SLAP THE MONSTER ON PAGE ONE (1972)

As it was made over half a century ago, one might expect Marco Bellocchio’s penetrating political thriller Slap the Monster on Page One / Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina to have dated badly. It hasn’t.

Indeed, in light of recent events, its central theme of how mass media manipulates popular opinion to stoke societal divisions for political leverage has never been more pertinent. So, this new and beautiful restoration on Blu-ray from Radiance is a timely and welcome release, especially as the 4K scan was taken from the original negative under the supervision of director Marco Bellocchio.

Admittedly, the media has changed over the intervening 50 years. Slap the Monster on Page One, as one may surmise from the title, is focused on traditional newspapers. Indeed, a big part of its appeal is seeing those old typesetters arranging metal letters in galleys and hand-rolling the ink to print a one-sheet proof for the editor’s approval, before warehouse-filling presses noisily reproduce it a thousandfold onto continuous rolls of newsprint.

National newspapers dominated the media and public opinion of the 20th-century, but conventional journalism has since been irrevocably weakened by the new media revolution. Centralised news sources have been dismantled across user-mediated channels where online search engines and algorithms bypass any form of fact-checking and journalistic integrity. Now the truth is out there, but so much noise obscures it that the public can find it hard to distinguish real reportage with ‘fake news’. We have, as they say, a bigger problem now.

As soon as anything is reported across any media it is, by that very fact, mediated. Decisions are being made about where to begin and end a story. Not only are there choices of which quotes to use and from whom, but also how to edit and contextualise those quotes. Who will be framed as the protagonist? Even ‘reality’ documented in photographs or newsreel has already been highly selected—where to point the lens, how to crop the frame, what to leave in and what to leave out, where to begin or end a clip, right down to the angle of the shot, lighting, clarity. So many factors can subtly—and not so subtly—affect the received meaning of any text or image. What better medium to examine this conundrum than film, which inherently and deliberately uses the same audio-visual linguistics?

Marco Bellocchio’s Slap the Monster on Page One (herein simply Slap the Monster) shares several central themes with Elio Petri’s superior Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) which also starred Gian Maria Volontè in the bravura performance that confirmed his place among the greatest actors. But instead of playing an arrogant right-wing police chief, here he’s an arrogant right-wing newspaper editor. Both are powerful men who have no qualms about using their status and positions of trust for their own ends. By comparison, Slap the Monster is a simplified treatment employing a reductionist allegory that zooms in on a fragment of the bigger picture, just as a news story unpicks a simplified narrative that can’t possibly convey the complexities of the wider situation. And there’s a fine line between doggedly following an extant social narrative and creating one to serve a political agenda.

This conflict is examined through the relationship between Giancarlo Bizanti (Gian Maria Volontè), editor of Il giornale, who asserts that a newspaper must be biased in its attempt to shape the political landscape, and newbie reporter Roveda (Fabio Garriba), who believes that news should be reported objectively using only the known facts conveyed clearly. Of course, a journalist is subservient to their editor who, in turn, is subservient to those funding their publication. In this case, the ultra-right-wing businessman Montelli (John Steiner) is pulling the strings to benefit the capitalist interests of himself and his powerful friends.

After a title sequence compiled from newsreel footage evoking the incendiary political climate of the times—Italy’s so-called ‘years of lead’—the movie opens with an attack on the editorial offices of Il giornale. A Molotov is thrown through the window, but Bizanti delays the use of extinguishers until their photographer can capture dramatic images of the editor and staff cowering from the flames. He’s pleased to be handed the opportunity for his paper to be seen as a victim, rather than an instigator, of political disorder.

Slap the Monster could easily have veered into preachy polemic, as many political dramas do, but avoids this by merging its socio-political content with an intriguing murder mystery that aligns with the emergent giallo genre. The first act concerns the discovery of a schoolgirl’s body. The coroner’s report states that the victim, Maria-Grazia Martini (Silvia Kramar), was a virgin before she was raped and murdered. Seeing that this ‘good Catholic girl’ represents what was perceived as the moral core of Italian society, Bizanti seizes the opportunity to use her murder as a broad metaphor for the erosion of conservative, family values.

Given the front-page coverage, the story elicits the hoped-for moral outrage, and the paper receives a flurry of indignant letters, some of which called for the return of the death penalty, which had been briefly reinstated during the fascist regime under Benito Mussolini but abolished by 1948. Bizanti is delighted when, among those letters, is one suggesting a culprit in left-wing student and activist Mario Boni (Corrado Solari), who had been seen in possession of a diary belonging to Maria-Grazia.

