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Year: 1977
Country: Italy
Director: Damiano Damiani
Cast: Gian Maria Volontè, Erland Josephson, Mario Adorf, Angelica Ippolito
IMBD: Link
Language : Italian
Subtitles : English
After the commercially successful but artistically disappointing comedy western A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe, a.k.a. Trinity Is Back Again (Un genio, due compari e un pollo, 1975), produced by Sergio Leone, Damiano Damiani returned to what he knew best. I Am Afraid is perhaps the most chilling document on the so-called “leaden years.” The story revolves around a magistrate (Erland Josephson) who is murdered after discovering the connivance between fascist terrorists and the Secret Service, and his bodyguard Lodovico Graziano (Gian Maria Volonté), who realizes he knows too much. “It was the story of two characters who discover truths which they can’t reveal, and find out they cannot get any help on the part of the Law,” Damiani explained.
The script, by the director and his collaborator Nicola Badalucco, is engrossing and tightly written, and it gets more and more intense as it goes along. I Am Afraid continually seems on the verge of abandoning its realistic path and turning into a Kafka-esque nightmare: when brigadier Graziano is entrusted to escort a magistrate (Mario Adorf) who follows the same steps as his predecessor, the story revolves on itself like a snake biting its own tail, in a mocking, symmetrical déjà vu. Yet Damiani, unlike Petri (Todo Modo) and Rosi (Illustrious Corpses) doesn’t go for a metaphysical approach, and keeps the story stubbornly close to reality—that very same reality which in poliziotteschi is at least partially exorcised through the references to exemplary real-life stories, deformed and turned into film material by the genre’s hyperrealistic approach. This includes the references to the present as well: the fugitive terrorist is modeled upon neo-fascist Franco Freda, one of the masterminds behind the Piazza Fontana bombing, while the character of Tognon (played by former singer Rino “Joe” Sentieri) represents journalist Mino Pecorelli and his controversial agency (later a weekly magazine) “OP.” Just like Tognon in the film, Pecorelli would be murdered in March 1979—to many, he had found out too much about the Moro kidnapping and killing.
The choice of Gian Maria Volonté as Graziano is exemplary of Damiani’s approach. Seven years after Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, the circle is over. In Petri’s film the actor played a commissioner who toyed with power, here he is a mediocre police agent, badly paid and badly dressed: the contrast between Graziano’s cheap raincoats and the impeccable silk shirts worn by the commissioners played by Merenda and Merli gives an idea of I Am Afraid’s difference from strictly genre products, where there is always a gap between the hero and the reality that surrounds him. According to the director, “that’s a character Volonté “felt” very much. I liked his sensible face, a face that had a working class feel to it, the face of someone who understands when he’s being ripped off.”
To make the portrayal of law enforcement as closer to reality as he can, Damiani even mentions police unions and their protests—something unique in crime films, where the hero, even though badly paid (see Killer Cop or Free Hand for a Tough Cop) doesn’t seem to really care about his salary. As critic Davide Pulici noted, “for the first time in an Italian film, policemen are given a class conscience, they protest and march against their superiors, claim the right to disobey orders that turn them into gun fodder, and step aside from the usual conventions […] that portray them as either caricatures or heroes.”
Brigadier Lodovico Graziano doesn’t have the iron armor of the contemporaneous tough cops: in fact, he’s the exact opposite. “He’s a simple character, a man who didn’t study much; to him, being a cop is a job like any other” Damiani added. Graziano’s an ordinary cop, middle-aged, humble, insecure. An average man who gets involved in spite of himself in a story much bigger than him, in a plot whose meaning he does not understand; a man who is full of doubts and who makes many mistakes. A man who is understandably worried about his life. A man who is afraid.
