Fists in the pocket and a head that’s bursting. A mouth open to show the teeth, but issuing no sound. The huge family home isolated on the ridge of a hill, surrounded by snow that shows no signs of melting. The house and its stuffy, shut-up smell: the small rooms and the large terrace. And, beyond the courtyard, the road along which one can drive into town...
Like a map, which from the protagonist leads to the world around him, Marco Bellocchio’s film unfurls in our memory. Anyone familiar with his films will recognize Bobbio, the dialect and a few quips – “Va in Trebbia” (go to Trebbia). But rewatching it now, it is Italy that enters the frame in this film, so precisely locatable in terms of history and geography, and so powerful that it leaps out of the era in which it was made.
