| The Mattei Affair (Il Caso Mattei) | |
|---|---|
 Italian film poster | |
| Directed by | Francesco Rosi |
| Screenplay by | Francesco Rosi Tonino Guerra Nerio Minuzzo Tito Di Stefano |
| Story by | Francesco Rosi Tonino Guerra |
| Produced by | Franco Cristaldi |
| Starring | Gian Maria Volonté |
| Cinematography | Pasqualino De Santis |
| Edited by | Ruggero Mastroianni |
| Music by | Piero Piccioni |
Production companies | Vides Cinematografica Verona Produzione |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 116 minutes |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
The Mattei Affair (Italian: Il Caso Mattei) is a 1972 Italian drama film directed by Francesco Rosi. It depicts the life and mysterious death of Enrico Mattei, an Italian businessman who in the aftermath of World War II managed to avoid the sale of the nascent Italian oil and hydrocarbon industry to US companies and developed them in the Eni, a state-owned oil company which rivaled the "Seven Sisters" for oil and gas deals in Northern African and Middle Eastern countries.
The film shared the Grand Prix with The Working Class Goes to Heaven at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.[1] Italian star Gian Maria Volonté was the leading actor in both films.
The film is an innovative hybrid of documentary and fiction, representing Francesco Rosi's concept of cine-inchieste (film investigation).[2] The flashback structure shows the influence of Citizen Kane and Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962).[2] Rosi remains faithful to his neo-realist roots with on-location shooting and non-professional actors. The main plot is interwoven with a fictionalized account of the director's own investigation into the death of his friend, the journalist Mauro De Mauro, who disappeared while doing research for the film.[3] He was killed by the Sicilian Mafia, but like the death of Mattei, De Mauro's case was never solved.[4]
In 2008, the film was included among the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."[5]
- ^ "Festival de Cannes: The Mattei Affair". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 13 April 2009.
- ^ a b John Patterson "Made in Italy", The Guardian, 14 February 2009
- ^ Carlo Lucarelli, novelist, makes use of Italy's unsolved crimes Archived 23 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, 23 October 2007
- ^ Bayman, Louis (ed.) (2011). Directory of World Cinema: Italy, Intellect Books, p. 241
- ^ "Ecco i cento film italiani da salvare Corriere della Sera". www.corriere.it. Retrieved 11 March 2021.