Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy (Romanzo di una strage)

PIAZZA FONTANA:  THE ITALIAN CONSPIRACY (Romanzo di una strage)    B+  
Italy  France  (129 mi)  2012  ‘Scope  d:  Marco Tullio Giordana

Marco Tullio Giordana is the director best known for THE BEST OF YOUTH (2003), a 6-hour made-for-TV mini-series that screened to great acclaim at Cannes, following two brothers in an Italian family from the mid-60’s to the present, a film that contrasts the failed leftist political activism of the beginning with the faded apathy in the later years, a lead-in to the Berlusconi era.  Giordana was born in Milan, the second largest city in Italy with a strong working class reputation, where Fascist leader Benito Mussolini first organized his Blackshirts, used initially by the government in 1920 as strikebreakers to crush the rising socialist movement.  After trade unions were dissolved, Mussolini consolidated his Fascist movement throughout the nation, culminating with his March on Rome, where the Prime Minister declared a state of siege that Italian King Victor Emmanuel III refused to enforce, fearing a Civil War between the Army and the Fascists, handing over military power instead to Mussolini who went on to install a dictatorship in 1924 after Fascists kidnapped and murdered the socialist opposition candidate Giacomo Matteotti, who openly denounced Fascist election violence and vote fraud.  Three Fascist leaders were convicted of his murder, but released shortly afterwards, given amnesty by the King.  Only after the war was another trial convened and the three men given life sentences.  Mussolini proclaimed Fascism the “superb passion of the best youth of Italy,” and ruled until the end of World War II when Allied American troops marched into Milan.  But before they arrived, members of the resistance movement seized control of the city and executed Mussolini, his mistress, and three other Fascist leaders, hanging them by their feet in the Piazzale Loreto, a public square (from left to right, Nicola Bombacci, Benito Mussolini, Claretta Petacci, Alessandro Pavolini, and Achille Starace, seen here:  Mussolini_e_Petacci_a_Piazzale_Loreto,_1945.jpg).  The historical influence of Fascism in Milan is significant, giving rise to Giordana’s new film, an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the untold conspiracy behind the bombing of a downtown bank in 1969 that left 17 dead and more than 100 wounded.  

It’s impossible to see this film and not think of the Costa-Gavras film Z (1969), a somewhat fictionalized but extraordinarily dramatic account of the 1963 murder of a left-wing politician in Greece, Gregoris Lambrakis, orchestrated by the secret police at the behest of a right-wing military organization, an event that lead to a military coup d’état, where a week before a scheduled election the Prime Minister and all the left-wing politicians were arrested and held incommunicado by the conspirators, including mass arrests of ordinary citizens suspected of left-wing sympathies.  The takeover was led by a military junta known as the Regime of the Colonels who ruled Greece from 1967 – 1974, led by Colonel George Papadopoulos, one of the ringleaders, who, along with 19 other co-conspirators were eventually tried in 1975 for high treason and insurrection.  The Italian far right, however, was highly impressed by the methods of Papadopoulos and his military junta, where in 1968, 50 members were invited to view the junta’s methods firsthand, returning to Italy afterwards where they escalated a campaign of terror, specializing in car bombings and other violence that killed and injured hundreds, always blaming the violence on the communists.  Though the movie doesn’t show it, this is the backdrop to the film, where the Italian government deeply feared a repeat of what happened in Greece, where the coordinated actions of secret right-wing factions in the army, government, and judiciary suggest a Fascist military coup d’état was in place, as the bombing campaigns were designed to step up the pressure on the political and military authorities to declare a state of emergency, at which point the Fascists would step in.  Called the strategy of tension, this was a disinformation campaign designed to divide, manipulate, and control public opinion through a strategy of publicly organized fear and propaganda tactics, starting rumors of CIA and NATO plots against the rapid spread of communism in Italy and Turkey, spreading panic among the population that would lead to a demand for stronger, more dictatorial governments eventually run by far-right military organizations.  

