ew York City, sometime in the near future: Across a construction site, a fashionably clad woman is being chased by an Asian man who fires wild pistol shots at her. Remarkably, no bystander or policeman intervenes. For as a thin, feverish spokesman tells us, these two are engaged in the "Big Hunt," a socially sanctioned killing game. Every participant must alternate as either Victim or Hunter, and rare is the person who makes 10 kills, thus becoming an honored "decathlete." The woman Victim lures the would-be killer into the Masoch Club, then disappears. Cut to Caroline Meredith (Andress), busy doing a strip-tease-cum-audience-flagellation act. Lulled by the sexy atmosphere, the killer relaxes—at which point, Meredith—Victim gaining the upper hand—nails him with twin guns concealed in her bra.
The scene shifts next to Italy, at a horse show. A German rider summons his assistant, Marcello Polletti (Mastroianni), who fits him with special riding boots. But Polletti is a Hunter in disguise and the German his Victim, a relationship made clear when the booby-trapped boots explode. We have now met our two protagonists, but they couldn't be more different. Rich and courted by the media, Meredith is at the top of her game, going for her 10th kill. Polletti is broke and depressed and only on his sixth Victim. He's besieged by an ex-wife and a marriage-crazed mistress, Olga (Martinelli). His furniture is about to be repossessed, and he's reduced to running a fake sun-worshipping religion to earn a few bucks. What will bring these two disparate figures together? The Hunt computers in Geneva draw Polletti as Meredith's next Victim.
In Rome, Meredith and her commercial backers, the Ming Tea company, scout locations for the kill, settling on the ruined Temple of Venus. While the producers gear up for a big song-and-dance number that will culminate in the kill, Meredith takes the bold step of introducing herself to Polletti, pretending to be a journalist conducting a survey on the sex habits of Italian men. Sensitized to the approach of his Hunter, Polletti immediately suspects her, but decides to string her along. They go to the house of Polletti's ex-wife so Polletti can look for any loose cash. They have a tentative, truncated romantic clinch, and then Polletti ditches Meredith, returning to Rome. Now he's intuitively sure of her identity and arranges her own on-camera killing for another sponsor. ...
Black humor in a groovy mode
Although he won an Oscar for Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) and was recently the subject of a retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive, director Elio Petri does not possess a reputation equivalent to other Italian filmmakers of his era, such as Fellini and Rossellini. That seems an unfair trick of history, since his work was beautifully composed, intelligent and vibrant, at least to judge by this entry, which also happens to be one of those rare instances when European directors respectfully adapt American SF.
Robert Sheckley's original story, "Seventh Victim" (1953; expanded to novel length as The 10th Victim in 1966), was a tidy little mordant gem, and was treated with due reverence by the director and screenwriters while also being cleverly enlarged. The interpersonal dynamics between Hunter and Victim are present in Sheckley in embryo, but are realized much more fully in the film. Of course, simply the superb pairing of Mastroianni and Andress goes a long way toward fulfilling our expectations. Andress had gained bombshell prominence just three years earlier, in 1962's Dr. No, while Mastroianni, of course, carried the world-weary, glamorous aura of La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963). In fact, the riff about Polletti's women troubles seems a direct homage to the latter film, strengthened by the fact that Polletti lives on the "Piazza Fellini."
But the film is strong not only on the interpersonal level, but also the societal. The details of the how the Hunt is managed, and what it means for the culture, are numerous and ingeniously presented. The police who rush up to check all the paperwork after each kill, then issue a parking ticket if necessary; the bureaucracy of talking computers and flashing payout machines; the insouciance with which bystanders react to gunplay in cafes and clubs—these satirical touches and more all contribute to the insane plausibility of this future. And with a half-explained throwaway bit—Mastroianni's parents are revealed to be living in hiding so as to avoid being "turned in" to the state as illegal elders—we get a further buttressing of how callously this world values life. When Mastroianni visits a "service station" that proves to be a brothel (that joke originated with Robert Heinlein, as far as I recall), we get a final confirmation of how far the world has changed from 1965—and how closely it presciently approaches our own era of media saturation, spycams and reality shows.
