Italian filmmaker Pasquale Squitieri's 1977 adaptation of Arrigo Petacco's biography, The Iron Prefect, centers on a relentless lawman (A Pistol for Ringo's Giuliano Gemma, cast against his usual charismatic type) who sets out to curtail the Mafia's stranglehold on Sicily in 1925. Like The French Connection's Popeye Doyle or Dirty Harry's Harry Callahan, Cesare Mori will stop at nothing to achieve his objective.
In Palermo, he will align himself with two individuals of significance: Spanò (We All Loved Each Other So Much's Stefano Satta Flores), the level-headed police officer who will become his right-hand man, and Anna (Squitieri's wife, Once Upon a Time in the West star Claudia Cardinale), a proud peasant who doubts he can make a difference.
Mori proceeds to go after law-breakers of every stripe, from robbers to extortionists, which makes him more enemies than friends when he locks up men who have relied on ill-gotten gains to feed their families. One day when Mori's wife is out shopping, their wives attack her. After that, Mori sends her out of town for her own protection.
In a bid to force out the brigands hiding in Gangi, just outside Palermo, he cuts off the water supply. It doesn't endear him to Anna. "The state should free us from poverty," she laments, but when he attempts to ply her with supplies, she rejects them. She may not trust the mobsters who run the city, like Francisco Rabal's Don Calogero, but she doesn't trust the cops either.
By the end of Mori's eventful stay, after a series of raids and shoot-outs, he has won the trust of the mayor, and even of Anna, who asks him to help give her son a better life. Mussolini, who wasn't always his biggest fan, rewards Mori for his efforts with a senatorial position, which serves as a mixed blessing since it further aligns him with Italy's fascist faction.
Like a previous Ugo Pirro adaptation, Vittorio De Sica's Oscar-winning The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, The Iron Prefect, aka I Am the Law, made a splash to the extent that Jimmy Carter invited Squitieri to the White House for a screening. It was a surprising move, since the real-life Mori's politics were to the right of Carter's, but the film certainly makes for rousing entertainment, bolstered by vibrant cinematography from Silvano Ippoliti and a rich, orchestral score from Ennio Morricone.
If Mori isn't the most likable character, Gemma convinces as a man older than his 39 years. Squitieri, who once said he would never work with the spaghetti western star, cast him after Gemma's idol, 64-year-old Burt Lancaster, who starred in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard with Claudia Cardinale, dropped out due to poor health.
In their interviews for the extra features, filmmaker Alex Cox and Squitieri biographer Domenico Monetti go into detail about both director and star. This 2K restoration also includes archival interviews with Squitieri (1938-2017) and Gemma (1938-2013), who would receive the Italian equivalent of the Oscar, the David di Donatello Award, for their work on the film.
What kind of film series would The Iron Prefect fit in?
The Iron Prefect straddles the line between the spaghetti western and the poliziotteschi, Italian crime films popular in the 1960s and 1970s. It would fit with film series that involve these genres, in addition to series dedicated to the work of director Pasquale Squitieri (The Climber), star Giuliano Gemma (Tenebrae), or screenwriter and novelist Ugo Perri (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, and The Working Class Goes to Heaven among other films).
What kind of film collection would The Iron Prefect be suitable for?
Squitieri's eighth feature would be suitable for Drama, Crime, Biography, Literary Adaptation, Italian-language, and International film collections in academic and public libraries.