The film is told through quickly evolving chapter headings and largely seen through the eyes of Luigi Calabresi (Valerio Mastandrea), a likeable Milan police inspector with a quiet domestic life that includes a beautiful and very pregnant wife, Gemma (Laura Chiatti), where their marital happiness suggests a harmonious moral balance while all around them various political factions of Communists, Anarchists, and Fascists are demonstrating on the streets, all protesting the nation’s instability, usually resulting in violent confrontations with riot police.  The government fears the military junta in Greece will inspire a similar coup in Italy, where one of these factions will step in, believing Anarchists are behind the nationwide bombing campaign, but after the Milan bank bombing, all the known Anarchists are hauled in for questioning.  Most are let go, but a few leaders remain under intense, sleep-deprived interrogation, including Gisueppe Pinelli, (Pierfrancesco Favino), an articulate and outspoken Anarchist that many in the police division would like to blame, even though he despises both the extreme left and the right.  While there’s a developing connection between bomb materials and a former Anarchist, where the police believe his recent falling out with Pinelli is too convenient of an alibi, suspecting they masterminded the bombing.  But Calabresi is not convinced, as there’s no evidence connecting Pinelli to the crime, but police headquarters insists upon a bait and switch method, informing Pinelli that his partner has confessed, implicating his guilt, which has little effect initially, but the police demand he sign a document framing his former comrade.  When Calabresi steps out of the room briefly to prepare the statement, Pinelli goes flying out of an open window, falling to his death below.  The police in the room all claim he jumped, anguished over his apparent guilt, but Calabresi suspects something more, as does his widow who doesn’t for a second believe the reported suicide.  This alleged suicide breaks open the tense divisions between the various police, government, and judicial interests, where the police insist the Anarchists are behind the bombings, though they are thoroughly scrutinized by an Italian press that remains unconvinced.    

What follows is a swirling choreography of investigative inquiry, where government leaders and the police delve into possible leads and suspects, where Calabresi continues his search for the truth as well, which remains elusive, though newly uncovered evidence suggests it’s the far right that has been carrying out the campaign of terror all along, operating under the instructions of secret Fascist powers imbedded deep within the Italian government itself, but due to highly placed officials in all branches of government, they refuse to pursue this possibility, claiming the case is closed, so anything more is purely speculative, alleging political interference.  Rumors run rampant, however, where the CIA and NATO are implicated, also highly influential U.S. officials, though forensic reports determine the explosives themselves are of such a sophisticated nature that only the Italian Army has access to them.  By the time Calabresi develops a clear evidentiary path to the perpetrators, some three years after the bombings, he is murdered, shot in the head outside his apartment.  Not only does this stall the investigation, but even worse, since his death, all accused persons for the bombings have been acquitted, so no guilty parties have ever been found.  While the filmmaking is outstanding, meticulously researched, where the attention to detail is stunning, and the acting superb on all levels, making this one of the better political conspiracy movies since Z, but unlike that film, there is plenty of confusion surrounding so many characters, as the accumulation of information becomes overwhelming.  Like an epic movie, it feels like there is a cast of thousands, where outside of a few identifiable characters, the rest of the assembled cast can get lost in a blur of constantly disseminating information, where the audience loses tract of who many of the people are onscreen.  This is a familiar trait in recent Italian movies, where the critically acclaimed GOMORRAH (2008) was exactly the same way, another long and sprawling narrative that is utterly confusing, where it’s hard to tell which players are on what side.  Giordana might have made an even longer film, say three hours or more, as he toyed with length when he made THE BEST OF YOUTH, but he took certain liberties to keep the film close to two hours, streamlining the film with quick edits where at times it feels hurried and rushed, yet part of the enjoyment of the film is that electrifyingly fast pace that lends itself to a sleek and sophisticated political thriller.  Even with a few missed details, the film is extremely intelligent and highly entertaining throughout.  

