Strategies of Tension: Towards a Reinterpretation of Enzo G. Castellari’s The Big Racket and The Italian Crime Film

Abstract

In this chapter I will be using Enzo G. Castellari’s 1976 film, The Big Racket/Il grande racket as a case study in order to question traditional critical interpretations of the poliziesco – a short-lived but highly successful cycle of well over 100 crime films produced in Italy between 1972 and 1979. The poliziesco can be considered the direct heir of the Spaghetti Western for three reasons: firstly, because its rise coincided with the Spaghetti Western’s decline; secondly, because virtually all of the filmmakers and actors responsible for the poliziesco came directly from a background working on Spaghetti Westerns; and thirdly, because it borrowed many of the narrative and stylistic conventions of the Spaghetti Western and relocated them to a contemporary Italian setting. Like the Western the poliziesco features an isolated hero who uses violence to bring order to a corrupt world in a contemporary restaging of the classic ‘hero myth’.