Bellocchio writes “the novel of DC power”, draws “the portrait of an interior of the Regime” in a “quite successful introspection of the Christian Democrat world” while he does not understand the Red Brigades, told as “a neurosis” and experienced as “an unjustified heresy of the Communism”. Thus the ex Br Paolo Persichetti, author of books and investigations on the Moro case, comments to Adnkronos “Esterno notte”, the series by Marco Bellocchio which is being broadcast on Rai 1 (the second episode tonight and the last on the 17th ).
“The initial decision to show what the Victor plan would have been like with Moro locked up in a clinic receiving a visit from leading Christian Democrats, Andreotti, Cossiga and Zaccagnini, and the off-screen voice reading the passage against the DC seemed to me a very authorial choice spot on – observes Persichetti – She is not acrobatic and dreamy like the Moro who strolls free in ‘Buongiorno, notte’ but imbued with historical truth. That plan had been prepared and Moro wrote those words for real”. The former Br is also struck by the scene in which Cossiga converses with Professor Ferracuti, a leading member of the crisis committee who managed the government’s kidnapping strategy at the Interior Ministry. “Belocchio displays subtle perfidy – he underlines – in the scene Ferracuti explains that neurotics rejoice differently from paranoids and psychopaths at the news of the kidnapping. If we stick to these categories, I would add that psychopaths were the supporters of the line of firmness and paranoids the conspiracy theorists” .
Persichetti, as a true exegete of the Moro case, whose dynamics he has tried to reconstruct over years and years of research, recognizes in fiction “some imprecisions of detail”. For example, he explains, “the description of the first police check in via Gradoli is not true. It was not a mass inspection but a discreet check, a check at the door: the BR were not at home and they never learned of that episode otherwise they would immediately demobilize the base”.
The former member of the Red Brigades also disputes “a few too many glosses over the figure of Berlinguer, not very well studied, and of the PCI in general, whose role was decisive in opposing the liberation of Moro in those 55 days”. Indeed, he underlines, “it is time to tell what they said in the meetings of the Management, and the brutal reaction to Moro’s choice to change the list of ministers of the new government by deleting the three indicated by the PCI”.
Beyond these observations, however, “the judgment on these first two episodes is not negative – he says – We need to see the rest, even if we already understand that the story of the 1977 movement, of the Red Brigades and of the militant figures in general remains in the background, made up of caricatured figures, blurred, never expertly explored. It is not clear why Moro was kidnapped, who were the members of the Red Brigades, where did they come from, how and why did they get this far? The problem lies in Bellocchio’s lack of curiosity, inattention and prejudice perhaps linked to the incrustations of his doctrinaire past as a Maoist militant who perceived the Red Brigades as an unjustified heresy of communism”. And then, he adds, “his acquaintances with Fagioli lead him to categorize Red Brigades as a neurosis”.
“On the contrary, the portraits of DC politicians are effective, truthful and penetrating both in the political dimension and in the very sad personal and private dimension. A fairly successful introspection of the Christian Democrat world. So far it is a novel of DC power, a portrait of an interior Regime”, underlines Persichetti, who notes: “The sentence addressed to the PCI placed in Cossiga’s mouth after the arrival of the letter that Moro had addressed to him was deadly: ‘They are already giving him the funeral and we are following them with the candles lit ‘ Which is the summary of what happened in the 55 days”.
“Esterno notte”, the former Br Persichetti: “Belocchio writes the novel of DC power”