Director Damiano Damiani’s is getting quite the retrospective thanks to Radiance Films. Last summer the label released Cosa Nostra: Franco Nero In Three Mafia Tales. The boxset featured his Scillian films that starred Franco Nero taking on the mob in three different roles. In the mid-70s, the director found an international operation that rivaled the Mafia in the CIA. Instead of giving us a ruthless calculating agent that we need to fear, Damiani gives us a top-level CIA agent on his worst day in Goodbye & Amen.
John Dannahay (The Bird With the Crystal Plumage‘s Tony Musante) is the head of security for the American Embassy at Rome. Turns out that he has other duties inside his office since he’s really a major CIA operative. He’s gathered together a crew to overthrow the government of an African country. He’s got everyone primed for this mission where they have to look like the locals are the ones that cause the coup without any American involvement. Before John’s gets his crack crew on an airplane, he gets rather distressing news that throws everything into a tizzy. Harry Lambert, the assistant to the ambassador at the embassy, has snapped. He’s broken into his own house and stole a rifle. During the night, the diplomat gets inside the Rome Hilton Hotel and shoots two people dead. Before the cops arrive, Lambert busts into room where an actress (The Pink Panther‘s Claudia Cardinale) and her actor are rehearsing for an upcoming Spaghetti Western. Lambert takes them hostage. John has had his suspicion that Lambert might have been a mole at the embassy. He hadn’t busted him sooner because the guy was considered a golden boy of the State Department. This hostage situation gets more complicated when the Ambassador (Dynasty‘s John Forsythe) gets too involved. All of this gums up John’s African operation. This is making him look incompetent. The CIA executives back in Virgina are wanting to cut John’s throat. Can he save his position and the hostages?
Goodbye & Amen does an unusual plot twist on the audience by making us root for the wicked CIA agent. This is such a masterful move by Damiano Damiani. The mid-70s was not a time for viewing CIA agents as anything except vile creatures of destruction. They had destroyed a lot of good people in Southeast Asia, Africa, Central America and South America at this time. Yet we don’t want to see everything blow up in the face of John Dannahay. Instead of wanting to see him put on a plane and returned to CIA headquarters, there’s hoping John can save his job. It’s strange feeling to root for the anti-hero, but Damiano achieves it. Helping this element is quite a few twists that reveal what’s really happening in the chaos. This is a great thriller capped off with an intense ending involving a helicopter escape on the top of the hotel.
Tony Musante humanizes his CIA character so he’s not someone who exists in the shadows. He takes a role that’s normally one note in American films and fleshes it out. It’s also good to see him back in Italy after he became part of the rise of a Giallo with Dario Argento. He’s back in a deep mystery although it’s not a gloved killer this time. Claudia Cardinale gets to shine as the actress who finds herself stuck in a real gun drama. John Forsythe is properly cast as the ambassador since he seems like the kind of guy who would think he would be helpful walking into the kidnapper’s lair. It doesn’t appear the film got a wide released in America. Perhaps having a CIA agent looking to overthrow a country wasn’t as appealing to US distributors so soon after the Vietnam War.
Damiano Damiana proves he can create a thriller without relying on the Mafia. The story is full of intrigue and the ending is tense and engrossing. We get the strangest twist of caring about the fate of a CIA agent. Goodbye & Amen is so worth discovering.
The Video is 1.85:1 anamorphic. The transfer brings out the groovy details of the Rome Hilton in the mid-70s. The Audio is DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono in Italian. There is an option to watch the English cut of the film that offers the English soundtrack in DTS-HD MA Mono. There’s a warning that this English soundtrack was damaged and they couldn’t do their usual excellent job in restoration. There are scenes where the actors sound very echoey. But they’ve included this version since it wasn’t part of the home media before. The English cut is shorter at only 102 minutes. The movie is subtitled in English although the subtitles for the English and Italian version vary.
Audio Commentary by Eurocrime experts Nathaniel Thompson and Howard Berger. They talk about how it is also called The CIA Man. They get into how the film is about Italian police having to deal with the CIA instead of the Mafia. They also talk about a bit of satire in the film before it gets extra serious towards the third act.
Interview with editor Antonio Siciliano (38:49) was shot a year ago. he discusses how got into the film business. His father was a stage director and built sets before he got into editing newsreels. He would bring home scraps of films for Antonio to run on his little projector to show friends. He tried other jobs but eventually got into editing by working a house that dubbed American Films into Italian. He gets into working with Damiano Damiani. Their first collaboration was a bit awkward since he was getting film from Sicily and was cutting without Damiani near the editing room. The director appreciated his work. He also talks about the director’s art career. This came handy since Damiani storyboarded his scripts, so he didn’t shoot excessive coverage.
Wolf’s Instinct (23:49) is an interview with Wolfango Soldati from 2013. He talks about losing a few pounds before he auditioned for the role. His workout buddy got injured, but Wolfango landed the part. The audition was in English and his character’s hardest scene in the film. He gets into playing a character that not easily defined. Is Lambert a traitor? He chose a paranoid mindset for the role. The rest of the cast hated him because of the character. He talks about acting in English instead of his native Italian. He talks about his working on scenes with Tony Muscante. He did meet Claudia Cardinale.
Limited edition booklet featuring an essay by Italian crime cinema expert Lucia Rinaldi.
Radiance Films presents Goodbye & Amen: Limited Edition. Directed by Damiano Damiani. Screenplay by Damiano Damiani & Nicola Badalucco. Starring Tony Musante, Claudia Cardinale, John Steine, Renzo Palmer, Fabrizio Jovine, Wolfango Soldati, Gianrico Tondinelli, Angela Goodwin, Anna Zinnemann & John Forsythe. Running Time: 110 Minutes. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: February 13, 2024.
