NoTHE NAME OF THE FATHER
Type: dramatic, political
Director: Mark Bellocchio. With Yves Beneyton, Renato Scarpa, Aldo Sassi, Lou Castel, Laura Betti. Saturday 22 July at 3.25 on Rai3 and on RaiPlay
School year 1958-59, Angelo is led to the sound of slaps – reciprocated – in boarding school. “Ungrateful. Respect your father. I order you.” That place, which the director shows us in the opening credits already abandoned and crumbling, hosts a world divided into classes (the attendants will try to rebel against injustice cloaked in charity) where fear and desire are administered by authority.
Marco Bellocchio, with his third film after Fists in the pocket And China is close, he elaborates his own personal experience in a boarding school of the Salesians and subverts the established order of the religious institution, precisely in the days of Pope Pacelli’s death and the end of an era.
Renato Scarpa is the deputy director of the college in “Nel nome del padre” (photo Contrasto).
The fiery temper of the rebel is not tamed (“If I rebel it’s because I can’t get anything out of this experience!”) and the staging of the Faust by the students, designed to unmask the true nature of the microcosm, eventually restores order.
Broadcast late at night from Out of hours (but it’s worth watching) the “director’s cut” version (15 minutes less than the 1971 film) presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2011 on the occasion of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement can also be retrieved on Raiplay.
For those who want to know the beginnings of an author’s career.
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