La decima vittima

In the near future, violence is controlled in societies avoiding wars. Killing is allowed to violent individuals in a game called Big Hunt where the participants are alternatively Hunter or Victim. The winner of each round is awarded with a prize and the survivor after ten rounds, wins one million dollar award (in 1965).

When the American huntress Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress) completes her ninth round, she comes to Rome to kill her tenth victim. She negotiates with the sponsor Ming Tea Company to kill his victim in front of the cameras. The cynical Marcello Poletti (Marcello Mastroianni) is her target and has just succeeded in his marriage annulment with Lidia (Luce Bonifassy) but has not disclosed to his lover Olga (Elsa Martinelli). Marcello suspects that Caroline is his hunter, but is not sure; further he falls in love with her and he is reluctant to kill her.

"La decima vittima" is a funny and entertaining comedy with a silly but cult story. The sexy Ursula Andress is in the top of her beauty and shows a perfect chemistry with Marcello Mastroianni. In the end, the viewer has 92 minutes of fun. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Décima Vítima" (The Tenth Victim")

Note: On 31 January 2023, I saw this film again.

Coming at the tail-end of one of the most provocative eras of film, European new wave, and featuring Italian cinema's premiere leading man of the time, Mr. Mastroianni, The 10th Victim exciting movie, given its year of release. The concept, that a group of over-bored members of a somewhat Utopian society spend their time hunting and being the hunted in the then-futuristic 1990's, works well, while the Italian backdrop is, as usual, a treat. While at times aping better Italian filmmakers of the time such as Fellini, the movie chugs along into a somewhat twisted relationship between hunter and hunted - the female component of this equation being played by Ursula Andress, yow!. Themes of a desensitized society, anonymity, and a thrill-seeking populace would re-emerge around the early 90's in America with cult obsessions over serial killers, a groundswell of violent video games/movies/television,and the formation of underground social cliques and groups such as gen x and "grunge" culture, whose attitudes towards sex/society/money/politics differed radically from the norm. The Tenth Victim may not have been on the spot prediction-wise, but its themes were accurate to the future scape it was attempting to create.

As a wonderful example of 60s pop art filmmaking, Elio Petri has taken many of the decade's most popular culture crazes (the Bond films, Courreges fashions, discotheque jazz, etc.) and used them with great success to give a plausible look to a highly improbable (in 1965!) future world. Petri's digs at Mad Ave advertising and humanity's relentless pursuit of fame and money (no matter the price) are on-target, and his delight in mocking societal idiosyncrasies (the sun worshipers) is priceless. However, at the heart of The Tenth Victim is the old-fashioned battle-of-the-sexes plot (still very popular in the mid-60s), and yet Petri has the upper hand by his spoofing of the romantic-comedy genre and giving us instead a deliciously amusing trifle that is fun to watch for its joking attitude towards everything it depicts, including Marcello and Ursula! To one reviewer who found it outdated, it must be remembered that this film was made 35 years ago and so it naturally has nothing to do with today's standards - and why should it? That's like dismissing Griffith's Intolerance because it's a silent film!

In the future an organization sets up a game show that show people hunting each other. Two people are chosen: the Hunter and the Victim. Anything goes as the Victim flees for the designated time period. Marcello Mastorianni plays the most successful killer and then his number comes up as a victim. The hunters and victims have know knowledge of one another and Marcello must always be on guard. The hunter after him is the beautiful Ursula Andress, always dressed in knock-out fashions. Marcello's as cool as ever, always dressed in black, wearing sunglasses. The production design is fantastic. The colourful comic book architecture is the height of retro cool. For fan of Italian '60s pop art science fiction, this is one to check out.

THE TENTH VICTIM might not be the kind of film one readily associates with Italy's foremost political director, Elio Petri, but it sure has his leftist mark stamped all over it. Set in a not-so-distant future, a hodge podge of pseudo-futuristic art installments, snazzy backgrounds and a general air of camp-kitsch than a fully realized world, more A CLOCKWORK ORANGE than BLADE RUNNER in that sense, and involving a peculiar game called The Big Hunt where people are assigned to murder complete strangers and become in turns hunters and victims, an idea that seems to have resurfaced in another form in Robert Altman's QUINTET a decade later, The Tenth Victim is at once a biting critique of capitalism and all assorted paraphernalia and a thoroughly enjoyable absurdist comedy.

Nothing escapes Petri's ire. Although not particularly profound, his satire makes the rounds firing among other things at the media's obesssion with violence, reality TV, society's fixation on youth and beauty, the ostracizing of the elders, etc. It's all very tongue-in-cheek and vibrant in an irreverent Euro-kitsch way but still quite imaginative for its time. Later in the film, Mastroianni presides in a sun ritual by the seaside, mourning the setting of the sun, which is interrupted by a group of 'neo-realists' throwing tomatoes at the assembled crowd. Petri's stab at Rossellini, De Sica and the rest? Mastroianni's character admits of doing the ceremony for the money and the tears he cried were fake thanks to a 'tear pill' that lasts for 15 minutes.

That's pretty much the tone set for the entire movie. Petri doesn't seem to dwell on anything for long or take his critique any more serious than he has to. The movie declines significantly in quality in the last 20 minutes, the last 10, an awkward shootout between Mastroianni and his two ex-wives, should've been left out altogether, but overall it's never boring and it's filled with great little moments. The opening titty-shotgun murder in the Masoch Club, students beating each other up as a nonchalant Mastroianni walks through them, other players of the game popping up randomly throughout the movie shooting at each other. If all else fails, you can still oogle at the gorgeous Ursulla Andress and her skimpy outfits.