"A Ciascuno il suo" is based on the homonymous book by Leonardo Sciascia, and just like many of the author's books is an unconventional detective story aimed at unveiling the hypocrisy and immorality of Sicilian society. The story begins with a man showing his friends a few threat letters. A few days later he gets shot together with one of his friends, a chemist. The murder is filed under "honour crime" (delitto d'onore) a murder committed out of passion and jealousy, and a peasant is convicted for it. Gian Maria Volonté is an awkward school professor who believes in the peasant's innocence, and decides to investigate the crime. His infatuation with the beautiful wife of the victim also plays a part in his decision to solve the mystery. As the story unveils, he will discover unpleasant truths, but will continue with the investigation despite all dangers. Volonté is as formidable as always, changing his accent and posture to fit the part. But the real protagonist is the Sicilian landscape in all its harsh brightness. The cinematography is such that we can almost feel the wind, the sun and the dryness of the air. When I first watched this film I wondered whether anyone who was not Sicilian or familiar with Sciascia's writing would understand all its complexity, but Elio Petri does a masterful job in transposing the book.
11 Reviews
A Sicilain tragicomedy and murder mystery
PimpinAinttEasy17 September 2015
Warning: Spoilers
A tragicomic murder mystery set in Sicily with a stellar cast - Volante, Irene Papas and Gabriele Ferzetti.
A womanizing pharmacist receives a death threat in a letter full of alphabets cut out from a newspaper. Soon, the pharmacist and a professor friend are murdered while on a hunting trip. The brothers of one of the pharmacist's lovers is blamed for what everyone believes to be a honor killing.
But their friend, a bumbling leftist professor (played by Volante) thinks there is more to the murders and embarks on an investigation. He becomes suspicious because the letter contained alphabets cut out of an obscure and little read catholic newspaper that the illiterate peasant brothers of the girl could not have subscribed to. After he embarks on his own investigation, the leftist professor falls in love with the beautiful femme fatale Irene Pappas who plays the wife of the murdered professor.
The guilty parties are revealed at the beginning of the film itself but Volante's character seems to be completely oblivious. I heard a podcast which suggests that the film is critical of the gullibility and intellectual posturing of the Italian left. Volante's character is representative of the left - he is the only person who does not seem to know what is going on in a society that seems to be complicit in the murders.
The film is nice to look at. The heat and dust of Sicily really comes through in the visuals.
A great Luis Bacalov score is used to great effect especially during the aerial shots of Sicily. It is a melancholic tune but there are playful versions of the score too.
The appreciation of a film like this requires some understanding of the political context about which I was completely oblivious. It is not a Hitchcockian murder mystery if that is what you're looking for. I watched it because I am a fan of Volante and Petri.
(7/10)
A womanizing pharmacist receives a death threat in a letter full of alphabets cut out from a newspaper. Soon, the pharmacist and a professor friend are murdered while on a hunting trip. The brothers of one of the pharmacist's lovers is blamed for what everyone believes to be a honor killing.
But their friend, a bumbling leftist professor (played by Volante) thinks there is more to the murders and embarks on an investigation. He becomes suspicious because the letter contained alphabets cut out of an obscure and little read catholic newspaper that the illiterate peasant brothers of the girl could not have subscribed to. After he embarks on his own investigation, the leftist professor falls in love with the beautiful femme fatale Irene Pappas who plays the wife of the murdered professor.
The guilty parties are revealed at the beginning of the film itself but Volante's character seems to be completely oblivious. I heard a podcast which suggests that the film is critical of the gullibility and intellectual posturing of the Italian left. Volante's character is representative of the left - he is the only person who does not seem to know what is going on in a society that seems to be complicit in the murders.
The film is nice to look at. The heat and dust of Sicily really comes through in the visuals.
A great Luis Bacalov score is used to great effect especially during the aerial shots of Sicily. It is a melancholic tune but there are playful versions of the score too.
The appreciation of a film like this requires some understanding of the political context about which I was completely oblivious. It is not a Hitchcockian murder mystery if that is what you're looking for. I watched it because I am a fan of Volante and Petri.
(7/10)
Sicily - Where nobody sees nothing, ever.
Bezenby3 March 2019
Gian Marie Volonte's got himself into some hot water this time! Doesn't he know that in Sicily, if someone gets murdered, you just keep your trap shut and let whoever the police randomly arrest go to jail?
