A Pure Formality

A Pure Formality

DVD cover
Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore
Produced by Bruno Altissimi
Mario Cecchi Gori
Vittorio Cecchi Gori
Jean-Louis Livi
Alexandre Mnouchkine
Claudio Saraceni
Written by Giuseppe Tornatore
Pascal Quignard
Starring Gérard Depardieu
Roman Polanski
Sergio Rubini
Nicola Di Pinto
Tano Cimarosa
Paolo Lombardi
Maria Rosa Spagnolo
Music by Ennio Morricone
Cinematography Blasco Giurato
Edited by Giuseppe Tornatore
Release dates
 18 May 1994 (France)
12 January 1995 (Germany)
30 March 1995 (Spain)
Running time
 108 minutes
Country Italy
Language French

A Pure Formality (Italian: Una Pura Formalità) 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

Reception

A Pure Formality was nominated for a Golden Palm at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.[1] 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.

References

  1. ↑ "Festival de Cannes: A Pure Formality". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-08-30.

External links