Milano Trema: La Polizia Vuole Giustizia

Guido & Maurizio De Angelis – MILANO TREMA: LA POLIZIA VUOLE GIUSTIZIA (THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS)

▶ LP 180gr. | Limited Edition 400 copies

▶ inner sleeve with original movie artworks included

▶ exclusive liner notes by Sergio Martino, director of the film, and Emanuele Leotta

▶ artwork by Luke Insect

Right after LA POLIZIA INCRIMINA, LA LEGGE ASSOLVE (HIGH CRIME), the magic duo of Italian poliziotteshi conceive yet another highlight of the genre - the groovy, melancholic score of MILANO TREMA: LA POLIZIA VULE GIUSTIZIA (THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS, 1973), which perfectly sets the tone of metropolitan violence presented on the screen. A dramatic sound, which preludes the acid-prog and gloomy music created for IL GRANDE RACKET (THE BIG RACKET) just three years later, with lots of flutes, clavinet, frenzied percussions, deep basslines and experimental effects.

The result is a disturbing atmosphere of suspence, always on the verge of exploding in deep piano notes that highlight the most violent moments of the film. With the main theme "Blue Song", repeated several times with endless instrumental variations, the De Angelis brothers set a dark- romantic atmosphere which becomes a manifesto of disenchantment and the perfect accompaniment for the detective story.

Four Flies Records, in collaboration with Bloodbuster Edizioni, is proud to present the complete soundtrack for the first time on vinyl (only the two songs of the movie were published before on a 7''-inch by RCA), featuring exclusive liner notes by the film's director, Sergio Martino.

LINER NOTES by SERGIO MARTINO

On the set of the movie Milano trema: la polizia vuole giustizia (The Violent Professionals) we got into all kinds of mischief... risking a lot of troubles... For example, many of the car chases were filmed without shooting permits or roadblocks.

Once, while we were shooting a fake bank robbery, somebody called the police: the attack on Milan's police headquarters had just happened a month earlier, and the newspapers were still talking about it... In short, we took a lot of risks, young and reckless as we were.

When I attended the press screening, in Milan, before the release of the movie in theaters, the most prominent journalists who interviewed me were proud to underline what they believed was my original sin, "to be commercially successful". Not to mention a thousand other faults, from the mechanisms of the story, which in their opinion did not make sense, to the bad taste of the pictures, and so on...

For the first time though, a few younger reviewers shyly admired the film's pace, action, and spectacular value. Maybe something was changing?

Milano trema ran in theaters of the Lombard capital from mid-August, i.e. the period of b-movies releases. Oreste Del Buono wrote a positive review in the national newspaper "Il Giorno" (or at least I think so...) also mentioning, indirectly, the film's success at the box office. The last sentence said something like this: "The cinema was packed, a sign that the citizens of Milan have returned home from holidays - tomorrow they will all go back to work".

The following year our young administrative director Gianni Saragò (currently a producer himself) gave my brother a plaque that read: "Milano trema: la polizia vuole giustizia, the first film produced by Dania, has made over a billion liras at the Italian box-office".
I hope his daughters, Lea and Dania, still keep the plaque along with other tokens of his brilliant career.

LINER NOTES by EMANUELE LEOTTA

Thanks to the first Italian Poliziotteschi, directed in the early Seventies by professionals like Enzo G. Castellari and Sergio Martino, the brothers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis are now considered as specialists of the genre. When Martino filmed Milano trema: la polizia vuole giustizia (The Violent Professionals) in 1973, he asked the two brothers to compose the soundtrack for the movie, while they were already working for another of his films, the thriller Torso.

It is precisely from the latter work that the brothers began to find inspiration for a darker mood, contextualizing it in a scene of metropolitan violence. Starting with the title of the main theme Blue Song, the De Angelis brothers set a dark-romantic atmosphere where the delicate melody, mixed with flutes, strings, and piano, becomes a manifesto of pessimism and disenchantment, the perfect accompaniment for the investigations of the leading character: Inspector Luc Merenda.

The backbone of this album is centered on this theme, repeated several times with endless instrumental variations. The rest of the LP, instead, is an inspired and multifarious "B-side" composed with dramatic bass and hysterical percussion to create a disturbing atmosphere of suspense, always on the verge of exploding in deep piano notes that highlight the most violent moments of the story. Four Flies Records, with this philological operation, presents the soundtrack in its primal form, leaving in all the music tracks actually featured in the film.