Discuss The 10th Victim
Discuss → Movies → The 10th Victim → General
Holy cow what a great film
posted by rooprectSTAFFMOD on November 2, 2022 at 11:49 AM
I can't believe I'd never heard of this until I stumbled upon a random used DVD. The title, cover art & era made me think it was going to be just some forgettable B-movie good for a 90 min distraction, but wowzers. It immediately rocketed to my top 10 of retro scifi dark comedy satirical dystopian pseudo-romcom social commentary artsy action flicks. (It's a short list to begin with, but it includes masterpieces like Brazil, Logan's Run, 1984, Orson Welles's The Trial, and of course Veerhoven's Robocop.)
I'd say of the bunch, The 10th Victim has the wickedest sense of humor. I mean, in the first 10 mins someone gets it with a bra-gun to the rapturous applause of fashionably dressed socialites. Agent 99 would be proud. But this film is far from campy. Written & directed by Elio Petri, Cannes winner for his similarly themed (but considerably toned down) dark comedy Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, there's a lot of substance under the flashy premise.
Loved this flick so much I hunted down and read the short story it was based on ("The 7th Victim" which is so short it's practically just a punchline) and realized how much Petri expanded on the theme, added the whole dimension of bizarre TV commercialism (decades before Robocop, Running Man, etc) and somehow wove a tricky romance into the mix which makes the story epically satisfying, not to mention bringing to the table the stark cultural differences between America vs. Italy regarding love & marriage. Ursula Andress isn't the main protagonist though I think she steals the show with her nuanced performance. She's really the "straight man" to Marcello Mastroianni's deadpan sarcasm. Couldn't think of a better pair to pull this off.
For some reason I frickin LOVE the line "There's no point in killing me, there aren't any TV cameras!"
Reply by wonder2wonder
on November 2, 2022 at 6:48 PM
It's been decades since I read the short story and later saw this movie. The movie was novelized - "The 10th Victim (1966)" - by the same author Robert Sheckley, and he also wrote two standalone sequels: - "Victim Prime (1987)" and "Hunter/Victim (1988)".
I got a kick out of listening to the story, when it was adapted for the X Minus One radio show: "The Seventh Victim (1957)".
This is the scene.
Reply by rooprect
on November 4, 2022 at 10:22 AM
That's the one! Classic. And I should correct myself... he gets it twice with the bra gun (I mean, duh).
I never knew about the sequel stories, I'll have to check them out. The first was classic but really too short to be a movie, and it makes me wonder if Petri used the 2 sequels to help flesh out the characters. I loved Ursula Andress's character because she actually had a glimmer of conscience, unlike the cold killer of the original story.
A cool subtheme of the film is how her undeveloped sense of emotion/sexuality is awakened by the Mastroianni character, sending her into a mini existential crisis. And that culminates BRILLIANTLY with the climactic scene at the Temple of Venus when she has to decide whether to go for the kill or not.
Under the surface it's a not-so-subtle dig at the plastic American culture (America represented by Ursula) clashing with the more traditional yet bizarrely hypocritical attitude of Italy (represented by Mastroianni). In Petri's futuristic America it's common to have a dozen marriages & divorces, while in Italy marriage is sacred even if you shack up with a dozen lovers on the side.
Petri's surprise ending gives us a "compromise" so drenched in sarcasm you can't help but think we're all screwed in the ways of love. It's true to the spirit of Sheckley's gut punch that ends the original story, but in a very different way.