La Decima vittima (1965) - film review

In the not too distant future, human aggression is channelled away from war and into a government-licensed murder game known as The Big Hunt.  Those who participate in this game must hunt down and kill five victims, chosen by computer, whilst being the target of five equally determined hunters.   Fame, glory and some significant income tax concessions await the winner of each game, the one who manages to dispose of his ten opponents.  For the final challenge in her game, the beautiful American Caroline Meredith is pitted against an Italian with a complicated love life, Marcello Polletti.  She sells the rights to the killing to a company who will film and broadcast the contest to promote a brand of tea.  Realising that Caroline is his would-be assassin, Polletti devises a plan to eliminate her with a crocodile.  Things take a bizarre turn when the hunter and her victim fall in love with one another…

Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress are on top form in this bizarre vision of the future, a film which has become a cult science-fiction classic and which is a fine example of 1960s pop cinema.  Although the film has dated somewhat, it still retains its anarchic fun, and much of what it portrays has a disturbing familiarity about it.  The way in which society has become dehumanised by consumerism and personal greed, the hypocrisy of governments that devise ever-more morally dubious means to control their citizens, and the inevitable arrival of that most execrable of media inventions, the reality show.   (True, the participants in Big Brother don’t yet go so far as to kill one another in front of the camera in a bid to prolong their fifteen minutes of fame, but it’s probably only just a matter of time, and TV ad-sponsored money, before they do.)

La Decima vittima is not the best example of director Elio Petri’s work but it is the film with which he is most closely associated.  With its garish pop art sets, luxurious (and stunningly filmed) Italian locations, super-sexy lead actors and ultra-kitsch soundtrack, the film reeks of 1960s cool.  Unable to transcend the fantasy silliness of its time, it has great fun laughing at the major icons of its period, notably the James Bond films.  The film even offers its own new icons, in the form of Marcello Mastroianni’s peroxide bleached hair (making the great Italian actor look like something out of Thunderbirds) and Ursula Andress in a kinky double-barrelled bra (now’s probably a good time to take a cold shower).

It has to be said that there isn’t much plot to this film, and what there is is, frankly, muddled and rather silly, albeit enjoyably so.  As the film meanders drunkenly towards its conclusion, you can almost see the screenwriters tearing their hair out as they struggle to come up with a suitably up-beat ending – that would account for the overdose of insane silliness we see in the last ten minutes (bullet proof skin, indeed!).  Yet, like most fantasy of this period, the plot isn’t the thing which drives the film.  What holds our attention and keeps us entertained is not the trite reject Avengers storyline but the film’s outlandish visual style and its unbridled sense of fun – plus the fact that Marcello Mastroianni manages to keep up a respectable straight performance without ending up as some kind of cheap James Bond send-up.  Italian cinema is seldom as deliciously off-the-wall as it is in the unforgettably crazy La Decima vittima.

© James Travers 2004

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