Rapito

Paolo Pierobon as Pope Pius IX

Marco Bellocchio's Rapito (Kidnapped) is, by my count, the Italian director's 37th feature film since he debuted with the terrific Fists in the Pocket in 1965. Subtitled The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara, Rapito tells the true life story of a six year old Jewish boy in Bologna who was snatched by Papal authorities in 1851, taken to Rome, converted to Catholicism and eventually became a priest. This caused an international furor chronicled in Daniele Scalise's The Mortara Case, the basis of the film's script and a book not yet available in English. The film juxtaposes the rites and rituals of both religions shifting between Edgardo's Catholic education and his beside themselves parents and their household in Bologna.

Rapito's story is so wrenching that the film needs little directorial embellishment. Despite a few critics accusing the director of melodramatic overstatement, I think Bellocchio shows great restraint, often filming the proceedings at a classical remove. Close-ups are largely reserved for Edgardo, Edgardo's distraught parents or the film's main villains. Bellocchio is fully on the side of the Mortara family, but his portrait of the clergy has some balance with a few notable exceptions. These include Father Feletti, a zealous Inquisition official who is the architect of Edgardo's forced conversion, and Pope Pius IX. The arc of the film focuses as much on Pius as it does on Edgardo who, when he reaches maturity, is rapt in his adoration of his pontiff. Edgardo's brain washing is conveyed by Bellocchio through the repetitive and rote nature of his Catholic education. Bellocchio presents his protagonist's religious instruction as an indoctrination by a cult.

Paolo Pierobon has the film's juiciest role as the vain and power mad Pius, drunk with his own papal infallibility, and delivers an indelible portrait of evil. Pius and his Papal states are literally under siege by a burgeoning nationalist movement that would unite the nation into a secular republic under Victor Emmanuel II. Pius' anxiety is illustrated in a few dream or hallucinatory sequences which include his being circumcised by a cabal of Hebrew elders. These moments go a long way in keeping Rapito from being a dry historical treatise. These sequences parallel a number of hallucinatory dream sequences that convey how Edgardo's unconscious is affected by the dogma and graven images of the church. A further parallel is the image of Eduardo hiding under a skirt. Initially he hides under his mother's skirt when threatened with being separated from his family. Eventually he nestles under the pope's robes during a game of hide and seek, marking his shift in allegiance to mother church.

Barbara Ronchi

Edgardo becomes such a devout defender of his newfound faith that he tries to baptize his mother on her deathbed. It is a tribute to Barbara Ronchi's performance as the mother that this climactic moment never seems overheated or hackneyed. Technically, Rapito is immaculate. I particularly enjoyed Francesco Di Giacomo's cinematography and Fabio Massimo Capo Grosso's score. The lion's share of the credit should go to Bellocchio, a filmmaker whose releases in America has been limited. Rapito is an impressively vigorous film from an 84 year old artist. The best of his work that I've seen ( which would include besides Rapito and Fists in the Pocket, Vincere and Devil in the Flesh) indicates that he needs more exposure on these shores.