Torino Nera (1972)

During a Torino football match, Vito Santoro is shot dead with a gun that turns out to belong to Rosario Rao, an honest, fair-minded mason from southern Italy who worked alongside the victim. Since Rao was also at the stadium, he is accused and arrested for the murder. He had previously clashed with Santoro because he could not tolerate Santoro’s arrogant attitude toward the weak. After Rao has unjustly served three years in prison, his two underage sons, Mino and Raffaele, decide, with the help of their friend, lawyer Mancuso, to look for evidence of their father’s innocence. Their search sets off a spiral of violence by the people who framed Rao. Two of the false witnesses are killed—one in a staged car accident, the other while in agony in hospital—as is Nascarella, a prostitute and Santoro’s girlfriend. She dies in mysterious circumstances (officially ruled a suicide), perhaps because she kept a photograph of the stadium murder scene, taken by the photographer Cammarata, in her home. At the end of his investigation, Mino obtains a confession from one of the people who took part in the crime, and the truth finally emerges. The building contractor Fridda, who is in league with the Mafia and is a Sicilian who successfully relocated to Turin, had decided to murder his subordinate Santoro because Santoro’s excessively brutal methods had made him a troublesome figure, disliked by the other employees. Fridda also wanted to get rid of Rosario Rao, since Rao’s union activism threatened to destabilize his company and turn the workers against him. Fridda’s men then set out to hunt down Mino and the recording of the confession. They find both, and the hitman Mascara beats Mino, leaving him at death’s door. Meanwhile, Rosario Rao obtains special leave from prison to visit his son, evades surveillance, and goes to kill Mascara and Fridda, after which he turns himself in.