Bellocchio

Italian  Director Marco Bellocchio Gives Cinema Master Class at the  Cannes Film Festival 2010

by Joanna  Tachmintzis

For aspiring film makers and cinephiles, an  important and very interesting annual event at the Cannes Film Festival is  the Cinema Master Class (Leçon du Cinema), this year given by the 71-year old Italian director (and also producer and actor) Marco Bellocchio. Launched  by the Festival in 1991 with  a Master Class given by Francesco Rossi, the event always  attracts  very  prestigious directors as lecturers but surprisingly goes almost unnoticed in the midst of the hectic cinema activity of Cannes. The 2009 Master Class was given by the Belgian Dardenne brothers and was reported on in this website.

Marco Bellocchio was at the Cannes Festival in 2009 to present his film “Vincere” which had been selected for the official Competition, accompanied by  the actress starring in that film as Mussolini's mistress, Giovanna Mezzogiorno. She was also back in Cannes this year as a member of the Competition Jury. However, Bellocchio's relationship with Cannes is a long-standing one.  In 1986,  his film “El Diavolo in Corpo” (Devil in the Flesh) was screened in the 'Quinzaine des Réalisateurs' (The Directors Fortnight) and caused a sensation because of its explicit sex scene showing fellation. In 1980, his “Salto nel Vuoto” (Leap in the Dark) was in Competition, and the  protagonists Michel Piccoli and Anouk Aimée received the Best Actor and Best Actress Awards respectively. And in 2006, his film “Il Regista di Matrimoni”(The Wedding Director) was selected for the 'Un Certain Regard' section of the Festival.

The Master  Class was given by Bellocchio in French, with frankness and humour, in conversation with the French cinema critic Michel Ciment. Short scenes from several of Bellocchio's films were shown during the Class,  illustrating the various points made and themes discussed, and giving the audience the opportunity to have an overview  of the directors work through the years.

Bellocchio started off as an aspiring painter at the age of 18-19, but soon abandoned his art studies in favour  cinema studies because, as he explained, he considered painting too solitary an activity and was afraid of solitude. He  saw cinema as 'a way to be in contact with the world', and enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, at first for acting, then switching to directing. However, his aptitude for drawing has served him well in the cinema. He often draws the storyboard himself, in great detail, even showing shooting angles, but as he clarifies, not in order to lay down any detailed guidance for the filming itself, but rather in order to try and create the atmosphere of the film. It is also interesting to note how important images are for him. Not only does he give importance    to  beauty in the  photography, but images are also  his starting point when conceiving a new film. Images, one after another,  come to his mind first,  then the scenario follows and brings them together. It is the images that motivate him to make a film - not the story, not the ideas, and even less the message. Colour was also an exciting discovery for him – his third major film (“Nel Nome de Padre” - In the Name of the Father) was his first filmed in colour starting in 1971.

After finishing his studies in Rome, Bellocchio wanted to enlarge his horizons and went to study in the London Film School. It was the era of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but he was more interested in classical music. Indeed music,and opera in particular, have had  an important place in his films, starting from his first film “ Pugni in Tasca”(Fists in the pocket) in 1965, with music from La Traviata,  to his most recent “Vincere” in 2009, with music from Rigoletto. In fact music is so important for him that he insists it must be an integral part of the film editing from the start. He cannot imagine how you can edit the image and dialogue  first and add the music later.

While in London, Bellocchio wrote his first feature film,”Pugni in Tasca” which won the “Velo d'Argento” prize in the 1965 Locarno Film Festival and the Prize Outside the Competition in the Venice Film Festival the same year, and launched his film making career. He wrote his own screenplay for this film, as he did for most of his films, sometimes in collaboration with screenwriters. His screenplays, while not autobiographical, often include personal experiences and views. For example, his  challenge of  the Catholic religion in films such as in  “Nel Nome de Padre” (1972) has  a basis in his own experiences as a pupil in a Catholic boarding school. But he has also made book adaptations ( 'El Diavolo in Corpo' is based on Radignet's novel and 'Henry IV' on Pirondello's work). He places importance on the screenplay (“if the screenplay is no good, the film cannot be good”) but nonetheless gives  himself the flexibility to make changes when filming, when it feels right to do so. As for the editing, he leaves it to the professional film editors, considering that the film is really made at the filming stage, not the editing stage.

His first film “Pugni in Tasca” was also his first experience of producing and financing his own film – out of necessity as no one else wanted to do it. He made it on a shoe-string budget, filmed in his mother's house in  Bobbio in Emilia Romagna,  with money from his family and a bank loan. He believes in good preparation and minimum number of takes – the most he will  ever do is 4 or 5 takes of a scene, not 50 or 100 as some other directors may do.

Over the years Bellocchio has worked with many actors, from well known ones (eg. Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale in 'Henry IV'in 1984) to totally unknown ones. The extremely powerful performance of the protagonist in  “Pugni in Tasca” was given by a then totally unknown actor, Lou Castel . His real name was Ulv Quarzell- a Swede born in Colombia and living in Italy, accidentally discovered by Bellocchio. As a director, Bellocchio  likes to give his actors the possibility to improvise, and above all to cut dialogue rather than add to it. Reducing dialogue to a minimum also helps handle the relationships between adult actors and children. He does not believe in talking too much to actors, but wants them to work themselves to understand the “inside” of the character. There  have been difficult moments with actors, such as convincing a strong Christian  believer to say “I do not believe in god” in one film, or filming with dogs in another with an actor who was terrified by them. There have also been very delicate sex scenes to film- such as the fellation scene in “El Diavolo in Corpo” or the passionate love making scene in “Vincere”. In these cases, it is not possible for the actors to pretend, so the sensitive thing to do is to leave them alone  at some point with just a cameraman. Since many of his films were screened when dubbing was in vogue, finding the right actors to recreate the voices in another language was always a challenge.

Bellocchio's films are mainly fiction, but he has also made documentaries – his most well known being “Sogni Infranti” (Broken Dreams), made in 1995, about terrorism and  the Red Brigades and the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, which is also the theme of his later 2003  fiction film ”Buongiorno Notte” (Goodmorning Night). Making the fiction film after the documentary posed many challenges, especially about where and how to film in order  to best create the feelings of  tension, of  despair, of isolation, but also the notions of fundamentalism, martyrdom and inhumanity. In the end he decided to make  the entire film inside an apartment  and  filming mostly close up so as to create a feeling of claustrophobia. And isolation was highlighted by having a TV constantly on as the only means of contact with the outside world.

Bellocchio admits to having been influenced by Ingmar Bergman, and especially by his film “Le Visage” (1958) , and by Luis Bunuel and other surrealists, but  not by his compatriot Federico Fellini. As for his on-going  projects, having  returned to his childhood home in Bobbio in 2006 to film “Sorelle” (Sisters), he has now gone back again to his  hometown and to his religious themes  to make  his new film “La Monaca di Bobbio” (The nun of Bobbio).