Quartet Records, in collaboration with GDM and Universal Music Publishing Italia, presents a remastered and expanded edition of Riz Ortolani’s masterful score for the Damiano Damiani thriller CONFESSIONE DI UN COMMISSARIO DI POLIZIA AL PROCURATORE DELLA REPUBBLICA (aka CONFESSIONS OF A POLICE CAPTAIN), starring Franco Nero and Martin Balsam. This was one of the first films about the Mafia in which the fight is hopeless because “the polyp’s feelers” reach everything and everybody. A police inspector and a deputy public prosecutor try to prove that the city’s construction magnate is a member of the legendary criminal organization.
Far from showing an idealized and traditional Mafia (as Nino Rota would do a year later in THE GODFATHER), Riz Ortolani’s innovative score is based on fast and contemporary rhythms, in an extension of the hustle and bustle of an overpopulated Palermo. Between pop, jazz and funk, the music becomes the showcase of an aggressive and real metropolis. Ortolani uses an omnipresent main theme that underscores the narrative like a repeated echo. But the variations, short notes and transpositions of the melody follow each other in an increasingly rarefied atmosphere: the electric guitar distorts, the strings are strangely tuned, the winds and keyboard are unsettling.
