The Property Is No Longer a Theft

After focusing on political power in Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and on automated work as a disease in The Working Class Goes to Heaven, Petri rounds out his trilogy of "social neuroses” with an explicitly theatrical burlesque on another form of social malady: the desire for property and wealth. The protagonist, Total (Flavio Bucci), is a young bank employee who suffers from a physical allergy to money. Convinced that wealth and the wealthy are the root of all injustice, he decides to attack the depraved system by methodically stealing items (never money) possessed by a certain rich and unscrupulous butcher (Ugo Tognazzi). "When I watch children, I feel that the first thing they express is the desire to appropriate. They automatically say, ‘No’ and then, ‘It’s mine!’ This initial refusal and then the appropriation is motivated by the need to forge their own identity.” Injecting his usual dose of sardonic humor, Petri carries Proudhon’s and Marx’s theses ad absurdum. Property can no longer be theft because theft has become a defining part of modern social and economic existence. The visual side of this expressionist-tinged picture, the restored version of which was awarded during its premiere screening in the Venezia Classici section at last year’s Venice festival, is the work of renowned painter and illustrator Renzo Vespignani, a personal friend of Petri’s.