Disorder and Chaos

Le mani sulla città (Hands over the City, 1963), Rosi’s indictment of local civic corruption, maps the labyrinthine spaces and power hierarchies of Naples, the city that exemplified for him scandalous urban developments in postwar Italy. The film, which exposes the rapacity of land speculators operating in collusion with local government, features spectacular collapse and eviction scenes that reflect Rosi’s rapport with Neapolitan theater and his aesthetic ties to Cartier-Bresson. Cadaveri eccellenti (Illustrious Corpses, 1976), adapted from Leonardo Sciascia’s Il contesto, is Rosi’s noir on the Mafia’s ascendancy to a de facto partner in national government. The film, which unfolds around a series of unsolved murders of distinguished jurists, reflects Rosi’s political unease with the “historic compromise.” To capture these political maneuverings, Rosi breaks with “documented” realism and devises a neobaroque view of the South as an iconic site of corruption, doubt, conspiracy, suspicion, and visual theatricality.