However, we soon learn that the coroner had doctored his findings to maintain the reputation of the girl’s respected father (Gianni Solaro), and she had, in fact, been promiscuous, having a series of relationships with ‘bad boy’ members of militant groups. This information is omitted from the coverage as it doesn’t fit with the newspaper’s constructed narrative. It also transpires that Boni had been the young lover of Rita Zigai (Laura Betti), the older woman who had sent the incriminating letter. The suspect certainly does fit the narrative, and it doesn’t take long before he’s arrested and beaten by the police, who are also keen to exploit the situation to win greater powers in their fight against political activists.

While the film was in production, police officer Luigi Calabresi had been murdered. It would later turn out to be at the hands of far-left guerrillas. Also, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, a communist and militant activist, was killed, probably by his own bomb. The involvement of far-right extremists, possibly even the government, was suggested at the time. We see footage of Feltrinelli’s funeral during the opening newsreel clips, and the film reflects the violent upheaval of the times, which was approaching something like civil war, with terrorist bombings and pitched battles in the streets.

Director Marco Bellocchio is one of Italy’s respected auteurs who had himself been involved with left-wing political activism in the 1960s. Slap the Monster was an unusual project for him as he was hired after production had started. It seems the original writer-director, Sergio Donati, had left due to ill health, but it is generally thought to be because of a falling-out with Gian Maria Volontè, who was known to be difficult at times. It would have been Donati’s directorial debut after being a prolific scriptwriter, including co-writing Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More (1965) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Bellocchio apparently requested a fortnight’s preparatory window in which he reworked the screenplay with collaborator Goffredo Fofi, introducing more contemporary political themes, and aligning it with his own vision. He claims that he got on well enough with Volontè because he knew when to give direction and when to defer to the actor’s experience.

Volontè is as impressive as ever and manages to make an unscrupulous man sympathetic. At least to begin with, before allowing us to glimpse the suppressed internal rage that gradually reveals the monstrous, misogynistic, misanthrope. A modern audience may well be uncomfortable with the misogyny here—not of the filmmakers but of the characters, which is probably an accurate representation of the social norms of the times. However, there’s a notable lack of strong or sympathetic female characters. That said, Laura Betti is excellent in the female lead as a neurotic woman on the edge—possibly because of said social climate—who is by turn vulnerable and vindictive.

Slap the Monster works as both a political thriller and a whodunnit and places the viewer in the uncomfortable position of questioning their own political prejudices and moral beliefs. Yes, Boni is obviously being framed, at least to begin with, but what if he turns out to be the killer? At the risk of being fired from Il giornale, Roveda conducts his own investigation, following a trail of inconvenient clues ignored by Bizanti. Whoever the murderer turns out to be, their political allegiances will be pertinent and may have wider social repercussions when revealed.

ITALY • FRANCE | 1972 | 87 MINUTES | COLOUR | ITALIAN

Limited Edition Blu-ray Special Features:

• 4K restoration of the film from the original negative by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Surf Film and Kavac Film, under the supervision of director Marco Bellocchio.
• Uncompressed mono PCM audio.
• Archival interview with Marco Bellocchio (21 mins). He recounts how he came to be given the project and places the film in context with his other politically charged works. He recalls working with the key cast and recounts what it was like to make a film about the events that were unfolding around them as they filmed. He also explains how much of the movie is a veiled autobiography and many of the difficult interactions between characters were written based on lived experience.
• NEW filmed interview with critic and author Mario Sesti (2024, 25 mins). Highly informative overview of the historical context of the film’s production. He points out that the famous Italian newspaper Il Giornale was founded two years after the film, and the film’s version was actually based on the contemporary Corriere della Sera. He surmises that Gian Maria Volontè based his character on its editor Indro Montanelli, who was a significant Conservative influence within the Italian press for decades. A fascinating and educational extra.
• Appreciation by filmmaker Alex Cox (2024, 10 mins). In which he provides his usual well-researched mini-commentary on the making of Slap the Monster and places it within the context of the subgenre of films about journalists and media manipulation such as His Girl Friday (1940) and The Sweet Smell of Success (1957).
• NEW improved English subtitle translation.
• Reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters.
• Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Wesley Sharer.
• Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings.

Cast & Crew

director: Marco Bellocchio.
writers: Sergio Donati & Goffredo Fofi.
starring: Gian Maria Volonté, Corrado Solari, Laura Betti, Fabio Garriba, John Steiner & Jacques Herlin.