Cinema: Italian Crude

• Share

THE MATTEI AFFAIR

Directed by FRANCESCO ROSI Screenplay by FRANCESCO ROSI, TONINO

GUERRA, NERIO MINUZZO, TITO DE STEFANO

Within 17 years after World War II, Enrico Mattei developed the shattered Italian oil industry to a point where it ranked somewhere between a major nuisance and a minor power in the byzantine world of the international petroleum cartels. In 1962 Mattei died in a plane crash that many believe was caused by sabotage—a credible suspicion given the number of enemies (ranging from the Mafia to American oil interests) this bragging, abrasive and ingenious man had made.

Rosi's movie is a semi-documentary investigation of that crash, as dramatically formless as a pile of researcher's note cards shuffled and dealt out at random, leaving the viewer to reach whatever conclusion he pleases about the cause of Mattel's ugly demise. This formlessness dictates a film less suspenseful and, in the end, less satisfying than it might have been. It never quite pierces the surface to reach the dramatic possibilities we know to be buried in the dark depths below.

On the other hand, as played by Gian Maria Volonte (gratefully remembered as the title character in Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion), Mattei himself emerges as a fascinating enigma—proud, driven, a masterful manipulator. His sheer energy—and his peculiar sense of realism, which appears to have been a blend of cynicism and idealism—compels attention. A pioneer conglomerator, he headed a state-owned corporation and drove himself not for money (he apparently had no life, let alone luxury, outside the office), but for power and, perhaps, for love of a game in which he delightedly cast himself in the role of spoiler.

Rosi and Volonti give a persuasive portrayal of the style and manner of a furiously single-minded international businessman. Chewing out the sloppy employees of one of his motels, threatening vengeance on an American tycoon who patronizes him at a business lunch, or doing a full-scale snow job on a dubious journalist, Mattei was obviously an archetypal figure of our time. If The Mattei Affair is not quite as good in design and execution as it might have been, it is nevertheless an interesting and honorable attempt to sketch impressionistically the sort of complex personality the movies too often avoid. ∙ Richard Schickel