Marco Bellocchio’s filmic output is built upon the complex issues surrounding the interrelationship of the public and the private, the political and the personal, the collective and the individual. During the 1960s and 1970s these issues were bitterly negotiated in Europe, when – against a backdrop of postmodern theories – the idea of committed film-making struggled against the notions of a more private and introspective cinema of the ‘I,’ and now, in the new millennium, they have returned to Italian cinema.Impegno, as Burns (2000) has argued, is now fragmented, with film-makers currently tackling issues as diverse as prostitution, the mafia, gay...

Bellocchio is commonly categorized as a political film-maker.Michalczyk (1986) unproblematically classifies him as such alongside Pasolini, Rosi, and others inItalian Political Filmmakers. However, I am not convinced that Bellocchio is so easily characterized, either in terms of classifying his cinema in its entirety as the work of a political film-maker or even in terms of interpreting particular films, likeBuongiorno, notte,as such despite their avowed political content. This chapter will explore whether, and to what extent, Bellocchio’s earlier films are political, what is meant bypoliticalin this regard, and how politically engaged they may be considered...

The symbolic opening to Bellocchio’sIl sogno della farfalla(1994), the last film made with his analyst, Massimo Fagioli, screens two abstract cones of light, which, like cinema projector beams, cut through the darkness of what appears to be a theatre. These beams represent ‘due occhi … lo sguardo del ragazzo’ [two eyes … the boy’s gaze] (Roberti, Suriano, and Turco 1994, 325) and, at least in part, the capacity of the media of cinema and theatre to enlighten, to throw light onto darkness. This brief prefacing shot, which cites the opening to another highly introspective film, Ingmar Bergman’sPersona...

During the eighties, when the focus of Bellocchio’s cinema was on interiority, Bellocchio’s interest in politics did not, in fact, entirely disappear. Since 1980, five feature films explicitly or implicitly reference the politics of terrorism and the 1968 contestation, and one film,Vincere, treats italian fascism. In 1982,Gli occhi, la bocca’s protagonist, Pippo Pallidissimi, is the exemplum of a failed rebel of the contestation who must learn to adapt to a new socio-political climate. In 1986,Diavolo in corpo’s love story takes place against the backdrop of the judicial trials of political terrorists in the eighties. In 1999,La...

Chiara’s character inBuongiorno, notteand Ida’s inVincerebring us to the heart of Bellocchio’s cinema and signifies the point at which the individual, the ‘I’ aseye, becomes political. They become political not just in the narrower sense of interacting with the state and its political representatives, seen in the guise of Moro and Mussolini, but also in the broader sense because of their insertion into power structures and their position of resistance towards them.

The figure of the rebel, which Chiara exemplifies, dominates Bellocchio’s cinema from its origins in the early sixties to the present. This chapter...

In this final chapter I will be exploring how a director who maintained a rebellious and often individualistic attitude towards society, its traditions, and its institutions deals with artistic traditions in his own work, especially the cinematic and the literary. The focus of this chapter will be Bellocchio’s adaptations from the classics of European literature, particularly Pirandello’sEnrico IVandLa balia. However, the chapter will also explore Bellocchio’s use of citation and will discuss two further films –L’ora di religioneandIl regista di matrimoni– which involve their protagonists in complex and bitter battles for control against a pre-existing...