood. However, they started having enormous success as many of the stars were American ex-patriots like John Saxon, Joe D'Allessandro, Henry Fonda, Franco Nero, Chris Mitchum, Henry Silva, Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance and a whole host of stars unable to get regular work in the U. S. Imagine the violence of Hollywood films and triple it... that's what one was getting in Italy with these cheap imitations that often had the Mafia involved, but not as a rule. How Italians could tolerate up to 500 of these violent "poliziotteschi" ( cop films) per years literally boggles the mind.

That is now all in the past. It's an unbelievable era that lasted from the creation of the Spaghetti Western in the 60's and went into the 1980's before burning itself out completely. My one positive note in all this mayhem would be that many films, not the majority, were addressing very distinct Italian issues like the Sicilian Mafia or the notorious RED BRIGADE! I HAPPEN TO LOVE RETROSPECTIVES OF ALL KIND. BUT THERE IS A LIMIT!!! There was so much material available for this particular retrospective that director Mike Malloy could have turned out one horrendous mess or disaster. To his credit, he did categorize things quite well. EVEN WITH THAT, I DID NOT ENJOY THE DOCUMENTARY EVEN A BIT. It's simply not my type of material. I've never glorified violence of any type and I'm certainly not going to validate this documentary though it hails from the country in which I was born. It was the worst of times in Italy!