Number One (1973 film)

Number One is an Italian language film directed by Gianni Buffardi in 1973. It starred Renzo Montagnani, Luigi Pistilli, Claude Jade, Chris Avram, Guido Mannari, and Massimo Serato. The film is loosely based on a real story detailing crime and drugs in the Rome underground. After the film quickly disappeared from public view in 1973 due to political censorship, it was restored in 2021 and had its theatrical re-release and world premiere on television.

Plot

Rome. In the nightclub "Number One", the playboys Benni (Chris Avram) and Leo (Venantino Venantini) determine the nightlife. In a villa in Rome, Teddy Garner Jr. (Paolo Malco) and his friends Massimo (Guido Mannari) and Dino (Howard Ross) report the death of his wife Deborah. The first result is suicide, but Inspector Vinci (Renzo Montagnani) doubts this and begins his investigation. Teddy Garner has fled the country to avoid prosecution. Connections quickly develop with the organised art robbery, in which Massimo and Dino are active and do not shy away from murder. Vinci now works together with the "Capitano" (Luigi Pistilli), the commander of the carabinieri. The French model Sylvie Boisset (Claude Jade), who is a friend of playboy Benni (Chris Avram), is the only one to go to Deborah's funeral. She informs the carabinieri about the hiding place of the stolen paintings in a convent. Later, Sylvie visits her friend Massimo. From him she learns terrible news. In the meantime, the police have searched the monastery and found the paintings. Sylvie goes to the carabinieri again and makes a statement to the Capitano about Deborah's death: When Tony arrived at Deborah's house with his friends Massimo and Dino, she was lying on the bed, naked and rolling around, foaming at the mouth. She had taken heroin and was going to die. Dino reassured his friends to wait for Deborah's death throes. While the men play cards, Deborah is dead after a long agony. Only then do they call the doctor. And Tony leaves Italy in a hurry. Sylvie's testimony leads to another autopsy of Deborah's body. But the investigators cannot find a culprit, because again and again suspects - a couple will be executed at a lake - or even witnesses disappear...

Cast

Making of the movie

Nicola Campigli, to whom his late father Massimo bequeathed a fortune in pictures in 1971, is the victim of an art theft. Since Campigli has frequented Rome's jet set at Club "Number One", he meets the son-in-law of comedian Totò, the young film producer Gianni Buffardi. After the thieves are discovered, Campigli and Buffardi do research in the night club and at police stations. [1] With a dozen Italian starlets as well as some well-known Italian actors (Venantino Venantini, Luigi Pistilli, Renzo Montagnani), the Romanian Chris Avram and the French actress Claude Jade, the crime thriller Number One comes into being, which finally hits on May 28, 1973 Premiere.

In an uncredited extra appearance, Eleonora Giorgi is seen in her first film appearance. She is a blonde companion in the nightclub to Commenda, played by Renato Turi.


Since the film shows very clear references to the then current trials surrounding the Number One and makes real persons clearly recognisable, such as the death of Talitha Getty and the Banda della Magliana (Magliana Gang), it was immediately withdrawn from circulation after the screening: The memory of the real-life Number One, Rome's hottest nightclub, which had been closed down for drug use after an anonymous tip-off just a year earlier, was too vivid. But above all, the people involved were too strong.

It wasn't until 2021 that negatives were discovered in a warehouse and the film was restored by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and saw its re-release and world premiere on television.

Restoration in 2021

The film, whose main characters are pseudonyms of partly real representatives of the jet set in Rome in the 1970s, disappears from the public very quickly. Negatives will appear in 2020. The Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and the Cineteca Nazionale are reconstructing the film in collaboration with the cineast television broadcaster Cine34. Roberto d'Ettore Piazzoli, the cameraman at the time, and Antonello Buffardi, the director's son, are also present. The film was shown again at the 39th Torino Film Festival in Turin in November 2021 The film will then have its television premiere on the broadcaster Cine34. Luca Pallanch from the Cineteca Nazionale explains: “The good Roma, told a little earlier by Carlo Lizzani, and the bad Rome, painted by Gianni Buffardi, are two sides of the same coin that now not only offer cinephiles but also detectives in Italian history will. "

Shortly after it was shown at the film festival, the film premiered on TV on Italian Channel Cine 34 at december 9th 2021

Critics

Davinotti: "If the intent was to suggest without declaring, to let only glimpse the web of intrigue that pertained to the upper echelons of the Roman bourgeoisie at the time of "Number one", then one can say that Buffardi has hit the mark: as much as it appears at first sight as logical and structured, the story in reality soon swells with a quantity of names and events that to follow becomes initially arduous of a wide movement in the high spheres that from the murder of the young Deborah (made to pass for suicide) passes through the theft of precious works of art in a rich flat to get to involve even sections of the Church and big shots of the most prominent society. [...] It should not be forgotten that the director himself used to hang out at the club and knew many of the people who frequented it: this is why the references to real events are less far-fetched than one might imagine, and also why the film is said to have disappeared almost immediately. Two people try to unravel the puzzle: the police, who start from the discovery of the girl's body, and the Carabinieri, who enter the story from the report of the theft of the paintings. They are the most authentic and credible characters, also thanks to the excellent performances of the two (Montagnani, Pistilli), and they somehow manage to keep alive the interest in a story built according to the canons of the detective story but which then amuses itself by subverting the rules to bring everything back into the framework of the great conspiracy through which to demonstrate the level of protection guaranteed to the usual league of powerful people who rule the country with their empires and money. Avram and the others are the lords of the "Number One", with the "little" photographer (Mannari) who becomes the key figure necessary to link up the various branches of the investigation, beginning with that linked to the French girl (Jade) who could represent the witness capable of bringing down part of the house of cards. You can see Buffardi's desire to experiment, even formally, with sudden flashbacks, noises that cover the dialogues, juxtapositions that suggest the utmost cynicism (the one in which a game of cards is played while poor Deborah is turned off on the bed behind her, expelling white foam from her mouth, is highly questionable), but it is as if everything remained in embryo, as if the film as a whole deserved a higher level of realisation, which in the end gives way in favour of a vague and inconclusive work, not without a charm, however, partly due to its legendary unavailability for almost fifty years and partly to its real, strong references to a world that certainly had much to hide."

References
  1. Hugh McLeave: Rogues in the gallery. 2003, P. 115–118


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