Director: Elio Petri; Story: Elio Petri, Tonino Guerra - Screenplay: Elio Petri, Tonino Guerra, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa - First assistant director: Giuliano Montaldo - Second assistant director: Giorgio Trentin, Adolfo Cagnacci - Director of photography: Carlo Di Palma - Camera operator: Dario Di Palma - Music: Piero Piccioni, diretta dall’autore; Music publishers: Titanus - Film editor: Ruggero Mastroianni - Production: Franco Cristaldi for Vides, Titanus, S.G.C. (Parigi) - Distribution: Titanus - Country: Italy - Running time: ca. 95’

Cast: Marcello Mastroianni (Alfredo Martelli), Micheline Presle (Adalgisa De Matteis), Cristina Gaioni (Nicoletta Nogara), Salvo Randone (Police chief Palumbo), Marco Mariani (Police chief Margiotta), Franco Ressel (Francesconi), Giovanna Gagliardo (Rosetta, housemaid), Paolo Panelli (Paolo, inmate), Toni Ucci (Toni, inmate)

The film:

"I had made Giorni d’amore with Giuseppe De Santis, and Elio Petri was his assistant and scriptwriter. We immediately got along. One day, Elio brought me this script that was so intelligent and different that I decided to direct it. L’assassino was a gorgeous film. I found a poster in the Hollywood home of Martin Scorsese, who keeps plenty of Italian posters in every room, and this touched me and made me so proud."

[Marcello Mastroianni, in Paola Pegoraro Petri (curated by), Lucidità inquieta. Il cinema di Elio Petri, Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino 2007, p. 44]

The film restoration:

The digital restoration of L'assassino was conducted by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and by the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Titanus, from the original camera negative and, for the first and the last reels, by a lavender from the same era, since the original conserved negative had a number of gaps. The two elements were scanned at 2K resolution and digital grading was based on a positive copy of that era which the production company Titanus conserves at the Cineteca di Bologna archives. The original soundtrack was digitally restored, starting with a 35mm optical negative from which a positive soundtrack was mastered. Once this element was ready, the film was digitally cleaned and the background noise caused by the wear and tear of time was reduced. The restoration produced a conservation dupe negative and a new soundtrack negative.

The restoration was carried out in 2011 at the laboratory L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna.

The publisher Carlotta Films released a DVD/Blu-ray of the restored film.

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