The Day of the Owl Blu-ray Review
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, August 8, 2023
Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of the
Cosa Nostra: Franco Nero in Three Mafia Tales by Damiano Damiani set from Radiance
Films.
Franco Nero is one of those huge international superstars who perhaps perplexingly never really seemed to make a consistent impact in the United
States market for whatever reason, though some have mentioned his lack of facility with English for having potentially contributed to that situation.
In
that
regard, it's at least arguable that the "average Joe" and/or "Joanne" filmgoer on this side of the pond would only be able
to point to
Camelot, perhaps ironically even if they
hadn't
actually seen it, simply because of the gossip column fodder that erupted courtesy of his burgeoning relationship with co-star Vanessa
Redgrave.
That said,
Camelot and
maybe, just maybe titles like
The Bible: In the Beginning... and/or
Die Hard 2: Die Harder might occur to some
stateside fans as offering Nero
performances they've seen, but of course his European popularity was unmatched in his heyday, spurred by his star making performance in
Django. As is recounted in some of the supplements Radiance has
included with this three disc set, Nero matriculated from westerns in the sixties into some late sixties through seventies films that were at least
tangentially related to
Poliziotteschi, though often from the "flip side", i.e., focusing on the criminals rather than the good guys. Radiance has aggregated three of
those entries in this appealing set, which features productions ranging from 1968 to 1975 all directed by Damiano Damiani, and at least somewhat
interestingly only one of which features Nero as a policeman.
Though this data point
might need to be taken with that veritable grain of salt, some of the supplements included on this disc as well as the
reverse cover's backside verbiage state that the book on which this film was based was supposedly the first to openly deal with organized crime in
Sicily. As "groundbreaking" as the source novel may have been,
The Day of the Owl is in some ways a kind of "old school" property for
those acquainted with
any kind of organized crime outing, whether or not it's the Mafia and/or Italians or some other group and/or
nationality. This is the one film in the
Cosa Nostra set where Franco Nero is a cop, in this case a captain named Bellodi who is tasked with
figuring out whether a murdered truck driver met his end because he crossed paths with a corrupt Mafia don named Mariano Arena (Lee J. Cobb) or
because he crossed paths with a married woman named Rosa Nicolosi (Claudia Cardinale), whose husband may have not wanted
that
particular "path" crossed, so to speak.
If Nero is an ostensibly unabashed "good guy" as a cop, it's soon revealed that he's not above using some questionable methods to get to the truth,
but that aspect only tends to make the film's supposed point about "corruption" seem almost painfully obvious, and indeed there's a kind of stifling
feeling of moral turpitude infusing the film, which rather strangely also has some lighter moments in its depiction of a more rustic, quasi-rural
sensibility. This is a rather interesting story one way or the other that doesn't completely rely on some of the tropes that it admittedly traffics in.
The Day of the Owl Blu-ray, Video Quality
The Day of the Owl is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Radiance Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Radiance's insert
booklet contains the following information on the transfer:
The Day of the Owl was scanned in 2K from the original camera negative and restored and colour graded by Studio Cine, Rome. The original
Italian and English mono soundtracks were restored by Radiance Films in 2022.
This is a great looking transfer with secure detail levels and a really nicely organically resolved grain field, along with an often quite sumptuously
suffused palette. The color timing may strike some as just a tad on the yellow side at times, but a lot of the outdoor material in particular pops
beautifully and offers sometimes surprisingly fulsome fine detail levels even in midrange and wide framings. There are some very slight deficits in
shadow detail in some nighttime scenes and a couple of dimly lit interior moments.