Bizanti (Gian Maria Volonté), an editor for the Milanese paper Il Giornate, gives a junior some notes. That junior is Roveda (Fabio Garriba), who ‘learns’ that readers can’t be ‘feeling responsible for…death…’. He’s right, but Milan learns the wrong version of that lesson in Marco Bellocchio’s shocking satirical film Slap the Monster on Page One. Here, schoolchildren find the body of a young girl, Maria Grazia Martini (Silvia Kramar). Upon learning that Grazia hung out with anarchists, he visits her mentor, Rita Zagai (Laura Betti). A Conservative shill, he plants the idea that an anarchist did it instead of investigating properly.

It’s really good timing that this is coming to streaming because it takes place during an election. As things change, they also remain the same, and that old adage makes sense in this film. Fake news made its way to pamphlets the same way it makes its way to Twitter. Page One remembers the former more than it foresees the latter and shows Bizanti using his resources. Our generation of grifters need Twitter while Bizanti’s generation uses newspapers and even conversations. Bizanti, like grifters of any age, knows how to pull in even the most seasoned anarchists like Zigai into his trap.

Slap the Monster on Page One is good satire, even if one defines ‘satire’ in different ways – it shows the sneakiness of the right as well as the fractiousness and sneakiness of the left. Rabble-rouser Mario Boni (Corrado Solari) doesn’t rape and kill Grazia but he is still grooming her. The film is also a satire in ways that its nihilism actually comes off as funny. Bizanti asks Roveda if those anarcho-communists attack him at a presser. The way he asks this seems hilarious self serving as well as the mick headline anticipating the assault against Roveda that doesn’t happen.

Bizanti, as Slap the Monster on Page One shows, is the best at being the worst – he throws Zagai to the wolves, and she’s at the mercy of the Italian courts. There is, however, one thing he says that makes sense, especially when it comes to twenty-first century journalism. That line has his saying that journalists “must be protagonists, not observers” and he is kind of right. I mean, no one should life, but writers lie to themselves by calling themselves impartial. This film has a lot of aces which include Sergio Donati and Goffredo Fofi’s intelligent script that still reflects contemporary society.

Stream Slap the Monster on Page One on OVID.