«Some people speed in a car and some jump with a parachute and only open it at the last minute», says Remo between one robbery and another; «if I am going to hurt myself, I’ll do it as I please». Remo is a policeman by day and a criminal by night, robbing houses in the wealthy districts of the capital. He fights for survival and for the class struggle. The choice of Valerio Mastandrea for such a role was not the only gamble: The Scent of the Night digs into the misery of the Roman suburbs, brutal and brutalised, telling the unfiltered story (but with invincible touches of humour) of a desperate and violent reality, an existential anguish that does not affect the marginalised alone. For his second film, Claudio Caligari chose to focus on the deeds of “arancia meccanica” – the “clockwork orange” –, the band that terrorized high society in Rome between 1979 and 1983, and nailed a new cult film. He owes a great deal to his actors (along with Mastandrea, Marco Giallini, Giorgio Tirabassi and Emanuel Bevilacqua), but above all to his terse yet ironic style, in an ideal triangulation between Paolini, Melville and Tarantino. Twenty-five years after its release, the Cineteca Nazionale brings it back to the screen, restored with the precious collaboration of the cinematographer Maurizio Calvesi, as part of a project to retrieve the entire Caligari fonds that was inaugurated in 2021 at the Rome Film Fest with Toxic Love. (Alberto Anile)
DIRECTOR: Claudio Caligari
NATION: Italy
YEAR: 1998
RUNTIME: 101′
CAST: Valerio Mastandrea, Marco Giallini, Alessia Fugardi, Giorgio Tirabassi
Original version with subtitles