04/09/2003 - The madness of recent Italian history, showing the kidnapping of Moro in an intimate vein. A film that has been widely applauded by the press

Marco Bellocchio: video interview

Pier Giorgio Bellocchio: video interview

Craziness is a constant theme in Marco Bellocchio’s cinema, and yet again it permeates Good Morning, Night [+see also:
trailer
interview: Marco Bellocchio, director …
film profile], a film about one of the most devastating periods of madness in Italy’s recent past: the kidnapping, death sentence and eventual execution of the president of the Christian Democrats, Aldo Moro, by the Red Brigade terrorist group in 1978. The director of Fist in His Pocket and My Mother’s Smile [+see also:
trailer
film profile] has portrayed the dramatic events using archive TV footage, but it is set in a dream-like style film: “Once again, I have to state that this film isn’t faithful to the events of the Moro case in respect to other films that have tried to search for the historical truth. I wasn’t interested in looking at the possible motives behind the kidnapping, the P2 Masonic lodge or the CIA. I wanted to trace through the steps that led to the tragic death in this story”.

The director shows the contradictions, the other side to that harsh and unexplainable gesture, through the character of the young woman terrorist (played by Maya Sansa), who prepares food for the prisoner. And she reacts and rebels against the death sentence passed on the statesman, “imagining” she can free Moro. This surreal quality to the images is thus mixed with the historical reality.

The figure of Aldo Moro, who in the first version of the screenplay didn’t even appear, we just heard his voice, is portrayed in a measured and highly believable performance by Roberto Herlitzka.
“While I was writing the script and also during the shooting– explains Bellocchio – I had an image of my father in my mind, the memory of him coming to look at us while we were sleeping”. It’s not an accident that one of the terrorists is played by the director’s young son, Pier Giorgio.
One of the film’s crucial elements is the soundtrack, featuring music from the album “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd: “This music wasn’t really well known in my generation, but I was advised to use this record and I realised that it was the perfect synthesis for the spirit of desperation and rebellion of that time”.

(Translated from Italian)