Raised in a family of strict Catholic observance, "educated by Barnabites but openly atheist (just scroll through his films, since Fists in the Pocket and In the Name of the Father, to understand his relationship with the Catholic religion and its practices), Marco Bellocchio saw in this story the possibility of facing the knots of the Family, the Church, the Power that have always been at the center of his cinema. And that in the story of little Mortara reveal a strength and evidence hitherto unpublished in his filmography". This was written by the critic Paolo Mereghetti, editor of the book 'Rapito - Un film by Marco Bellocchio, arriving on May 26 in bookstores, three days after the world debut of the feature film in competition at Cannes.
The volume that has drawings by Marco Bellocchio, photographs by Anna Camerlingo, sketches of sets by Andrea Castorina and an introduction by Gian Luca Farinelli proposes to investigate the folds of the film through the testimonies of the filmmaker from Piacenza, Palme d'Or for Lifetime Achievement at the Cannes Film Festival 2022 and the two producers, Beppe Caschetto and Simone Gattoni; the essays by historians Alberto Melloni and Marina Caffiero and above all, the punctual reconstruction of the screenplay. Produced by IBC Movie and Kavac Film with Rai Cinema, 'Rapito', freely inspired by the book "Il caso Mortara" by Daniele Scalise (Mondadori), takes us back to 1858, in the Jewish quarter of Bologna, where the soldiers of Pope Pius IX (Paolo Pierobon) break into the house of the Mortara family. They went to pick up Edgardo (at different ages he has the faces of Enea Sala and Leonardo Maltese), a seven-year-old boy. According to the statements of a maid, believed to be dying at six months, the baby had been secretly baptized. Papal law is unappealable: it must receive a Catholic education. Edgardo's parents, distraught, will do anything to get their son back. Supported by public opinion and the international Jewish community, the battle of the Mortara soon took on a political dimension.
But the Pope does not agree to return the child. As Edgardo grows in the Catholic faith, the temporal power of the Church turns to sunset and the Savoy troops conquer Rome. In the cast, also, among others, Filippo Timi, Fabrizio Gifuni, Andrea Gherpelli, Samuele Teneggi, Corrado Invernizzi, Aurora Camatti and Paolo Calabresi.
"The Mortara affair to be understood must therefore be inserted in this long-lasting context, in which forced baptisms constituted a current practice and legitimized by Catholic norms - explains Marina Caffiero in the book -. Above all, the increase in cases that occurred precisely between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries explains both the non-exceptionality of that event and the consequent behavior of the Pope and the Church, which remained immutably faithful to their own norms, even if now completely detached from universal law and human rights. What had changed profoundly in 1858 and that caused the case to explode was the historical, political and legal context of Italy and the international world". The story of the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara - underlines Marco Bellocchio, also co-author of the screenplay together with Susanna Nicchiarelli with the collaboration of Edoardo Albinati, Daniela Ceselli, and the historical advice of Pina Totaro - interests me deeply because it allows me to represent first of all a crime, in the name of an absolute principle, and the desperate will, and therefore very violent, of an authority now dying to resist its collapse, indeed to counterattack".