Given his prodigious output over a career that started in 1965, it should be surprising that director Marco Bellocchio doesn’t have more of an international following, but it may have something to do with the parochial nature of his work, which is not just thematically handcuffed to his native Italy but also appeals to a narrow sensibility that non-Italians may fail to appreciate. In recent years, however, he’s made attempts to explore Italian history more broadly, and while his storytelling tools still deliver overly large sentiments at the expense of narrative subtlety, for those of us who don’t know much about Italy as a national entity the films are quite educational.

With Kidnapped, Bellocchio explores an incident that marked a turning point in Italy’s development as a nation while also igniting the world’s scorn. In 1852, a son was born to a Jewish couple in Bologna, which at the time was under the direct rule of Pope Pius IX. The household maid, believing he was ill and might die, clandestinely baptized the boy, named Edgardo, so that his soul would not be banished to limbo. But the child did not die and the maid was subsequently fired for a different misdemeanor. When Edgardo was 6 a magistrate for the church arrived at the couple’s house and said that he was taking the boy to Rome to be raised as a Christian. His parents, Salomone (Fausto Russo Alesi) and Marianna (Barbara Ronchi), knew nothing about the maid’s subterfuge and, of course, objected mightily. The scene where Edgardo is taken away wailing while his parents put up a fight is the kind of thing Bellocchio was born to stage, with operatic music pounding away on the soundtrack and the camera following every outsized emotional gesture. Over the next hour or so, we see how Edgardo is indoctrinated into the Church while his parents try everything to secure his return, including writing letters to Israelite associations in foreign countries to help them gain public support. The matter becomes an international scandal, much to the chagrin of the Rome Jewish Council, since they have to deal with Pius (Paolo Pierobon) directly for their own needs, and the pressure from outside forces, including the global press, just makes the old megalomaniac more perverse in his determination to keep the boy at all costs. During this part of the movie Bellocchio plays the viewer’s emotions like a well-tuned violin, periodically suggesting the possibility of some kind of moral triumph before quashing it with another melodramatic set piece. Boo! Hiss!

Historically, much of the script sacrifices truth for dramatic convenience (at least according to Wikipedia), though the details—like, for instance, the Church’s sizable financial obligations to the Rothschilds, which constantly works to stir up the pope’s antisemitic rants—are endlessly fascinating. And I got lost at the end when the forces for Italian unity took over Bologna, since it wasn’t clear just what the Papal States lost except their regional political autonomy. Obviously, Italians already know about this, but Bellocchio doesn’t bother spelling it out for the rest of us. I guess I need to brush up on my 19th century European history.

In Italian, Latin and Hebrew. Opens April 26 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Cinema Qualite (03-3352-5645), Yebisu Garden Cinema (0570-783-715).

Kidnapped home page in Japanese

photo (c) IBC Movie/Kavac Film/AD Vitam Production/Match Factory Productions (2023)