Two years before the cult movie The beast kills in cold blood (1971), Apulian director Fernando Di Leo, now called a master of film noir, wrote and directed The boys of the massacre, a crime-thriller genre film based on the works of writer Giorgio Scerbanenco. Considered one of the best Italian noirs, The boys of the massacre is a film about youth discomfort (a theme also addressed in the erotic-drama Loving each other badly), about alcohol use and violence. Topics, these, that mask a deep existential malaise.
With The boys of the massacre Fernando Di Leo sheds light on the latter point namely, the malaise of living, an unease that fuels pessimistic thoughts and violent instincts, the latter depicted with extreme rawness in the interminable violence that takes place at school, inside a classroom, where a teacher is assaulted by her students under the influence of "anise lactescente" (a superalcoholic drink).
Shot with originality (with frenetic camera movements) and without ever falling into explicit or vulgarity, this gang rape sequence symbolizes the degradation of society in which boys from disadvantaged families become puppets in the hands of those who exercise control over them. From that moment on, in fact, the story gives way to a string of interrogations held by Commissioner Duca Lamberti (played by a great Pier Paolo Capponi), who will put the perpetrators, here transformed into the subjects of a real psychosocial investigation, under the microscope.
Skilled in bringing abuses of power to the stage with ruthlessness, with The boys of the massacre Fernando Di Leo shows the rotten side of a youth with no future. This is a stark film, ahead of its time, which is striking in the harshness of its themes.
The boys of the massacre it also remains memorable thanks to good pacing and an apt choice of a very credible youth cast (the boys are said to have been real underdogs) whose faces the director often frames with frequent, carefully crafted close-ups typical of spaghetti westerns.
Plot: In Milan, a young teacher at an evening school is brutalized and murdered by her students during a lesson. Commissioner Duca Lamberti (Pier Paolo Capponi) is in charge of the case, and he puts the boys under the microscope with very close interrogations. During the investigation the man discovers that each of them has maladjustment problems and leads a life on the edge of legality. Having earned the trust of one of the boys, Lamberti will deepen the investigation, convinced that the crime hides another truth.
The cast includes Pier Paolo Capponi, Nieves Navarro, Marzio Margine, Renato Lupi, Vincenzo Liberti, Danika La Loggia, Jean Rougeul, and Anna Maria La Rovere.
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Distributed by CG Entertainment, The boys of the massacre is available on DVD (RaroVideo/CG label) from July 11, 2019. The proposed edition contains a rich section dedicated to special contents: Audio commentary by Pier Paolo Capponi, Manlio Gomarasca; "Those Good Men," documentary; Original trailer; Photo gallery; Original screenplay; Filmographies.
DVD EDITION.:
VIDEO: 16/9
DURATION: 90′
AUDIO: Italian Dolby Digital 2.0, English Dolby Digital 2.0
N. DISKS: 1
OVERVIEW: English
