Elio Petri's Property Is No Longer A Theft tells the story of Total (Flavio Bucci), a young man who works day to day as a bank clerk. He doesn't have much in the way of prospects or opportunity and when he asks his employer (Julien Guiomar) for a loan and is subsequently denied, he decides to do something about. Irritated by the corruption and greed that he sees around him on a nearly constant basis, Total decides to take out his frustrations on the town butcher (Ugo Tognazzi). While he is one of the bank's biggest and most important customers, he's also a greedy rat bastard with a penchant for violence.

Soon enough, Total quits his job at the bank and basically dedicates all of his time to an increasingly risky life of petty crime. He makes a point out of going back to the butcher time and time again to get at him, eventually taking everything that is his, including his beautiful mistress Anita (Daria Nicolodi) and slowly but surely driving him insane.

Made after A Citizen Above Suspicion and The Working Class Goes To Heaven this third part of Petri's ‘neurosis trilogy' once again works leftist/socialist leanings into a clever story dealing with the pitfalls of capitalism and, yes, paranoia (a recurring theme in his work). Total clearly represents the working class, he doesn't have much though it's through no fault of his own. He's a good worker and an honest man and when he sees the butcher beating a would-be thief, it sets something off in him. He changes. This previously docile bank worker takes on a new persona, he gets shiftier, more daring. This is represented not just in his actions but in his appearance as well, essentially becoming that which he has set out to destroy. While clearly very (darkly) satirical in nature, Petri puts his politics on full display. Money corrupts and those who care only about amassing property are to be villainized. Never if this more obvious than in the scene where Total lights a bill on fire and his director goes ballistic. This movie isn't always subtle, but its message holds up, ringing ever clearly in the modern age and in the current political climate. There are some occasional pacing problems and the message behind the film is pretty heavy-handed, but most of what Petri does here works quite well.

Performances are strong here. Flavio Bucci has been better in other films than he is here, but he's decent in the lead. We like him, at least at first, and we understand why he feels the way he does about not only his lot in life, but the system that seems to have been put in place by those in power to keep him, and people like him, from climbing the economic ladder. As his character changes throughout the movie, he tweaks his performance accordingly and it's interesting to watch this happen. Ugo Tognazzi is pretty great as the butcher. Right from the start, we share Total's feelings towards the character. He is greedy, unpleasant and cruel to many of those around him. Tognazzi plays this part well, seeming to relish the chance to really craft a character as despicable as he can. Throw lovely Daria Nicoladi into the mix as the butcher's mistress and then eventually Total's flame, and the three principal leads shape up nicely in this picture, each delivering strong, distinct work.

Production values shine in this film. Shot by frequent collaborator Luigi Kuveiller, the cinematography is excellent. The framing in the picture does a great job of not only showing off some important details of the locations (pay attention to what we see in both the church and the bank, small things matter here), and it's interesting to see how the appearance of the characters can contrast with their surroundings. On top of that, the picture features an effectively quirky and occasionally flat out bizarre score from Ennio Morricone.

Video:

Arrow offers up Property Is No Longer A Theft in a ‘brand new 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negative' in AVC encoded 1080p high definition framed at 1.85.1 widescreen. It looks, in a word, fantastic. Detail is really strong throughout while texture and color reproduction are strong from start to finish. There's nice depth here and the black levels are strong. Compression artifacts, edge enhancement and noise reduction are never obvious problems. This looks really, really good on Blu-ray. Nice and clean too, no real print damage worth noting.