Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

The Mattei Affair (1972)

Director: Francesco Rosi

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

An astonishingly powerful conspiracy thriller. Enrico Mattei, head of the state-owned oil firm AGIP and president of ENI, the man Time dubbed 'the most powerful Italian since Caesar Augustus', died in 1962 in a highly suspicious air crash. His death was followed by a wall of silence. In the light of his championship of the Italian economy against the machinations of international cartels, his death - in fact and in Rosi's masterful film - carries a sickening political inevitability. Rosi casts the film along the lines of an inquest, and pieces together not simply a picture of the man himself (Volonté, brilliantly cast), but of the dynamics of capital, the role of the media, and the traps to which the individualist hero can't help but fall prey. The Mattei Affair is Point Blank played out at the level of power politics and monopolistic economic intrigue. Essential viewing.

Author: VG 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Francesco Rosi

Producer: Franco Cristaldi

Cast: Gian Maria Volonté, Luigi Squarzina, Peter Baldwin, Franco Graziosi, Gianfranco Ombuen, Elio Jotta, Edda Ferronao full cast

Duration: 115 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.