The Mattei Affair

The Mattei Affair
(Il Caso Mattei)
The Mattei Affair; (Il Caso Mattei)
	Italian film poster
Directed by	Francesco Rosi
Screenplay by	Francesco Rosi; Tonino Guerra; Nerio Minuzzo; Tito Di Stefano
Story by	Francesco Rosi; Tonino Guerra
Produced by	Franco Cristaldi
Starring	Gian Maria Volonté
Cinematography	Pasqualino De Santis
Edited by	Ruggero Mastroianni
Music by	Piero Piccioni
Production; companies	Vides Cinematografica; Verona Produzione
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	May 1972 (Cannes); 20 May 1973 (New York City)
Running time	116 minutes
Country	Italy
Language	Italian

The Mattei Affair (Italian: Il Caso Mattei) is a 1972 Italian drama film directed by Francesco Rosi. It depicts the life and mysterious death of Enrico Mattei, an Italian businessman who in the aftermath of World War II managed to avoid the sale of the nascent Italian oil and hydrocarbon industry to US companies and developed them in the Eni, a state-owned oil company which rivaled the "Seven Sisters" for oil and gas deals in Northern African and Middle Eastern countries.

The film shared the Grand Prix with The Working Class Goes to Heaven at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.^[1] Italian star Gian Maria Volonté was the leading actor in both films.

The film is an innovative hybrid of documentary and fiction, representing Francesco Rosi's concept of cine-inchieste (film investigation).^{[according to whom?]} The flashback structure shows the influence of Citizen Kane and Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962).^{[according to whom?]} Rosi remains faithful to his neo-realist roots with on-location shooting and non-professional actors.^{[according to whom?]} The film is interspersed with footage of the director trying to find his friend, the investigative journalist Mauro De Mauro, who disappeared while doing research for the film.^{[citation needed]} He was killed by the Sicilian Mafia, but like the death of Mattei, De Mauro's case was never solved.^[2]

In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."^[3]

Cast[edit]

Gian Maria Volonté - Enrico Mattei
Luigi Squarzina - Journalist
Furio Colombo - assistant
Gianfranco Ombuen - Ing. Ferrari
Edda Ferronao - Mrs. Mattei
Accursio Di Leo - Sicilian important man #1
Giuseppe Lo Presti - Sicilian important man #2
Aldo Barberito - Journalist Mauro De Mauro
Dario Michaelis - Carabinieri official
Peter Baldwin - McHale (journalist)
Franco Graziosi - Minister
Elio Jotta - Head of commission
Luciano Colitti - Bertuzzi
Terenzio Cordova - Police official
Camillo Milli - Change teller
Jean Rougeul - American official
Francesco Rosi - himself

References[edit]

^ "Festival de Cannes: The Mattei Affair". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 13 April 2009.
^ Bayman, Louis (ed.) (2011). Directory of World Cinema: Italy, Intellect Books, p. 241
^ "Ecco i cento film italiani da salvare Corriere della Sera". www.corriere.it. Retrieved 11 March 2021.

External links[edit]

The Mattei Affair at IMDb

This article related to an Italian film of the 1970s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[festival-cannes.com-1] "Festival de Cannes: The Mattei Affair". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 13 April 2009.

[2] Bayman, Louis (ed.) (2011). Directory of World Cinema: Italy, Intellect Books, p. 241

[3] "Ecco i cento film italiani da salvare Corriere della Sera". www.corriere.it. Retrieved 11 March 2021.

[1]

[2]

[3]

v t e Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or
1939–1975	Union Pacific (1939) No festival held (1940–1945) Brief Encounter (1946) The Last Chance (1946) The Lost Weekend (1946) María Candelaria (1946) Men Without Wings (1946) Neecha Nagar (1946) Pastoral Symphony (1946) The Red Meadows (1946) Rome, Open City (1946) Torment (1946) The Turning Point (1946) Antoine and Antoinette (1947) Crossfire (1947) The Damned (1947) Dumbo (1947) Ziegfeld Follies (1947) No festival held (1948) The Third Man (1949) No festival held (1950) Miracle in Milan (1951) Miss Julie (1951) Othello (1951) Two Cents Worth of Hope (1952) The Wages of Fear (1953) Gate of Hell (1954) Marty (1955) The Silent World (1956) Friendly Persuasion (1957) The Cranes Are Flying (1958) Black Orpheus (1959) La Dolce Vita (1960) The Long Absence (1961) Viridiana (1961) O Pagador de Promessas (1962) The Leopard (1963) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) The Knack ...and How to Get It (1965) The Birds, the Bees and the Italians (1966) A Man and a Woman (1966) Blowup (1967) Festival cancelled while in progress (1968) if.... (1969) MASH* (1970) The Go-Between (1971) The Mattei Affair (1972) The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1972) The Hireling (1973) Scarecrow (1973) The Conversation (1974) Chronicle of the Years of Fire (1975)
1976–2000	Taxi Driver (1976) Padre Padrone (1977) The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) Apocalypse Now (1979) The Tin Drum (1979) All That Jazz (1980) Kagemusha (1980) Man of Iron (1981) Missing (1982) Yol (1982) The Ballad of Narayama (1983) Paris, Texas (1984) When Father Was Away on Business (1985) The Mission (1986) Under the Sun of Satan (1987) Pelle the Conqueror (1988) Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) Wild at Heart (1990) Barton Fink (1991) The Best Intentions (1992) Farewell My Concubine (1993) The Piano (1993) Pulp Fiction (1994) Underground (1995) Secrets & Lies (1996) The Eel (1997) Taste of Cherry (1997) Eternity and a Day (1998) Rosetta (1999) Dancer in the Dark (2000)
2001–present	The Son's Room (2001) The Pianist (2002) Elephant (2003) Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) L'Enfant (2005) The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) The Class (2008) The White Ribbon (2009) Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) The Tree of Life (2011) Amour (2012) Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) Winter Sleep (2014) Dheepan (2015) I, Daniel Blake (2016) The Square (2017) Shoplifters (2018) Parasite (2019) No festival held (2020) Titane (2021) Triangle of Sadness (2022) Anatomy of a Fall (2023)