From the start, viewers are primed to keep their eyes on the money. For writer/director Fernando Di Leo’s adaptation of Giorgio Scerbanenco’s short story collection opens with a zippy, rapidly cut sequence in which a bag filled with piles of cash is passed from one courier to another – and somewhere in this passage, by an unseen sleight of hand, those banknotes are swapped for blank paper. Once this is discovered, all those who came into contact with the money are rounded up, beaten and brutally murdered by the gangsters who had hired them and do not appreciate being robbed – even if they are not sure which party exactly is responsible for the theft, or where the money has gone.
Though known abroad as Caliber 9 or sometimes The Contract, this was released domestically under the Italian title Milano Calibro 9. That reference to Milan is important. For while this is a poliziottesco whose ex-con protagonist finds himself caught between criminals and the police much as the antihero of Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) – which Di Leo co-wrote – plays off a sheriff’s family and a gang of brothers against one another, it is also a city symphony of sorts, capturing a snapshot of Italy in general, and of Milan in particular (and in negative), during the turbulent Years of Lead.
Accordingly here explosives are regularly used as weapons of terror and assassination, even as the shockwaves of the very real Piazza Fontana bombing in 1969 were still reverberating through Milan. Here big-business profits are in illegal flight from Italy to Swiss bank accounts. Here ageing, blind former godfather Don Vincenzo (Ivo Garrani) laments the replacement of Milan’s traditional mafia with “hoodlums, conmen, all in competition, one with the other” who “like to invest all of the dough they’re making in drugs – as soon as they get a pile, it goes into the market”. And here Vice Commissario Mercuri (Luigi Pistilli), newly recruited from the south, constantly annoys his line-toeing, right-leaning boss the Commissario (Frank Wolff) by offering a leftist intellectual analysis both of Milan’s problems (exploited labour, the impunity of plutocrats), and of a solution which would require going after not just local money-smuggling kingpin L’Americano (Lionel Stander), but also his – and Milan’s – rich paymasters. All this anatomises a city and a country torn apart by the violent chaos of sociopolitical disparity and criminal opportunity.
In the midst of Milan is small-time criminal Ugo Piazza (Gastone Moschin), who though just released from a three-year stint in prison, is still very much trapped. For despite his repeated and strenuous denials, everyone – from L’Americano and his hoodlums, to the police, to Ugo’s former colleagues Don Vincenzo and Chino (Philippe Leroy), and even to Ugo’s belly-dancing girlfriend Nelly (Barbara Bouchet) – believes that Ugo has stolen 300 grand from L’Americano and has it stashed away somewhere. Ugo knows that if he skips town, even to another country, L’Americano’s men will eventually find and kill him, and that the only thing presently keeping him alive is L’Americano’s hope to get his money back. “You’re gonna get squeezed,” Ugo is half-warned half-threatened by L’Americano’s enforcer Rocco Musco (Mario Adorf). Indeed, everyone wants a piece of Ugo, and as the film’s explosive prologue shows, anyone who crosses L’Americano is liable to come to a horrific end.
“I’m not very smart,” Ugo tells the Commissario, also readily conceding that he is a ‘schmuck’ and a ‘potato head’ when so called by others – although we suspect that there may be a certain Socratic irony to Ugo’s claims, as our taciturn hero engages in a deft balancing act between every side of the law while accepting a job from the very man who everyone knows wants him dead. Caught in an extremely precarious, even impossible predicament, Ugo may take his beatings when they come, yet he proves more adept than others at outmanoeuvring death itself. His self-deprecating modesty and coolness under immense pressure make him not just a hard-boiled hero, but also very hard to read, so that, in this shadowy dog-eat-dog world, he is a suitably ambiguous protagonist.
All this unfolds to the contemporary sounds of Luis Enriquez Bacalov’s funky score (played by prog rockers Osanna), and captures a treacherously unstable moment in Italy’s history. Milano Calibro 9 would spawn two very loose sequels – The Italian Connection (1972) and The Boss (1973) – making up Di Leo’s Milieu Trilogy. It is a bleak film for bleak times, where any honour that once existed among thieves has long since departed, and everyone is out for themselves and after the money.
Watch Caliber 9 as part of ArteKino Classics 2025 – just click here for more information. Geographic restrictions apply, with the following European countries being excluded: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Vatican City, Croatia, Czech Republic, Italy, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, San Marino, Serbia, Spain, United Kingdom.
