One Way or Another (1975)

There is a curious irony in the fact that the Italian political thriller One Way or Another arrived in 1975, the same year the Italian Communist Party achieved its strongest ever electoral result, a period when questions of institutional corruption, clerical influence, and the rot at the heart of the Christian Democrat establishment were very much live and raw for ordinary Italians. Elio Petri's film drops its audience into a closed retreat, a world of politicians performing spiritual exercises behind closed doors, and uses that claustrophobic setting to build something part mystery, part allegory, and thoroughly unsettling. The crimes that unfold there are almost beside the point: the real subject is power, how it insulates itself, how it performs piety, and how it tends to outlast any individual scandal. For audiences in 1975, watching a group of recognisably powerful men sealed off from consequence in a religious retreat would have felt less like fiction and more like a diagnosis.

Petri was already well established as one of Italian cinema's sharpest political voices by the time he made this film for Cinevera, having built a reputation for genre work charged with social critique throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. The cast he assembled here is remarkable even by Italian standards of the era. Gian Maria Volonté, an actor who had already demonstrated serious range in everything from operatic spaghetti westerns (you may remember his villainous turns in A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More) to demanding art-house work, brings his characteristic intensity to proceedings. Opposite him, Marcello Mastroianni, one of the most recognisable faces in world cinema at the time, offers a rather different register, more contained, more ambiguous. Mariangela Melato, coming off a string of high-profile Italian productions, and character actors Ciccio Ingrassia and Franco Citti fill out an ensemble that is polished but never comfortable, which suits the material perfectly. The 125-minute runtime gives the film room to breathe, or to slowly constrict, depending on your perspective.

It is worth situating the film within the broader tradition of Italian genre-bending that produced so much interesting work in the 1970s. Italian cinema of this period had a particular gift for using the machinery of thriller or mystery plots to smuggle in ideas that a straightforwardly political film might have delivered more bluntly (and less memorably). Films like Cemetery Man and Nightmare City show the range of that national tradition across different decades and genres, and One Way or Another sits towards the more serious, intellectually purposeful end of that spectrum. What Petri is doing here is not horror or exploitation but something closer to political satire with a genuine edge of menace, the kind of film that trusts its audience to connect the dots without spelling everything out.

One Way or Another (De cierta manera, 1975) is a bold hybrid of fiction and documentary that captures post-revolutionary Cuba through both intimate drama and sociopolitical observation. Directed by Sara Gómez (Cuba’s first female feature filmmaker) it weaves together the story of a schoolteacher navigating love and class tensions with real-life footage of Havana neighbourhoods, community meetings, and everyday citizens grappling with lingering machismo and systemic inequality. The blend is ambitious and often insightful, offering a rare, ground-level view of revolutionary ideals clashing with human complexity. The direction is assured and quietly radical: Gómez avoids propaganda in favour of nuance, letting contradictions breathe. Some of the non-professional actors deliver remarkably natural performances, particularly in unscripted moments that feel lived-in and authentic. Yet the narrative unfolds slowly (sometimes too slowly) relying on repetition and didactic dialogue that can test patience. The pacing reflects its educational intent, but it rarely achieves the emotional momentum of more conventional cinema. Visually, the film shows its age and budget: grainy 16mm footage, uneven sound, and limited lighting give it a rough-hewn quality that adds to its documentary realism but detracts from cinematic polish. Still, there’s poetry in its imperfections, the sun-drenched streets, cramped tenements, and earnest faces tell their own story. One Way or Another is historically significant and socially perceptive, but not always engaging as entertainment. It’s a landmark work that deserves respect for its vision and context, even if its storytelling feels dated or diffuse by modern standards. Worth watching for its pioneering voice, but don’t expect a smooth ride.

I'll be honest: knowing the production context and appreciating what Petri was reaching for doesn't entirely paper over the frustrations I'd already noted. There's something to be said for a film that leaves you slightly restless, slightly provoked, slightly unwilling to let it go, even when the experience of watching it isn't straightforwardly pleasurable. The cast alone makes it worth the time for anyone with an interest in this period of European cinema. But for me, the most lasting impression is of a film that knew exactly what it wanted to say and built its whole architecture around that idea, for better and worse. Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes it's a little less than enough.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 1975  | Watched: 2026-04-29

View on Letterboxd →

Related on Movies With Macca

More with Gian Maria Volonté: A Fistful of Dollars (1964) · For a Few Dollars More (1965)
More from Italy: Nightmare City (1980) · Cemetery Man (1994) · Chicken for Linda! (2023) · The Firemen's Ball (1967)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)