Damiani’s film is the most remarkable example of a cinema “with eyes wide open, in step with the times, and which doesn’t try to compete with reality” as Alberto Pezzotta wrote. To the Milanese critic, I Am Afraid is “one of the films that, nowadays, most precisely convey the sense of threat and loss of all certainties, political and civil alike, which emerged back then for the first time.” (Roberto Curti)
[ About file ]
Name: I Am Afraid.Damiano Damiani.1977.VHSRip.mkv
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2022 23:11:30 +0100
Size: 1,792,621,336 bytes (1709.576927 MiB)
[ Magic ]
File type: Matroska data
File type: EBML file, creator matroska
[ Generic infos ]
Duration: 01:53:05 (6785.24 s)
Container: matroska
Production date: Sun, 23 Feb 2014 09:41:30 +0100
Total tracks: 3
Track nr. 1: video (V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC) {eng}
Track nr. 2: audio (A_AC3) {und}
Track nr. 3: subtitle (S_TEXT/UTF8) {eng}
Muxing library: libebml v1.3.0 + libmatroska v1.4.1
Writing application: mkvmerge v6.5.0 ('Isn't she lovely') built on Oct 20 2013 12:50:05
[ Relevant data ]
Resolution: 636 x 576
Width: multiple of 4
Height: multiple of 32
Average DRF: 22.240534
Standard deviation: 3.842271
Std. dev. weighted mean: 3.608176
[ Video track ]
Codec ID: V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Resolution: 636 x 576
Display resolution: 925 x 576 (pixels)
Frame aspect ratio: 53:48 = 1.104167
Pixel aspect ratio: 925:636 = 1.454403
Display aspect ratio: 925:576 = 1.605903
Framerate: 25 fps
Stream size: 1,628,221,207 bytes (1552.792747 MiB)
Duration (bs): 01:53:05 (6785.24 s)
Bitrate (bs): 1919.721286 kbps
Qf: 0.209613
[ Audio track ]
Codec ID: A_AC3
Sampling frequency: 48000 Hz
Channels: 2
Stream size: 162,840,576 bytes (155.296875 MiB)
Bitstream type (bs): AC3
Frames (bs): 212,032
Duration (bs): 01:53:05 (6785.024 s)
Chunk-aligned (bs): Yes
Bitrate (bs): 192 kbps CBR
Sampling frequency (bs): 48000 Hz
Mode (bs): stereo
[ Video bitstream ]
Bitstream type: MPEG-4 Part 10
User data: x264 | core 138 r2358 9e941d1 | H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec
User data: Copyleft 2003-2013 | http://www.videolan.org/x264.html | cabac=1
User data: ref=8 | deblock=1:0:0 | analyse=0x3:0x133 | me=umh | subme=9 | psy=1
User data: psy_rd=1.00:0.15 | mixed_ref=1 | me_range=28 | chroma_me=1
User data: trellis=2 | 8x8dct=1 | cqm=0 | deadzone=21,11 | fast_pskip=0
User data: chroma_qp_offset=-3 | threads=6 | lookahead_threads=1
User data: sliced_threads=0 | nr=0 | decimate=0 | interlaced=0
User data: bluray_compat=0 | constrained_intra=0 | bframes=5 | b_pyramid=2
User data: b_adapt=2 | b_bias=0 | direct=3 | weightb=1 | open_gop=0 | weightp=2
User data: keyint=250 | keyint_min=25 | scenecut=40 | intra_refresh=0
User data: rc_lookahead=60 | rc=2pass | mbtree=1 | bitrate=1920 | ratetol=3.0
User data: qcomp=0.60 | qpmin=0 | qpmax=69 | qpstep=4 | cplxblur=20.0
User data: qblur=0.5 | vbv_maxrate=14000 | vbv_bufsize=14000 | nal_hrd=none
User data: ip_ratio=1.40 | aq=1:1.00
SPS id: 0
Profile: [email protected]
Num ref frames: 8
Aspect ratio: 16:11 (16:9 PAL pixel shape)
Chroma format: YUV 4:2:0
PPS id: 0 (SPS: 0)
Entropy coding type: CABAC
Weighted prediction: P slices - explicit weighted prediction
Weighted bipred idc: B slices - implicit weighted prediction
8x8dct: Yes
Total frames: 169,631
Drop/delay frames: 0
Corrupt frames: 0
P-slices: 39252 ( 23.140 %) #####
B-slices: 129260 ( 76.201 %) ###############
I-slices: 1119 ( 0.660 %)
SP-slices: 0 ( 0.000 %)
SI-slices: 0 ( 0.000 %)
[ DRF analysis ]
average DRF: 22.240534
standard deviation: 3.842271
max DRF: 30
DRF=1: 2 ( 0.001 %)
DRF=2: 0 ( 0.000 %)
DRF=3: 2 ( 0.001 %)
DRF=4: 13 ( 0.008 %)
DRF=5: 4 ( 0.002 %)
DRF=6: 11 ( 0.006 %)
DRF=7: 15 ( 0.009 %)
DRF=8: 50 ( 0.029 %)
DRF=9: 10 ( 0.006 %)
DRF=10: 35 ( 0.021 %)
DRF=11: 136 ( 0.080 %)
DRF=12: 363 ( 0.214 %)
DRF=13: 896 ( 0.528 %)
DRF=14: 2098 ( 1.237 %)
DRF=15: 3807 ( 2.244 %)
DRF=16: 6315 ( 3.723 %) #
DRF=17: 9697 ( 5.717 %) #
DRF=18: 13478 ( 7.945 %) ##
DRF=19: 10156 ( 5.987 %) #
DRF=20: 9704 ( 5.721 %) #
DRF=21: 10818 ( 6.377 %) #
DRF=22: 11793 ( 6.952 %) #
DRF=23: 13182 ( 7.771 %) ##
DRF=24: 16815 ( 9.913 %) ##
DRF=25: 15909 ( 9.379 %) ##
DRF=26: 23307 ( 13.740 %) ###
DRF=27: 14910 ( 8.790 %) ##
DRF=28: 4539 ( 2.676 %) #
DRF=29: 1520 ( 0.896 %)
DRF=30: 42 ( 0.025 %)
DRF>30: 0 ( 0.000 %)
P-slices average DRF: 19.965378
P-slices std. deviation: 3.538314
P-slices max DRF: 30
B-slices average DRF: 22.970927
B-slices std. deviation: 3.632544
B-slices max DRF: 30
I-slices average DRF: 17.677391
I-slices std. deviation: 3.243821
I-slices max DRF: 26
This report was created by AVInaptic (01-11-2020) on 17-02-2026 08:30:43
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