A Pure Formality
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A Pure Formality (Template:Lang-it) is a 1994 thriller film directed and written by Giuseppe Tornatore. It stars Gérard Depardieu as a reclusive writer and Roman Polanski as a police detective.
Plot summary
Depardieu's character is Onoff, a famous writer who is now a recluse. The Inspector (Polanski) is suspicious when Onoff is brought into the station one night, disoriented and suffering a kind of amnesia. As the head of an isolated, rural police station the Inspector tries to establish events through careful interrogation and deduction. By painstaking inquiry, he clears up a mysterious killing and brings the writer a new and strange realisation.
Cast
- Gérard Depardieu - Onoff
- Roman Polanski - Inspector
- Sergio Rubini - Andre, the Young Policeman
- Nicola Di Pinto - Captain
- Tano Cimarosa - Servant
- Paolo Lombardi - Marshall
- Maria Rosa Spagnolo - Paula
- Alberto Sironi
- Giovanni Morricone
- Mahdi Kraiem
- Massimo Vanni
- Sebastiano Filocamo
Reception
A Pure Formality was nominated for a Golden Palm at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. It also received a David di Donatello for Best Production Design (Andrea Crisanti).
Several films are inspired by A Pure Formality's idea (1994) of the mystery of the living versus the dead. The best example is The Sixth Sense (1999) from M. Night Shyamalan, another is The Others (2001) from Alejandro Amenábar.