Luigi Pistilli keeps getting letters telling him he's a dead man, and its making him a bit paranoid. Nevertheless, one morning he says goodbye to his wife, then his lover, and sets off with his friend to go hunting, only to find himself the prey. Two corpses later, we've got a bit Sicilian funeral to go to while the police chat about the people attending, including a well-respected lawyer (Gabriele Ferzetti) who's cousin (Irene Papas) was married to one of the victims, and Gian Marie Volonte, a professor friend of the two who starts poking in places that should not be poked.
Pistilli is generally thought to be the target as he was a bit of a fanny rat and some family members are arrested, but they are all illiterate so how could they cobble together those threatening letters. Volonte also finds that the words in the letter were from a Vatican-based newspaper, which leads him to the priesthood. Oh, and a lot of people are related in this film, so one of the priests is the uncle of Papas and Ferzetti.
It's a formula you'll see a lot of in these films, so it's just as well the lead actors are good! Volonte has the hots for the widow Papas and has to basically restrain himself every times he meets her, while Papas kind of has the hots for him too, leading to all kinds of awkward moments. Volonte is very good at the bookish professor who is just too smart and curious for his own good, while Papas just smoulders as the widow.
It looks absolutely scorching hot in Sicily in this film, and just like Damiano Damiani's Day of the Owl, the island itself is a character, with all the strange culture that lives on its land.
The only let down of the film is that the plot is a bit predictable, but it's by no means a bad film.
Luigi Pistilli keeps getting letters telling him he's a dead man, and its making him a bit paranoid. Nevertheless, one morning he says goodbye to his wife, then his lover, and sets off with his friend to go hunting, only to find himself the prey. Two corpses later, we've got a bit Sicilian funeral to go to while the police chat about the people attending, including a well-respected lawyer (Gabriele Ferzetti) who's cousin (Irene Papas) was married to one of the victims, and Gian Marie Volonte, a professor friend of the two who starts poking in places that should not be poked.
Pistilli is generally thought to be the target as he was a bit of a fanny rat and some family members are arrested, but they are all illiterate so how could they cobble together those threatening letters. Volonte also finds that the words in the letter were from a Vatican-based newspaper, which leads him to the priesthood. Oh, and a lot of people are related in this film, so one of the priests is the uncle of Papas and Ferzetti.
It's a formula you'll see a lot of in these films, so it's just as well the lead actors are good! Volonte has the hots for the widow Papas and has to basically restrain himself every times he meets her, while Papas kind of has the hots for him too, leading to all kinds of awkward moments. Volonte is very good at the bookish professor who is just too smart and curious for his own good, while Papas just smoulders as the widow.
It looks absolutely scorching hot in Sicily in this film, and just like Damiano Damiani's Day of the Owl, the island itself is a character, with all the strange culture that lives on its land.
The only let down of the film is that the plot is a bit predictable, but it's by no means a bad film.
The more you know, the more you are in danger.
susanascot10 May 2002
Paolo Laurana is a kind of leftist intellectual who chances to be intrigued by a mysterious double murder in the Sicily of mid Sixties. In his personal detection for murder's instigators, he will run into a plot in which both politicians and mafia racketeers are involved. So curiosity will become a very dangerous affair. Taken from a novel by Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989), A ciascuno il suo (1967) is a film where high rank acting is at its top. Cast (Gianmaria Volonté, Irene Papas, Gabriele Ferzetti, Salvo Randone, Luigi Pistilli. Mario Scaccia, Leopoldo Trieste) is perfect and well-combined, direction (Elio Petri, 1929-1982) is powerful and impressive. If compared to the novel, Elio Petri's film (written with Ugo Pirro) may seem short of that illuministic pessimism that breathes through Sciascia's books, but Laurana's rationalistic search for truth retains that `bitter taste of intelligence' which is one of the major feature of Sciascia's characters. A key film to understand historical condition of Italy in the Sixties.
My misfortune was to pick this film to watch the night after watching, Illustrious Corpses
christopher-underwood10 November 2013
This is a good, solid, beautifully photographed crime thriller. My misfortune was to pick this film to watch the night after watching, Illustrious Corpses. Now that Italian political crime thriller made in 1976 and based upon a book by Leonardo Sciascia is a near faultless classic with deep undertones and a broad scope that is simply a joy to watch. This, it turns out, is another film based upon another book by Leonardo Sciascia from 1967. How much more sensible it would have been to watch this one first. The thing is there is nothing wrong with this film except it is also about too easily explained killings that the lead character sets out to investigate and in the process overturns a hornets' nest, but there is much less action, intrigue and politics. Gian Maria Velonte is excellent as the professor who takes it upon himself to get involved when most people seem not to care. Interestingly this was the film that helped to lift this actor into more 'serious' films, after having made many spaghetti westerns, one of the last being face to Face also from 1967 when he also played a professor.
