At one point in Exterior noche, the ambitious miniseries (available on Filmin) that Marco Bellocchio has devoted to the kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, an American terrorism expert tells Interior Minister Francesco Cossiga: “Who is there behind? The Red Brigades, there is no doubt. Italians always look for a second motif behind the first, and then a third, a fourth, a fifth and a sixth. We Americans are more linear”.
This is a highly pertinent point, taking into account that, beyond the responsibility of the terrorists who in March 1978 kidnapped the president of the Christian Democrats (DC) to short-circuit the so-called “historical commitment” -by virtue of which the Party Italian Communist supported the DC Government—, the episode,
Bellocchio had already dealt twice with this trauma, which had become the point of no return in Italian politics. In 1995, in Sogni infranti. Ragionamenti e deliri, the documentary that he dedicated to the terrorism of the Red Brigades, and in 2003, in the celebrated Good Morning, Night, with which he began a stage of maturity punctuated by at least two other major works, Vincere and El traidor, consecrated to analyze the two biggest scourges of the Italian 20th century: fascism and the mafia. It is perfectly coherent that he now broadens the field of battle with respect to Good morning, night —where, based on the memoirs of the brigade member Anna Laura Braghetti, he narrated the story from the perspective of a kidnapper—, and proposes in Exterior noche an approximation Panoramic view of that shake with magnitudes of tectonic movement. A) Yes, the octogenarian filmmaker, who had never shot a series before and who considers this a six-part film, opens and closes the narrative with Moro and, in the middle, assumes the points of view of four other key characters, to whom he dedicates separate chapters and in which he synthesizes the neurosis into which the country plunged: Cossiga, the closest to Moro among his co-religionists and politically responsible for the sterile police deployment to search for him; Pope Paul VI, a friend of the kidnapped man, Brigadier Adriana Faranda, a member of the commando that captured him, and who would later renounce revolutionary violence, and the victim’s wife, Eleonora. This clash of glances fosters a kaleidoscopic narration that explores and intersects the political, intimate, and even Christian dimensions of the matter. who had never shot a series before and who considers this a six-part film, opens and closes the narrative with Moro and, in the middle, assumes the points of view of four other key characters, to whom he dedicates two separate chapters and in which synthesizes the neurosis into which the country plunged: Cossiga, the closest to Moro among his co-religionists and politically responsible for the sterile police deployment to search for him; Pope Paul VI, a friend of the kidnapped man, Brigadier Adriana Faranda, a member of the commando that captured him, and who would later renounce revolutionary violence, and the victim’s wife, Eleonora. This clash of glances fosters a kaleidoscopic narration that explores and intersects the political, intimate, and even Christian dimensions of the matter. who had never shot a series before and who considers this a six-part film, opens and closes the narrative with Moro and, in the middle, assumes the points of view of four other key characters, to whom he dedicates two separate chapters and in which synthesizes the neurosis into which the country plunged: Cossiga, the closest to Moro among his co-religionists and politically responsible for the sterile police deployment to search for him; Pope Paul VI, a friend of the kidnapped man, Brigadier Adriana Faranda, a member of the commando that captured him, and who would later renounce revolutionary violence, and the victim’s wife, Eleonora. This clash of glances fosters a kaleidoscopic narration that explores and intersects the political, intimate, and even Christian dimensions of the matter. In the middle, he assumes the points of view of four other key characters, to whom he dedicates two separate chapters and in which he synthesizes the neurosis into which the country plunged: Cossiga, the closest to Moro among his co-religionists and political leader of the sterile police deployment to search for him; Pope Paul VI, a friend of the kidnapped man, Brigadier Adriana Faranda, a member of the commando that captured him, and who would later renounce revolutionary violence, and the victim’s wife, Eleonora. This clash of glances fosters a kaleidoscopic narration that explores and intersects the political, intimate, and even Christian dimensions of the matter. In the middle, he assumes the points of view of four other key characters, to whom he dedicates two separate chapters and in which he synthesizes the neurosis into which the country plunged: Cossiga, the closest to Moro among his co-religionists and political leader of the sterile police deployment to search for him; Pope Paul VI, a friend of the kidnapped man, Brigadier Adriana Faranda, a member of the commando that captured him, and who would later renounce revolutionary violence, and the victim’s wife, Eleonora. This clash of glances fosters a kaleidoscopic narration that explores and intersects the political, intimate, and even Christian dimensions of the matter. the closest to Moro among his co-religionists and politically responsible for the sterile police deployment to search for him; Pope Paul VI, a friend of the kidnapped man, Brigadier Adriana Faranda, a member of the commando that captured him, and who would later renounce revolutionary violence, and the victim’s wife, Eleonora. This clash of glances fosters a kaleidoscopic narration that explores and intersects the political, intimate, and even Christian dimensions of the matter. the closest to Moro among his co-religionists and politically responsible for the sterile police deployment to search for him; Pope Paul VI, a friend of the kidnapped man, Brigadier Adriana Faranda, a member of the commando that captured him, and who would later renounce revolutionary violence, and the victim’s wife, Eleonora. This clash of glances fosters a kaleidoscopic narration that explores and intersects the political, intimate, and even Christian dimensions of the matter.
With this puzzle-like structure, Bellocchio faces the stormy dissection of complexity and rules out easy or resounding answers and conclusions. It does keep Andreotti, the villain of the story in the eyes of many, including Moro himself, in an always enigmatic background, inaccessible to the psychological scrutiny to which he does subject other characters, and he is relentlessly caricatured with reason. revolutionary from terrorists. Because, proud heiress to the country’s rich tradition of political cinema, Exterior noche does not renounce humour, a muscle relaxant that no one combines with tragedy like the Italians do, and which breaks out in the form of shocks as unexpected as they are credible: the wife of the kidnapped man, Faced with the insistent whining of the senator who has come to show his support, he blurts out: “He hasn’t come to my house to comfort him, has he?”; The agent at a police checkpoint makes an individual with suspicious behavior get out of the car and when he confesses that the person he has killed is his father, not Moro, he pushes him back into the vehicle to make him leave, despite his pleas to be arrested; The Pope, upon receiving the news of the kidnapping on television, the first thing he does is ask for the cilice. “But, now?” He asks a valet. For the only answer, Paul VI exhorts: “Push hard.” Upon receiving the news of the kidnapping on television, the first thing he does is ask for the cilice. “But, now?” He asks a valet. For the only answer, Paul VI exhorts: “Push hard.” Upon receiving the news of the kidnapping on television, the first thing he does is ask for the cilice. “But, now?” He asks a valet. For the only answer, Paul VI exhorts: “Push hard.”
That television that the Pope watches is a constant presence in the series. In one of the news programs, in addition to telling the news about the kidnapping, the filming of the adaptation that Francesco Rosi, a great of the seventies political cinema, will undertake that unlucky spring of the novel by Carlo Levi Christ stopped at Éboli is announced. It will have two montages, it is explained: one for the big screen and another by chapters, for the small one. The debate on whether or not series are cinema, Bellochio reminds us, in Europe has been over half a century. In the same way that it can give loud witness to a historical moment, television can be almost anything it sets out to do. Even cinema with capital letters.
