BODY AND SOUL

KIDNAPPED Marco Bellocchio’s true-life period piece shames the Catholic Church once again…

Enea Sala as Edgardo and Paolo Pierobon as Pope Pius IX

Loosely based on the non-fiction book Il Caso Mortara by Daniele Scalise, Kidnapped tells a remarkable story: in 1858 Bologna, six-year-old Jewish boy Edgardo Mortara is taken by the Catholic Church from the bosom of his family, after officials are told he was baptised a Christian by the family maid. So begins a horrifying ordeal for his parents (played by Barbara Ronchi and Fausto Russo Alesi) as they fight the Church – led by Pope Pius IX – to retrieve their boy.

Veteran Italian director Marco Bellocchio (Fists in the Pocket, The Traitor) was raised Catholic in Piacenza, near Milan. When he discovered this unique piece of history in Scalise’s book, he was shocked. ‘Obviously I immediately sided with the family upon reading this book. So by virtue of my reaction of becoming aware of the story, but also my reaction against the viewpoint of a Catholic conservative writer [Vittorio Messori, whose writing on the case Bellocchio also read], I thought, “Well, there’s a story – a great wrong has been done.”’

Co-scripted by Bellocchio, Susanna Nicchiarelli and Edoardo Albinati, the film has performed well in Italy, with the Catholic Church even holding up its hands. ‘There was great acceptance,’ says the 84-year-old Bellocchio. ‘They didn’t even try to overlook it. And actually the Catholic Church admitted it was a mistake they made. They didn’t try to defend either that policy or Pius IX. You have to bear in mind it’s a completely different atmosphere at the moment, and also in the figure of the current Pope, he tries to push a more progressive agenda. There was no scandal, no pushback.’

One of Kidnapped’s major talking points is just how good Enea Sala is as the young Edgardo. ‘He never even went inside the church before he filmed,’ explains Bellocchio. ‘But in his personal life, there was some suffering because his mother was ill in real life. [She] then died… [and] the child experienced that suffering and that sense of longing for the security of a mother. So that is the reason why we resonate with this performance... he latched on to this character’s story of being separated from his much-loved mother.’

‘I started shooting my film when I got wind of the fact that Spielberg had abandoned the idea’

MARCO BELLOCCHIO

Curiously, Bellocchio is not the first director to be intrigued by this story. Several years back, Steven Spielberg planned to film it, based on David I. Kertzer’s book The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. With Spielberg favourites – screenwriter Tony Kushner and actor Mark Rylance – lined up, it was only the right actor to play Edgardo that eluded him. ‘I started shooting my film when I got wind of the fact that Spielberg had abandoned the idea,’ shrugs Bellocchio. ‘After I shot the film, I wrote a letter to Spielberg, inviting him to see the film.’ So did he turn up? ‘I never received any reply.’ Oh well…