The Moro Case by Giuseppe Ferrara The famous screenwriter Tonino Guerra once said: “One day we will study the history of Italy from the films of Rosie” (Francesco Rosi is one of the most prominent representatives of Italian political cinema of the 60-70s). In fact, in place of Rosie in this quote, you can rightfully put the name of almost any Italian director of non-commercial cinema: Damiano Damiani, Marco Bellocchio, Carlo Lizzani, Ettore Scola, the Taviani brothers, Giuseppe Ferrara - the films of each of them in total give almost a complete historical panorama of Italy of those decades.
Here's Ferrara. His paintings “One Hundred Days in Palermo”, “Giovanni Falcone”, “The Case of Moreau”, “State Secret”, “Bankers of God” give a wide slice of Italian social and political life, from the 70s to the 90s of the last century. The film “One Hundred Days in Palermo”, which, based on authentic documents and testimonies of real people, reproduces the sequence of actions taken to combat the mafia by General Dalla Chiesa as prefect of Palermo (the capital of Sicily), can be considered as a continuation of the film “The Moro Affair”, despite the fact that chronologically the first came out before the second, and “The Moreau Affair”, in turn, as a prologue to “Bankers of God”.
It was under the leadership of General Carlo Alberto Dall Chiesa that the Red Brigades were defeated. But dealing with the radical left – and Ferrara makes it clear – was much easier than dealing with the mafia. On the side of the mafia was the state, the state was the mafia, and the mafia was the state, while the urban guerrillas were for this corrupt, criminal state ruled by the Christian democrats, the worst enemies. An honest and principled lawyer (at least as he is portrayed in the film) Dalla Chiesa will understand this too late.
But it's not just the mafia. According to the popular version, the murder of Dall Chiesa "ordered" boss bosses Giulio Andreotti is one of the main figures of the political life of the country in the second half of the XX century. This version, by the way, will be reflected in the film “The Amazing” by Paolo Sorrentino. In the hands of the general could get the diary of Aldo Moro, written in the dungeons of the “Red Brigades”, the publication of which could affect the further career of Andreotti. This explains the unnatural behavior of Andreotti and other prominent members of the party during the abduction of Moro "brigades", which is perfectly reflected in the film Ferrara.
Representing in the genre a close docudrama reconstruction of those intricate events, the last 55 days of Moro’s life, from the kidnapping on Fani Street to the discovery of the dead in the trunk of a car on Kaetani Street, the film is simultaneously an attempt to shed light on the undercover state intrigues, thanks to which the murder of a politician became not only possible, but inevitable and even desirable.
The events are presented from a very important distance of impartiality in political cinema, which does not allow the picture to slide to the level of propaganda consumerism or agitation. Ferrara does not take any side, does not evaluate the actions of left-wing radicals, does not build the film according to a pre-prepared ideological scheme. It raises more questions than it answers. Why wasn't Moreau saved? Why did the leaders of the Christian Democrats, Moro’s party comrades (and were they really his comrades?) hesitate? Who really wanted him dead: the city guerrillas or the top government officials? What share of the responsibility for the death of the politician lies with the secretary of the CDP Benigno Zaccanini, and what share lies with the chairman of the Council of Ministers Giulio Andreotti? What is the degree of involvement in the Moreau case of the United States of America? The neo-fascist P2 Freemason lodge? And so on. Conclusions Director offers to make the viewer.
He himself will draw conclusions later – in the film “Bankers of God”, showing the connection of the mafia, the Catholic Church, the P2 lodge headed by the famous boss Licho Gelli, Italian financial circles and the ruling party of Christian Democrats led by Giulio Andreotti.
Ferrara’s films, rooted in modernity, addressed to the current political moment, newspaper chronicles and journalistic investigations, are, in fact, designed, perhaps against the will of the director himself, to reveal the objective (social and political) reasons for the appeal of left-wing youth after 68 to extreme forms of struggle. Contrary to the opinion of many anti-communist slanders and defenders of the bourgeois state, the armed underground of the 70s was not an expression of the pathological desire for violence of a handful of outcasts, but was a response to political repression, including murders, left-wing intellectuals and activists, neo-fascist terror, rampant mafia, intermarried with state institutions, and other “lead abominations” of the era. What Ferrara’s films don’t contain, however, are explanations of internal, subjective, psychological causes. The answer to this question should be found in other films of other directors, be it the drama of Bernardo Bertolucci “The Tragedy of a Funny Man”, the tragicomedy of Dino Rizi “Dear Dad” or the black comedy of Salvatore Samperi “The Heart of a Mother”.
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