A BUTCHER’S JOB

Umbert Lenzi, who died in 2017, left us many enjoyable gialli, poliziotteschi and cannibal movies. He also left interviewer Barend de Voogd with the memory of this particularly hot-tempered talk, during the Offscreen Film Festival in Brussels in March 2012. The day before, Lenzi had caused a row during the screening of one of his films. The moment the lights went out, he started screaming and cursing in the back of the auditorium. Nobody knew what was going on. The interview was held the morning after. Barend recalls: I was over-prepared and nervous and Lenzi was still agitated. To make matters worse, we decided to do the interview in Spanish. I can’t remember why, but it was a mistake, as we both soon worked our way through questions and answers in a mixture of English, Spanish, French and Italian. It worsened what was already starting out as a difficult interview. Minutes before, Lenzi had entered the hotel lobby, argued with one of the festival organizers, finally sat down, glanced at my notes and said…

Don’t ask me too many questions. It takes two days to talk about all my films. Let’s do something short, from the seventies on.

Eh, okay… What would interest me the most would be to talk about your action movies, the poliziotteschi.

Cop movies, basta. Poliziotteschi is a stupidity from the critics. It’s a word that doesn’t even exist.

You made…

I started with a film that was called MILANO ODIA: LA POLIZIA NON PUÒ SPARARE. But that’s wasn’t a cop movie. It was a polar, like the French did. The protagonist was a very bad man. Then came ROMA A MANO ARMATA. That was a cop movie and a film about the bad situation in our cities. It was about everything that happened in the seventies in Rome and Milano. There were French gangs, from Marseille, in Italy. So, I started with ROMA A MANO ARMATA and continued with other films.

It was based on real events?

It was based on the violence that we had in our cities in the seventies, when you could rob a bank and the police had no means. Everything was possible. You could do whatever you wanted. Somebody could just enter a bank wearing a suit and a machine gun underneath. That situation doesn’t exist anymore. There are guards outside with guns now. The banks were not secured adequately, like today. Plus, the gangsters from Marseilles imported a system to take hostages so they could get away afterwards.

Your movies are quite violent. In MILANO ODIA, for instance, there is a scene…

[Sarcastic:] Yes, it’s the most violent film in the history of Italian Cinema. So what? Let’s talk about another film.

But… like, the main character…

He’s crazy. He’s a paranoiac. He kills a lot of people, because he doesn’t understand the difference between good and evil. But the film had an extraordinary success in the cinemas. Everybody knows it’s the most violent movie ever.

What was the secret of its success?

I don’t know. I don’t know. The fact that you have a strong character in a, more or less violent film. This character, the protagonist, is strong. That’s what the people who went to the cinemas wanted to see.

Often the protagonists in your movies are cops…

This is not a cop movie, it is a polar, like I said. There is Henry Silva, who plays a cop, but the protagonist is a bandit.

Yes, but Henry Silva or Maurizio Merli played…

That’s another thing. That’s another thing. Like I was saying: the first one is a polar, like the French made. After that I started another kind of movie: cop movies, in which the cops were the protagonists and tried to stop the bad guys.

Yes, and often in doing so they break the rules.

Yes. It’s like that. It’s a general rule in cinema. Many years earlier, you might remember a film called SCARFACE by Howard Hawks, from 1932. There was a guy, played by Paul Muni, who was killed with two-thousand bullets. So, Mister Howard Hawks was a great artist, but I was a fascist. Do you get it?

Critics in your time attacked you a lot.

Yes, but I’m an artist.

How did you respond to these attacks?

Very bad. Very bad. But I have been vindicated. After twenty years the Americans, Tarantino, Joe Dante, but also Tim Burton, said these films were masterpieces. Great films. So the new critics, the new Italian critics, started to change their opinion.

I read that even one of your collaborators, Dardano Saccheti, who wrote ROMA A MANO ARMATA and I CINICO, L’INFAME, IL VIOLENTE with you, afterwards thought these films turned out too right-wing.

He’s son of a whore! Let’s keep it at that. Next question. It’s stupid. I told him what to write. He was just a kid when I made these films. A kid nobody knew. Later, he became successful because of my films. Capice? And now, now he tries to pose as somebody in leftist politics. Come on!

One of your regular actors was Maurizio Merli, who died very young.

Yes, very young, 49 years old…

How was he as an actor?

Bad. He was great, physically. He did very difficult scenes without stunt doubles. Like an American actor. American actors work, no matter the danger. Maurizio was fabulous. There is a scene in NAPOLI VIOLENTA were he is on top of a funicular. He’s shooting at the bandits inside. It was a very dangerous scene. But his reading as an actor was a bit schematic. He was, I’d say, a bit wooden. But Mauricio was a fantastic success among the public. He made a lot of money.

Your last poliziottesco was with him, no?

Yes, DA CORLEONE A BROOKLYN. It’s now out on DVD in Italy, just a week ago. I did a commentary, because the lead actors are dead, both of them. [Lenzi suddenly becomes emotional:] I’m really sorry, but the three main actors are dead: Van Johnson, Mario Merola and Maurizio Merli…

You often worked with Tomas Milian, as well. How many films did you do with him?

Six.

He was very different, I imagine.

Very different. A great actor, very creative. He had ideas and a lot of expressive possibilities, but he couldn’t fight at all. We did everything with a stunt double. Merli was very good physically, Tomas was good as an actor. He also worked with Visconti, Antonioni, Bolognini… But he was a difficult man. He had problems from his past. When he was a kid, his father killed himself with a gun in front of his eyes. That marked him for good.

