Sightlines · how to watch

How to watch Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion

1970 · Elio Petri · Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion on Sightlines

5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.

On a first viewing

  1. Watch how small the Inspector looks against the headquarters architecture. (camera)

    Cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller uses wide-angle framings and long corridors that dwarf the human figures inside them.

    Payoff: The architecture itself starts to feel like a form of power pressing down on everyone in it.

  2. Notice how deliberately the Inspector arranges evidence at the scene. (staging)

    Petri stages the aftermath with the same care a director gives blocking a scene, each object and gesture placed with visible intention.

    Payoff: You are watching a man direct his own incrimination like theater.

  3. Listen for the score's jaunty, marching little melody. (sound)

    Ennio Morricone's music is plucked and repetitive, comic and sinister at once, recurring throughout the investigation.

    Payoff: The tune makes the machinery of power sound almost cheerful, which is the joke.

  4. Notice how the film cuts between the investigation and flashbacks. (cutting)

    Editor Ruggero Mastroianni fractures the timeline so the Inspector's past relationship keeps erupting into and commenting on the present case.

    Payoff: The intercutting lets you compare the man's public role and his private self in real time.

  5. Watch how the other officers respond to each confession. (staging)

    Petri stages their deference and disbelief the same way each time, almost like a repeated ritual rather than individual reactions.

    Payoff: Their sameness turns individual colleagues into a single, predictable machine.

The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".

Carry this in: Watch how deliberately he leaves each clue. The film's whole irony is that his competence works against him.

A Deleuzian reading of Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion →

How Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion was received →