Born in Rome in 1929 and died in 1982, Elio Petri started as a critic and a screenwriter and assistant to Giuseppe De Santis. With the actor Gian Maria Volonté and the composer Ennio Morricone he made a series of angry, grotesque political films in the Italy of the 1960s and 1970s. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) won an Oscar for best foreign film and portrays a police chief who murders his lover and tests whether his position makes him untouchable. The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971) shared the Palme d'Or. He also made the science-fiction satire The Tenth Victim.
Filmography
- The Tenth Victim (1965)
- We Still Kill the Old Way (1967)
- Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)
- The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971)
- Todo modo (1976)