Good Morning, Night [2003]

 The kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro has been such an epochal moment for Italy and emblematic of its ‘Years of Lead’ that multiple directors, from Elio Petri to Giuseppe Ferrara to John Frankenheimer, have touched upon it. Marco Bellocchio stands out as he made two works on it twenty years apart, viz. the brooding and deeply elegiac feature-length film Good Morning, Night – where he delved into a semi-fictionalized interpretation of the episode through the psychological unravelling of one of the kidnappers – and the ambitious miniseries Esterno Notte, where he expanded the scope and chronicled that event from multiple perspectives. It began with a young couple appraising and renting a lovely, spacious apartment in Rome. As it turns out, they’re Red Brigades revolutionaries and part of the four-member team – led by a firebrand doctor – that kidnaps Moro (Roberto Herlitzka), hides him there for many days, and takes the terrible ultimate step when they realize that the government has no plans to negotiate Moro’s release. The occurrences are portrayed from the POV of Chiara (Maya Sansa), a luminously beautiful and emotionally conflicted young woman. She works as a librarian, is haunted by the memories of her late father who was a Communist partisan during WW2 – evoked through found footage – and is increasingly troubled by their kidnapping of the mild-mannered Moro. Bellocchio blended bleak realism with moral inquiries, and made seductive use of Pink Floyd’s songs, while Sansa stood out for her immersive turn. In the film’s most memorable sequence, aged comrades from the Old European Left gather over an alfresco lunch and rousing “partigiano” songs to remember Chiara’s father and celebrate their days as anti-fascist partisans.

Director: Marco Bellocchio

Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Film a Clef

Language: Italian

Country: Italy