The Deadly Game of Searching for the Truth
Eumenides_025 August 2010
Warning: Spoilers
Elio Petri's We Still Kill The Old Way opens with a beautiful aerial shot of Sicily that establishes the importance of the island's natural landscape to the story. Wherever characters go, the sea or Mount Pellegrino always appear behind them. It's a beautiful landscape, mocking all the ugliness bubbling in its urban centres.
The town pharmacist, Manno (Luigi Pistilli – fans of Spaghetti Westerns will immediately recognize his face) receives a letter threatening him of death. It's the sixth that month and he's still alive so he doesn't take it seriously. But the next day, during a hunting trip he and his friend, Prof. Roscio (Salvo Randone), are murdered.
We could say that one of the film's theme is indifference. Most people seem indifferent to the double homicides. They certainly regret the death of Prof. Roscio, which was probably accidental, a typical example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are no regrets for Manno, the town philanderer. You mess with another man's wife, you get old-fashioned justice. When the relatives of a young girl Manno was seeing are arrested, the case seems closed. No point asking more questions. As Jack Nicholson says in Chinatown, let sleeping dogs lie.
Paolo Laurana (Gian Maria Volonté) refuses to let sleeping does lie and starts investigating. An intellectual loner and leftist sympathiser, Laurana, a teacher, is different from his townsfolk. Analysing one of the death letters, he discovers the letters were cut from the L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper. Knowing that the suspects are illiterate and discovering that very few people receive this newspaper in town, he continues his investigation to have the men freed.
His investigation makes him to grow close to Luisa Roscio (Irene Pappas), the deceased's widow, and her cousin, the lawyer Rosello (Gabriele Ferzetti), who's taken the defense of the suspects. Through Luisa, Laurana discovers that Prof. Roscio was actually the target and the death threats against Manno just a pretext. It seems the professor had discovered evidence that someone important in town was involved in corrupt businesses.
The story is sadly predictable and takes us through a web of intrigues involving the clergy, the senate, the town's influential men, and possibly the Mafia (although the word itself is never spoken). It's the typical story of a naïve man who stumbles upon corruption and dark secrets in an apparently idyllic place. How much of the story's weakness is due to the original novel by Leonardo Sciascia or the adaptation by Petri, Ugo Pirro and Jean Curtelin, is anyone's guess. But Sciascia, a celebrated author in Italy, did express disappointment over the screenplay.
The strength of the movie lies in the cast. Gian Maria Volonté is unstoppable and perfectly captures Laurana's naïveté and aloofness. He's an erudite person but inattentive, incapable of seeing what goes on around him. This flaw is his doom and leads directly to the climax, the best part of the story, an act of betrayal so unexpected and emotionally cruel that I was heartbroken for Laurana.
Irene Pappas also gives a fine performance as the widow Luisa (funny, in every movie I've seen her she always plays a widow. In defence of her lack of variety, she does look great in black). Less expansive than Volonté, Pappas acts mostly with her vivid eyes, revealing a personality that has little to say but is always calculating. Her expression of uncertainty and regret at the end of the movie, which is also the beginning of her wedding, encapsulates her character's essence and, like the beautiful landscape that contrasts with the horrible crimes, is at odds with the finale's festive tone.
Elio Petri, Gian Maria Volonté and Ugo Pirro met for the first time in this movie. So it's of historical curiosity to their fans. Although they went on to make masterpieces together, the simplistic We Still Kill The Old Way is not to be sneered at, even if it tastes like a mere appetiser for their future successes.
The town pharmacist, Manno (Luigi Pistilli – fans of Spaghetti Westerns will immediately recognize his face) receives a letter threatening him of death. It's the sixth that month and he's still alive so he doesn't take it seriously. But the next day, during a hunting trip he and his friend, Prof. Roscio (Salvo Randone), are murdered.
