Marco Bellocchio’s “The Rape” reveals a little-known practice of the Catholic Church in the 19th century in a subdued film

After his successful film about the mafia, The traitor (in 2019), a documentary dedicated to his brother, Marx can wait (2021) and his series on the Aldo Moro affair, Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio returns with Pick up, in theaters November 1. The film relates the strange story of the kidnapping of a young Jewish boy by the Catholic Church in 1850-60s Bologna, a practice that proved relatively common at the time in Italy.

Political color

In Bologna in 1858, the authorities intervened under the order of the cardinal at the Mortara family to take their son Edgardo, on the pretext that he had been baptized while still a baby without their knowledge. Pontifical law is peremptory: he must be educated in the Catholic Church. Upset, the family counterattacks in vain against an intransigent Pope, busy strengthening his faltering power in the face of increasingly liberal public opinion.

Inspired by a True Story, Pick up has the merit of revealing to as many people as possible the little-known ancestral practices of the Catholic Church, still in progress in the 19th century. Scandalous and abusive, the kidnappings of children torn from their families, forcibly converted, and sometimes enrolled in the clergy, are revolting. Marco Bellocchio takes hold of this incredible story by putting all his civic “faith” into it. The Edgardo Mortara affair takes on a political color, in a mid-century Italy which is beginning to move away from papal influence.

Precipitation

Marco Bellocchio chooses a nervous camera and bathes this traumatic story in darkness, taking the point of view of the Mortara family. However, he favors emotion a little too much by highlighting it with redundancies. We also don’t quite understand the Church’s determination to seize this child, with no particular significance, apart from being the youngest of a rich Jewish family. This perhaps explains it, but conversion at all costs remains the major issue. The image of Pope Pius IX (Enea Sala), very present in the second part, is also a little demonized, but he left in history the memory of a particularly devious pontiff overlord.

The story focuses mainly on Edgardo’s childhood, only to accelerate to an unexpected outcome. Once the boy becomes an adult, Bellocchio seems less interested in his subject, the staging becomes looser, and the pace quickens, to the point of haste, as if it had to be over with. Pick up is therefore mainly valid for its subject, the staging of this great director remaining a little below expectations.

The sheet

Gender : Historical drama
Director: Marco Bellocchio
Actors: Paolo Pierobon, Enea Sala, Leonardo Maltese, Fausto Russo Alesi, Barbara Ronchi, Fabrizio Gifuni
Country : Italy / France / Germany
Duration : 2h15
Exit : November 1, 2023
Distributer : Ad Vitam

Synopsis: In 1858, in the Jewish quarter of Bologna, the Pope’s soldiers burst into the home of the Mortara family. On the cardinal’s orders, they came to take Edgardo, their seven-year-old son. The child would have been baptized in secret by his nurse as a baby and the pontifical law is indisputable: he must receive a Catholic education. Edgardo’s parents, upset, will do everything to get their son back. Supported by public opinion in liberal Italy and the international Jewish community, the Mortara fight quickly took on a political dimension. But the Church and the Pope refuse to return the child, to establish an increasingly wavering power…