For those who like rhetoric in movies, “Counselor De Gregorio” resounds as a stirring plea for all the values trampled on by modern society: honor, justice, respect, the dignity of man. More demanding viewers are likely find this Neapolitan drama strident and predictable. Italian theater star Giorgio Albertazzi holds center stage in sweating, battered close-ups as a down-at-the-heel Neapolitan attorney who finds new motivation to practice his profession when he takes on a difficult case of social injustice. Director Pasquale Squitieri (“Russicum,” “Claretta,”) certainly communicates passion for his subject, but his reductionist approach to good and evil, and a confused, anything-goes shooting style, lower pic’s level to TV drama. Controversially turned down by Venice and later screened at the Viareggio festival, pic is still awaiting a release date in Italy.
A sick old shyster on his last legs, De Gregorio (Albertazzi) is introduced as an unlikable ruffian handling the lowest sorts of cases. It turns out he is practicing without a licence, having been disbarred for fraud. The backstory of his decline is never fully explored, except that it somehow relates to the trauma of a son who died in childhood.
One night a desperate hooker (Anna Tognetti) pounds on his door. She has accidentally killed an American sailor, and De Gregorio cynically shelters her in return for sex. But she has more to offer: a big claims case against the construction company where her husband worked and died under mysterious circumstances. Middle section of the film follows a detective story format as the lawyer investigates. Convinced the man was murdered, De Gregorio goes to the city’s idealistic new prosecuting attorney Foloni (Ciro Capano.) He listens to the scruffy old man so respectfully that it turns De Gregorio’s life around. Full of new self-worth, he decides to shave and bathe, while the camera turns the spurting water faucet into a baptismal. Now fired with the thirst for justice, he ignores Mafia threats and disappearing witnesses to get to the final courtroom scene and deliver a passionate closing monologue as camera zeroes in on a redeeming crucifix.
Squitieri’s native Naples is a hot, steamy cauldron of prostitutes and punks. The courtrooms, atmospherically rendered in all their noise and confusion, make “Chicago’s” look like the Supreme Court. From a soup line for indigent oldsters to an unfinished housing project and an ultra-modern medical research center, pic illustrates the city with a mixture of affection and repulsion.
Albertazzi’s unrestrained perf gives De Gregorio depth and resonance, and his soapbox eloquence, though far from realistic dialogue, can be a pleasure to listen to. Most of the acting, however, is unnecessarily emphatic, and even Albertazzi’s theatrical gasping and sweating is over-emphasized by invasive close-ups and an orchestral score heavy on violins and organ.