Rocco and His Brothers

ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS        A  
Italy  France  (175 mi)  1960  d:  Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti was heir to one of Milan’s richest families, as his mother inherited the Erba Pharmaceuticals fortune, where young Visconti grew up training and breeding racehorses before fashion designer Coco Chanel introduced him to French filmmaker Jean Renoir, where he began his career as Renoir’s assistant director.  Despite living in great luxury in a palace on the Italian island of Ischia, where today there is a museum dedicated to his work, possessing original works by Picasso and Gustav Klimt, he was also an avidly outspoken Communist after the war and openly gay, where throughout his film career he also worked as a theater and opera director.  This apparent contradiction in class consciousness lies at the heart of his films, as along with Roberto Rossellini, Federico Fellini, Vittorio de Sica, and others, they forged an Italian neorealist movement in the late 1940’s, much of which was forced upon them as they had no money, featuring non-professional actors, or poorly paid stars, often shooting on the street as many film studios were destroyed by the war, mostly in the rundown sections of urban areas, featuring the plight of the poor and the lower working class, focusing on their everyday struggles to survive the economic disaster that was postwar Italy.  Despite his connection with neorealism, Visconti also revealed an operatic flair for artificiality, beautifully expressed in White Nights (La Niotti Bianche) (1957) which was shot entirely within the artificially constructed world inside the Cinecittà studios.  Visconti is acknowledged to be one of the greatest directors of women, including Clara Calamai in OBSESSIONE (1943), Anna Magnani in BELLISSIMA (1951), Alida Valli in SENSO (1954), Maria Schell in White Nights (La Niotti Bianche) (1957), and Annie Girardot in this film, where the latter two, Austrian and French-speaking, were both dubbed in Italian.  Manipulating men for sport, in each case these women are representative of dominating forces men can neither resist nor overcome.  Released the same year as Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA (1960), which won the Jury Prize at Cannes, and Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA (1960), which won the Palme D’Or, the film was up against stiff competition, winning the FIPRESCI and Special Jury Prize at Venice. 

Often viewed as a flawed masterpiece, there remains an unreconciled tension between the realist, near documentary-style vision of a Marxist society and several over-the-top melodramatic moments where characters exhibit an operatic flair for excessive theatricality.  While not ruining the film, the exaggerations stand out as obvious contradictions to the otherwise low-key and brutally realistic style.  Adapted from the Giovanni Testor novel The Bridge of Ghisolfa, the story has an historical but also epic sweep about it, spanning more than a decade, following the continuing hardships of the Parondi family as they leave behind their traditional rural home in Southern Italy for a major city in the industrial north, apparently one the first films to portray a North/South migration, where the nation’s so-called economic miracle occurs almost entirely in the North.  The film captures the essence of postwar Italy and the politics of class, set in the housing projects and working class sections of Milan, the city of Visconti’s birth, becoming a historically relevant time capsule portrait of a vanishing era.  As the title points out, there are five brothers, each represented by a different chapter in the film, including the oldest, Vincenzo (Spiros Focás), who is already living in Milan, in the midst of an engagement party with the family of his fiancé, Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale), when the rest of his family arrives in mass out of the blue, carrying all their belongings as they pay him a surprise visit.  It’s a surprise, all right, when the perspective bride’s family realizes they haven’t come to congratulate the happy couple, but to migrate permanently to Milan, where they certainly pose an immediate logistics problem of where they can stay.  As quickly as they are welcomed with glasses of wine, the proud mother, Rosaria (Katina Paxinou, whose stereotypical long-suffering matriarch routine is almost cringe-worthy), realizes they’re seen as a financial burden and angrily grabs her sons, vowing never to return. Thus the family conflict begins. 

