Directed by Elio Petri, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) is an Academy Award winning Italian crime drama examining power, authority, and institutional corruption. Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the movie follows a high-ranking police official who commits a murder and then tests whether the system will hold him accountable. Blending satire with psychological tension, it stands as a landmark of politically charged European cinema.

Criterion Collection

The provocative Italian filmmaker Elio Petris most internationally acclaimed work is this remarkable, visceral, Oscar-winning thriller. Petri maintains a tricky balance between absurdity and realism in telling the Kafkaesque tale of a Roman police inspector (a commanding Gian Maria Volontè) investigating a heinous crime which he himself committed. Both a compelling character study and a disturbing commentary on the draconian government crackdowns in Italy in the late 1960s and early 70s, Petris kinetic portrait of surreal bureaucracy is a perversely pleasurable rendering of controlled chaos.

Från IMDB:
A high-ranking police inspector kills his mistress and deliberately plants clues indicating his responsibility for the crime in a sardonic test to prove that he is above suspicion.

Special Features

New 4K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray

Archival interview with director Elio Petri, conducted by critic and filmmaker Alexandre Astruc

Elio Petri: Notes About a Filmmaker (2005), a ninety-minute documentary on the directors career, featuring interviews with friends, collaborators, and filmmakers

New interview with film scholar Camilla Zamboni

Investigation of a Citizen Named Volontè (2008), a fifty-minute documentary about actor Gian Maria Volontè

Music in His Blood, an interview