Pietro Germi, you sumonabitch.

For today’s rerelease I went out and nabbed a copy of the 4K Blu-ray remastering of The Facts of Murder, aka Un maledetto imbroglio which actually translates to A Damn Scam from Italian. Directed by Pietro Germi who How About Notflix readers will naturally recognize from his hit 1961 film Divorzio all’italiana, A Damn Scam is a crime mystery film starring who else? Pietro Germi. He was a man of many talents.

Pietro Germi plays Inspector Ciccio Ingravallo, a highly intelligent police officer with a great mustache who finds himself investigating two separate crimes at the same residence. To next door neighbors, now that you mention it. Commander Anzaloni (Ildebrando Santafe) has items stolen from his house, and the following week? There’s a murder! Liliana Banducci (Eleonora Rossi Drago) is killed in her own house and her husband Remo (Claudio Gora) is a prime suspect. Well, him and his beautiful servant girl Assuntina (Claudia Cardinale).

The Facts of Murder is a very entertaining movie, juggling two separate mysteries without letting one overstep the other. Germi as the inspector plays well on his fellow detectives including my personal favorite, Saro Urzì as Detective Saro, probably because he didn’t want to learn a new name. Incidentally Saro is the loudmouth constantly jabbering while deciding who is guilty, and also eating the country’s supply of sandwiches. And they are tasty looking sandwiches, I’ll give him that.

Being the director and star of the show, Ingravallo is of course the smartest man in the room, able to deduce pretty quickly people’s motivations and figure out what they’re likely to do next. He’s never shown as being infallible, especially when the chief calls into the office to tell him what a moron he and his team are, and his fellow detectives aren’t made into bumbling idiots for the sake of making him look smart.

The film does a surprisingly good job of balancing multiple plot lines, although it can occasionally be hard remembering where we are with the large group of cast members and their complicated relationships to each other. The acting is top notch, albeit incredibly over-pronounced. Everyone leaned really hard into their roles to make sure you know they know they are in a crime noir film. But I will admit, the film is all the better for it. Keep that two hour runtime entertaining all the way through.

The bad news of this review is that it’s kinda hard to get your hands on The Facts of Murder physically. The copies of the Blu-ray are running out fast. I grabbed the last available copy on Radiance’s website and it only looks like they’re printing 3,000 for the limited rerelease. You can find the DVD in some stores for $40+. The full movie is available on YouTube in 1080p. You’ll need to find this copy for the 4k restoration however.

Rating: B+