Given the ingenious advice by a relative to move into the cheap housing projects by paying first month’s rent, but after awhile, if you stop paying, they won’t throw you out on the street, suggesting this was quite common in Milan, as they’re already living in the city’s cheapest housing.  Simone, Renato Salvatori’s best role, is the next oldest, becoming completely smitten by the sexual exploits of a willfully manipulative local prostitute Nadia (Annie Girardot), whose family lives upstairs but continually kicks her out, so she takes refuge prancing around this house of brothers where Simone can’t take his eyes off her, much to his mother’s regret.  Jobs are scarce, but Simone picks up a few bucks in the boxing ring, but his first few wins go to his head, as he spends all his winnings on Nadia, filled with the deluded notion that his future is lined with victories.  But he drinks, smokes, and womanizes, refusing to train hard, which eventually catches up to him.  Enter the next brother, Rocco (Alain Delon, also dubbed), the quiet one with the pretty face, who initially works in a dry cleaners run exclusively by women who are all enthralled by his presence.  When Simone steals some clothing to impress Nadia, Rocco can’t go back to work there, so he follows his brother into the ring.  This habit of forgiving his brother and bailing him out of jams that he continually gets himself into is the central theme of the film, as Simone’s troubles only escalate, contrasting the traditional macho sexuality of animalistic men who think they own women as their exclusive property with those who feel genuine love and respect for them.  Envisioned by Visconti as the saintly Prince Myshkin from Dostoyevski’s The Idiot, “a representative of illustrious goodness as an end in itself,” Rocco is seen as the only saving grace holding the family together, even persuading Nadia to give up prostitution after spending a year in prison. 

But the story only grows bleaker, as Simone’s trajectory spirals further out of control, becoming a drunken brute that turns on his brother when he takes an interest in Nadia, enraged that Rocco is stealing “his” girl, as if he still owns her, even though he hasn’t seen her in years, leading to a horribly violent rape of Nadia in front of Rocco, followed by a vicious beating when his younger brother won’t apologize for what he’s done.  In a strangely baffling and utterly appalling moment framed atop the Milan cathedral, Rocco changes course and urges Nadia to return to Simone, knowing he’s a toxic entity, thinking this is somehow good for the family.  This is perhaps the key moment in the film, as Rocco’s saintly concern is not for Nadia, who’s been brutally raped, but for his brother’s fragile lack of self esteem.  The result is pathetic, of course, becoming a devastating critique of masculinity as seen through the lives of both Rocco and Simone, the two most developed characters of the film, especially when Simone and Nadia move under his mother’s roof, bringing nothing but endless shame to the family.  This is underlined further through a homosexual subtext, where a wealthy boxing promoter is attracted to Simone’s descent, where the promoter’s ultimate satisfaction is sexually taking advantage of fallen fighters that are so desperately in debt they’re willing to submit to anything.  This corrupt promoter ends up blackmailing the family afterwards, where Rocco signs away his future boxing earnings to pay off his brother’s enormously inflated debt.  In doing so, he becomes another wage slave while also abandoning his dream of returning to the South and reclaiming their lost land. 

The highly mobile, black and white cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno veers between ultra realism and heavily stylized film noir effects, with heavily darkened scenes during particularly murky moments, while Nino Rota’s musical score continually finds the right emotional counterpoint.  The film is clearly an influence of Martin Scorsese’s RAGING BULL (1980), where in each the fight sequences are beautifully handled, and also Francis Ford Coppola who chose Nino Rota to score his epic GODFATHER (1972, 1974) films.  At nearly 3-hours, allowing thorough exploration of the characters, the true scope of the film is an apocalyptic Greek tragedy played out within the context of larger historical forces, where perhaps the key to understanding the family’s psychological descent are the social circumstances they have to deal with, where the horrors of urban existence are all too common as jobs remain scarce.  But as Pauline Kael noted, it’s sexual passion that destroys the family, where the performances by Salvatori and Girardot are nothing less than stunning, culminating with a scene right out of Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck, a bleak, working class nightmare where in a crazed, jealous rage the protagonist kills the woman he loves, refusing to allow anyone else to have her, where it’s suggested this is due to the accumulated effects of poverty and economic exploitation, continually being beaten down by a society that allows him to have nothing.  The surreal nature of the act defies all moral boundaries and may be an irredeemable sin.  Simone’s crime destroys the unity of the family and their hopes of ever returning home, beautifully expressed in the bleak emptiness of the elegiac final shot, suggesting freedom, as represented by Rocco’s idealized hopes and dreams of being able to save Simone and/or his family, exists only in the abstract, while working class people must walk to the beat of the factory whistle where being a wage slave, exactly what they left the South to avoid becoming, is the only reality.