Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Blu-ray)

The provocative Italian filmmaker Elio Petri’s 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 Fistful of Dollars’ Gian Maria Volonté, in a commanding performance) investigating a heinous crime—which he committed himself.

Both a penetrating character study and a disturbing commentary on the draconian crackdowns by the Italian government in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Petri’s kinetic portrait of surreal bureaucracy is a perversely pleasurable rendering of controlled chaos.

• New 4K digital restoration by the Film Foundation, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

• 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 director’s career, featuring interviews with friends, collaborators, and filmmakers

• New interview with film scholar Camilla Zamboni

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

• Music in His Blood, an interview with composer Ennio Morricone from 2010, conducted by film critic Fabio Ferzetti

• Trailers

• New English subtitle translation

• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Evan Calder Williams and excerpts from a 2001 book by author and screenwriter Ugo Pirro