Filmo Sapiens

Society itself was often the protagonist in Petri’s work. Even The Tenth Victim(1965) — arguably Petri’s most popular film — is bitingly astute under its bright surface, a delightful feast of high-style sci-fi in which Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress are, in the early 21st century, licensed to hunt each other to the death as part of a contest for cash prizes. Their world (imported intact from Robert Sheckley’s classic story) abounds in prescient details: lightweight phones, wall-sized TVs, New Age religions. There’s even a lap dance, performed by Andress, albeit with a pair of midget cannons in the nipple tips of her brassiere.

However, there is also one chilling touch of clairvoyance of which Petri could not have been conscious, haunting enough even for Tarkovsky’s Ouija board, and that is: The opening chase capers through that area of Manhattan we now, in the actual 21st century, call Ground Zero. Demolished buildings spin by in an eyeblink, as busy cranes clear the wide spaces around Andress to make room for the real future’s World Trade Center. Can there be deep meaning in such a coincidence? Need there be? No, but — however inadvertently — here Petri powerfully advances the thesis Chris Marker advanced in Remembrance of Things To Come: that the true test of an artist’s honesty and vision comes long after the work is done, when the “here and now” under scrutiny has become someone else’s here and now, and a ghostly continuity can still be felt, even at a glance.

“Remembrance of Things To Come: New and Classic Work From Chris Marker” screens Friday, September 5, through Sunday, September 7, at the Egyptian Theater. “The Films of Elio Petri” screens in the Leo Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Friday, September 5, through Saturday, September 13. See Film and Video Events for schedule.