Todo modo in the context of Marcello Mastroianni

Gian Maria Volonté (9 April 1933 – 6 December 1994) was an Italian actor and activist. He is best known for his roles in four Spaghetti Western films: Ramón Rojo in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964), El Indio in Leone's For a Few Dollars More (1965), El Chuncho Munoz in Damiano Damiani's A Bullet for the General (1966) and Professor Brad Fletcher in Sergio Sollima's Face to Face (1967).

He had notable roles in high-profile social dramas depicting the political and social stirrings of Italian and European society in the 1960s and 1970s, including four films directed by Elio Petri – We Still Kill the Old Way (1967), Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970), The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971), and Todo modo (1976). He is also recognized for his performances in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge (1970), Giuliano Montaldo's Sacco & Vanzetti (1971) and Giordano Bruno (1973), and Francesco Rosi's Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979).

Eraclio Petri (29 January 1929 – 10 November 1982), commonly known as Elio Petri, was an Italian film and theatre director, screenwriter and film critic. The Museum of Modern Art described him as "one of the preeminent political and social satirists of 1960s and early 1970s Italian cinema". His film Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, and his subsequent film The Working Class Goes to Heaven received the Palme d'Or at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.

Other noted films by Petri include The 10th Victim (1965), the prize-winning We Still Kill the Old Way (1967) and A Quiet Place in the Country (1968), and the controversially received Todo modo (1976).