We could say that one of the film's theme is indifference. Most people seem indifferent to the double homicides. They certainly regret the death of Prof. Roscio, which was probably accidental, a typical example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are no regrets for Manno, the town philanderer. You mess with another man's wife, you get old-fashioned justice. When the relatives of a young girl Manno was seeing are arrested, the case seems closed. No point asking more questions. As Jack Nicholson says in Chinatown, let sleeping dogs lie.
Paolo Laurana (Gian Maria Volonté) refuses to let sleeping does lie and starts investigating. An intellectual loner and leftist sympathiser, Laurana, a teacher, is different from his townsfolk. Analysing one of the death letters, he discovers the letters were cut from the L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper. Knowing that the suspects are illiterate and discovering that very few people receive this newspaper in town, he continues his investigation to have the men freed.
His investigation makes him to grow close to Luisa Roscio (Irene Pappas), the deceased's widow, and her cousin, the lawyer Rosello (Gabriele Ferzetti), who's taken the defense of the suspects. Through Luisa, Laurana discovers that Prof. Roscio was actually the target and the death threats against Manno just a pretext. It seems the professor had discovered evidence that someone important in town was involved in corrupt businesses.
The story is sadly predictable and takes us through a web of intrigues involving the clergy, the senate, the town's influential men, and possibly the Mafia (although the word itself is never spoken). It's the typical story of a naïve man who stumbles upon corruption and dark secrets in an apparently idyllic place. How much of the story's weakness is due to the original novel by Leonardo Sciascia or the adaptation by Petri, Ugo Pirro and Jean Curtelin, is anyone's guess. But Sciascia, a celebrated author in Italy, did express disappointment over the screenplay.
The strength of the movie lies in the cast. Gian Maria Volonté is unstoppable and perfectly captures Laurana's naïveté and aloofness. He's an erudite person but inattentive, incapable of seeing what goes on around him. This flaw is his doom and leads directly to the climax, the best part of the story, an act of betrayal so unexpected and emotionally cruel that I was heartbroken for Laurana.
Irene Pappas also gives a fine performance as the widow Luisa (funny, in every movie I've seen her she always plays a widow. In defence of her lack of variety, she does look great in black). Less expansive than Volonté, Pappas acts mostly with her vivid eyes, revealing a personality that has little to say but is always calculating. Her expression of uncertainty and regret at the end of the movie, which is also the beginning of her wedding, encapsulates her character's essence and, like the beautiful landscape that contrasts with the horrible crimes, is at odds with the finale's festive tone.
Elio Petri, Gian Maria Volonté and Ugo Pirro met for the first time in this movie. So it's of historical curiosity to their fans. Although they went on to make masterpieces together, the simplistic We Still Kill The Old Way is not to be sneered at, even if it tastes like a mere appetiser for their future successes.
We Still Kill The Old Way (Elio Petri, 1967) ***
Bunuel197620 January 2009
Goodish blend of Mafia movie (still pretty much uncharted territory at the time) and political thriller, with a hesitant romance thrown in for good measure; the result is generally absorbing, thanks largely to uniformly excellent performances, gleaming location photography (Sicily, of course) and a wonderful score by the ever-reliable Luis Enrique Bacalov. Heading the cast is Gian Maria Volonte': the film launched the political/social conscience phase of his career after a stint doing Spaghetti Westerns. His character is that of an intellectual loner who finds himself in over his head when he starts probing into the assassination of two friends including philanderer Luigi Pistilli which leads to his falling for the other's wife (Irene Papas). Though the identity of the villain (as ever, an eminent member of the community and far closer to the hero than he envisaged) comes as no real surprise, the investigation involving, among other things, the hushed participation of cleric and senator alike and the disquieting revelations that emerge from it, lends the whole a deeply cynical tone (culminating in the downbeat climax depicting Volonte''s own extreme fate) while cementing the Mafia's reputation as strictly a 'family business'. The Italian DVD includes an interesting half-hour featurette detailing the making and reception of the award-winning film (including the fact that the author of the source novel, Leonardo Sciascia, was dissatisfied with how the script turned out); the interviewees are co-scriptwriter Ugo Pirro, the wife of the late Elio Petri, and composer Bacalov (who is regretful that, given his felicitous working relationship with the director here, the opportunity never arose for another collaboration).
