IMDb RATING
7.3/10
2.8K
YOUR RATING
An investigation of the judges' assassinations reveals a political background.An investigation of the judges' assassinations reveals a political background.An investigation of the judges' assassinations reveals a political background.
- Awards
- 5 wins & 6 nominations
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe title refers to a party game, Cadavres Exquis (Exquisite Corpses) invented by the French Surrealists. Each person in turn would be handed a piece of paper folded accordion fashion so that only one narrow horizontal strip showed at a time. The person would draw a section of a human body but would not know what other people had previously drawn. At the end the paper would be unfolded to show the entire body, which would be a mixture of fat and thin, young and old, male and female, etc. The title therefore means that one is not able to use what happens as any guide to what will happen next.
- ConnectionsEdited into Lo schermo a tre punte (1995)
Featured review
Hidden monsters.
Director Francesco Rosi calls ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSES "a trip through the monsters and monstrosities of power." It is a detective thriller with the format of a political expose and deals with an unseen killer whose victims are judges, public prosecutors and magistrates. Viewers who have seen Rosi's THREE BROTHERS remember that one of the episodes in that film deals with a magistrate has a nightmare in which he envisions his own murder my terrorists. In ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSES Rosi elevates the crime of assassination to a cataclysmic dimension within which a modern industrial society is dragged to the brink of collapse. It is a structurally elliptical but harrowing picture of the weaknesses in social foundations and the fragility of all government. The country the movie is set in is unspecified although it clearly seems to be Italy. Yet the film is unspecific enough to represent any nation portrayed as being on the brink of anarchy. The eerie opening is set in Palermo's Convento dei Cappuccini with its crypt of 8000 bodies, some mummified, some rotting in subterranean corridors. Rosi turns those images into a horrific metaphor of political and social transience that are the themes of this movie. In the final sequence, oceans of banner-waving Communists are cut with noisily revving tanks being readied for a rightist takeover of power. One should observe that Rosi's left-wing political biases admit only of right-wing coups as being ominous. Nevertheless, it is an unsettling finale to a remarkable and unsettling film.
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- ItalianGerry
- Dec 7, 2001
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Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Izuzetni lesevi
- Filming locations
- Agrigento, Sicily, Italy(Judge's body laid on the road: 37.3052°N, 13.5751°E)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
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