A tasty and daring social satire between James Bond and Alphaville

New 2K restoration

In the near future, the governments in place have introduced a new world game, called the Great Hunt. The principle: a hunter and a victim, chosen at random, must kill each other. Rule #1: The hunter knows the identity of his victim, but the victim knows nothing about him. It was during one of these races that the American Caroline Meredith, on her way to winning her tenth consecutive victory, met her victim, the Italian Marcello Poletti. A game of seduction soon sets in between them. But is their attraction real or calculated?

Filmed in 1965, The Tenth Victim is the fifth feature film by Italian filmmaker Elio Petri – author of the virtuoso Inquiry into a citizen above all suspicion in 1970 –, whose work never ceases to question the evolutions of Italian society. With The Tenth Victim, Petri allows himself an incursion into a cinematographic genre a priori far from his universe: that of the anticipation film or, more precisely, dystopia. Adapted from the short story The Seventh Victim by American Robert Sheckley, the plot is set in the near future where governments have decided to channel the violence of their fellow citizens by organizing deadly hunts. With his fellow screenwriters – including his faithful sidekick Tonino Guerra – Elio Petri transposes the universe of the short story into a futuristic Italy plagued by the invasion of objects, the intrusion of the media into private life and the cult of ubiquitous youth. Although the film denounces this vision of the new Rome – and in this continues the tradition of dystopia in cinema – The Tenth Victim is above all a brilliant and hilarious social satire, transcended by an elegant staging with accents resolutely “pop” with its avant-garde sets and costumes. But this film by Elio Petri would not be so iconic without the presence of its two star actors, both at the height of their careers: the brilliant Marcello Mastroianni, who has continued to achieve success since his emblematic role in La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini in 1960, and the sublime Ursula Andress, James Bond Girl par excellence since her interpretation in James Bond against Dr No.
At the crossroads of the science fiction film and the action film popularized by the James Bond saga, The Tenth Victim remains an essential work in the filmography of Elio Petri, who inspired Running Man as much as the Austin Powers trilogy. To discover in its flamboyant restored 2K version.

THE TENTH VICTIM
(1965 – Colors – 93 mins)
new 2K restoration

SUPPLEMENTS *

. TRAILER

* in HD on the Blu-ray version

Released July 12, 2017
as part of the "Italian cinema collection part 1"