A subtle and clever intrigue of fear, power and clamming-up
VanDerGraafCamel17 February 2006
At the beginning of the movie a pharmacist receives an anonymous letter that threatens him of death. And the murder actually happens. Seems very simple but nothing is what it seems and the journey to the truth will be long and difficult. The book is excellent and the movie is at par with it and very faithful to the romance. Great direction. Incredible cast with Gabriele Ferzetti in his best interpretation together with the one in "C'era una volta il West" and Gianmaria Volonté simply beyond reach as always. Many other great actors. Yes I am an enthusiast 'cause there's not a word or a shot out of place in this movie and the plot is ingenious. Who is going to see this film for the first time will be taken away by the developments (the pace seems to be calm but looking in between the kinks you may realize that many things are going rapidly on). Trying to figure out what is the kernel of the happenings and the "reasons" for the murder is a very interesting exercise but it's highly unlikely for the spectator not to experience a big surprise at the end. In my opinion Elio Petri at his best (I mean at the same level of his other masterwork: La classe operaia va in Paradiso).
To each his own.
brogmiller1 February 2024
This marks the first collaboration between director Elio Petri, writer Ugo Pirro and actor Gian Maria Volonte which was to bear fruit in the extraordinary 'Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto' and is loosely adapted from the novel by Leonardo Scascia who was again to provide the source material for Rosi's stupendous 'Cadaveri Eccellenti'.
Scascia's novel was inspired by the assassination of a policeman by the Mafia and here Petri and his cinematographer Luigi Kuveiiller have created a striking contrast between the ravishing Sicilian scenery and the all-pervading corruption although there is perhaps a little too much use made of the 'zoom'.
Excellent script and taut editing with strong performances from Volonte, Gabriele Ferzetti, both of whom were awarded Silver Ribbons, the striking Irene Papas whose role does not really do justice to her talents and a marvellous cameo by Petri regular Salvo Randone as a blind oculist!
Petri's customary Left-leaning social criticism is in evidence here but what should have been a top class film is alas, for this viewer at any rate, weakened by imperfect post-synchronisation and some distinctly dodgy dubbing. The genius of Ennio Morricone is conspicuous by its absence here as the score by Luis Bacalov is intrusive, badly integrated and undermines rather than underlines the film's effectiveness.
Scascia's novel was inspired by the assassination of a policeman by the Mafia and here Petri and his cinematographer Luigi Kuveiiller have created a striking contrast between the ravishing Sicilian scenery and the all-pervading corruption although there is perhaps a little too much use made of the 'zoom'.
Excellent script and taut editing with strong performances from Volonte, Gabriele Ferzetti, both of whom were awarded Silver Ribbons, the striking Irene Papas whose role does not really do justice to her talents and a marvellous cameo by Petri regular Salvo Randone as a blind oculist!
Petri's customary Left-leaning social criticism is in evidence here but what should have been a top class film is alas, for this viewer at any rate, weakened by imperfect post-synchronisation and some distinctly dodgy dubbing. The genius of Ennio Morricone is conspicuous by its absence here as the score by Luis Bacalov is intrusive, badly integrated and undermines rather than underlines the film's effectiveness.
Unimpressive Cannes winner
JuguAbraham27 March 2020
Midway Between a Mafia Thriller and Sentimental Comedy
giulipp14 April 2003
Although drawn from a powerful novel by Leonardo Sciascia, this results in an oversimplified, well-meaning social mystery set in 1965 Sicily, where two men are killed during a hunting party. A leftist professor (Gian Maria Volonté, a much better actor in the later Petri offering "Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto") decides to investigate the murders, only to find himself entangled in a spiderweb of corrupt politicians, "mafiosi" killers and sinister Church connections: the anonymous letters received by the victims - and, in due time, by the professor himself - were made with clippings from the Vatican newspaper "L'Osservatore Romano". There is also a fascinating dark lady character, a victim's widow, played by the splendid Irene Papas, whose black-stockinged legs wink through the whole film to the shy, undecided professor. When he resolves to take the woman, in a love scene near the end of the movie, it is unfortunately too late... The film can still be seen with some fun, but it's far from a serious rendition of the novel and it's not perhaps among the best Mafia movies made in Italy at the time. It's curious to note how so-called "spaghetti westerns", for instance, were often much more effective in describing corrupt politicians and Mafia-governed southern towns than their "mainstream" counterpart, like this typically engagé movie. I found also irritating the use of Cinemascope combined with low angles, continuous camera movements and extremely close shots, so that the narrative pace is fragmented and, more often than not, disturbed.
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