Giulio Andreotti, was in Italian politics for 50 years and was prime minister 7 times and is now Senator for Life. He was connected to many scandals and many possible political murders. In the Italian trial of the century he was acquitted of ties to the Mafia.
This film is not a biography. It's more like a music video directed by Kubrick starring a still photo of Max Schreck as Nosferatu meant as a meditation on a caricature of a public image. The camera swirls around and pans over people sitting in opulent rooms as if we're supposed to be thinking about something other than how long until this ends.
A journalist asks him, "You're either the most cunning criminal in the country because you never got caught, or you're the most persecuted man in the history of Italy." The film assumes an answer but doesn't attempt to prove it. At one point, there's a dream sequence that stands out like the monologue in JCVD, where he confesses to 236 murders and 817 woundings and that's about it.
It's not that everyone looked alike, it's that everyone looked different. There were a ton of characters and many were introduced with title cards, but with only a couple of exceptions I'm not even sure they were ever in another scene. In Italy this must be as well known as Watergate is here, but the film makes no attempt to explain things, it's more like an opera.
Very little action was shown, it's usually another character describing events. It opens with several murders, they're given times and it's clear they are years apart and shown out of order, then you see many of them again at a later time. It's as if there's some relevance, but I'm not convinced there is.
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