He had problems with alco…

No, no, not problems! To be able to play these characters, these criminals, he had to put himself [starts laughing] both psychologically and physically in, let’s say, a particular state. So he drank half a bottle of vodka and took four very strong tranquillizers. He completely lost his head!

Did he even take directions from you?

I had problems with him, because of that. Sometimes he was completely out of his mind. It was difficult then, for me, to answer his questions. But he was a great actor. A great actor, so you forgave him everything.

He improvised a lot.

Yes! Great dialogues. [Lenzi laughingly starts ranting in Roman dialect, a dialogue scene from ROMA A MANO ARMATO].

In these times, there were a lot of other Italian directors who made cop movies as well: Sergio Martino, Fernando di Leo, Enzo Castellari…

I had no contact with them. They had no contact with me. Everyone worked on his own account.

Did you regard them as competitors?

No… There was room enough for everybody.

You also worked with a lot of American actors. John Saxon is a friend, I believe?

Yes, John Saxon is a friend. Because he’s from Italian descent and he speaks good Italian. He’s a very kind and humble guy. But I also had important actors like Joseph Cotton. He was a big star in the forties. He worked with Orson Welles. And Arthur Kennedy, who starred with Humphrey Bogart… Many, many others. I remember them well, because American actors are very professional.

And they add a little star power commercially.

No, it’s just a way to sell the movie to foreign countries. Say, the producer drew up a budget to make the film for 500.000 dollars. We’ll give 50.000 to an American actor for one week. One week, for that character, to shoot everything. So, I worked with Joseph Cotton. I looked up to him, because I’m a cinephile and I knew all his films: THE THIRD MAN, CITIZEN KANE… Later, there was Arthur Kennedy, Barry Sullivan, John Saxon, Henry Silva…

Were they difficult to direct, since they were American stars?

I had no problems. The only problem I had was with Henry Silva in MILANO ODIA. That was a complex, Italian character and he was not prepared for that. He was used to playing the killer in Hollywood and in the film of Di Leo. Playing a police chief was not easy.

Your films often feature spectacular car chases: well edited and very fast. How were these prepared? Did you storyboard them?

No, no, we didn’t know what storyboards were. We didn’t prepare. In ROMA A MANO ARMATA, what you see is real. We filmed Tomas Milian in this ambulance in the middle of all that traffic in the city, for real. The crashes we did separately, of course, on a terrain outside of town. When one car crashed into another there was no motor or gasoline in it anymore. But all the sequences of cars chasing each other through traffic, we filmed that in the city without any authorization. [Laughs:] Once I was almost taken by the police. That was for NAPOLI VIOLENTA. I had put Merli’s car in front of a crossroads and said to him: When the traffic lights go red, wait a little and when I give the signal, go! I thought he would take a little bit more time, but he went full throttle. He crossed traffic and almost hit a Volkswagen. Half a second! I recorded it. It’s in the film. We didn’t hurt anybody, but we got away as fast as we could.

Nowadays directors would use multiple cameras for these type of scenes.

I just had one. If you’re on a set and everything is prepared you can use two or three cameras, but when you’re filming in the middle of the road with a car, than you have to be real and fast. Take the scene in ROMA A MANO ARMATA, when the hunchback is driving the ambulance, chased by two police cars – those were our cars, naturally. We were filming. I was in the interior of the van, crouching down so the camera wouldn’t see me. The camera was attached to the side of the ambulance and aimed at the front: filming part of the ambulance and Tomas and part of the road. It was incredible. People were running away. Sirens blaring. Everything. So, when I turned around to film the cars chasing us at a distance: there were suddenly not two police cars, but four! No, six! The real police thought their colleagues needed help chasing us!

How did you make these action scenes feel so exciting?

In NAPOLI VIOLENTA I shot a scene with a man on a motorcycle. He had to drive real fast to escape from the police. So, I had a young man who was a world champion motor cross and I put the camera in front of him. I told him: go drive at 120 kilometres per hour, do what you want and then come back here. We changed the speed of the camera from 24 frames per second to 22. So, you see the two hands in front of him, the front part of the motorcycle and the whole of the street. He flashed past all these lorries, buses and cars without any fear. After the edit, the effect was really impressive. If you put the camera next to the wheel, at 120 or 130 kilometres per hour, you’ll feel the speed! But, hey, I’m not going to tell you all of my tricks!

Yesterday, during the screening of ROMA A MANO ARMATA, I understand you were upset because they showed the American version by accident.

Is not an American version, it’s an American carnage.

Can you explain what is wrong with it?

I haven’t seen it, I left after five minutes. It’s not an American version, it’s an illegal manipulation. Did you see my name in the credits? No? That’s what I mean!

I saw some American names in the opening credits…

Non-existing names!

Right, so I wondered what the story was with this version.

Ha! Look, there’s too many people around who see film just like merchandise. As if you buy a loaf of bread. So when the Italian producer sold the movie, the new owners thought they could do with it what they wanted. That happened to Rossellini and Antonioni as well. You can’t defend yourself. There is no worldwide legislation that protects a piece of art. In France they don’t do that, not in Belgium, not in Europe, but in the United States they do whatever they want. I don’t want to talk about it anymore, capice?! It enrages me. Why did you ask me? You know my films, don’t you see it is a butcher’s job?

[At this point, Lenzi gets angry again. Barend manages to calm him down and they end the interview. But not before Lenzi gets off one last wisecrack, referring to a very sweet Italian Christmas cake.]

Such a pity they don’t make films like yours any more in Italy.

No. Only cine Panettone!

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A small portion of this interview first appeared in the Dutch fanzine Schokkend Nieuws. Above is the whole talk, translated to English and edited only for clarity.