The Clockmaker Of St. Paul (1974)

When French director Bertrand Tavernier passed away recently, I was ashamed to say I’d not seen any of his movies. A number of them are on the Criterion Channel until the end of June, which gave me a timeline to at least see a few. I started with his first film, The Clockmaker Of St. […]

Street Law (1974)

Franco Nero and his moustache get into trouble in Street Law (1974) when he is taken hostage in a bank robbery. The opening credits have already spelled out that the city is rampant with robberies and murders, backed by the beautiful soundtrack work of Guido and Maurizio De Angelis (the prog-rock stoner jam of ‘Goodbye […]

Dead Pigeon On Beethoven Street (1972)

I always loved the use of Can’s ‘Vitamin C’ in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, but you know who used it first in a private eye flick way back in the 1970s? Samuel Fuller did, shooting an episode of a German crime TV anthology in West Germany (called Tartot) and spinning that into his own […]

The Big Racket (1976)

If you start watching Poliziotteschi from the 1970s, or Eurocrime movies where they attempt to go further than Dirty Harry and Death Wish, there’s always going to be some heinous shit in there in terms of the violence and sleaziness. The Big Racket (1976; Il Grande Racket) has that and more, but it is one […]

Four Nights Of A Dreamer (1971)

Potential sub-genre: movies where people wander around a city at night and find some sense of magic. Robert Bresson is a big name when it comes to Arthouse filmmakers (I’ve only seen Pickpocket) but Four Nights Of A Dreamer (1971; Quatre nuits d’un rêveur) is a title that doesn’t come up so much in discussion. […]