Even at the period of his life when Bellocchio was closest to Italy’s radical left, he couldn’t help satirizing the student movement in this Brechtian sketch made for the episode film Amore e rabbia. The filmmaker himself plays a professor lecturing about aesthetics to a lecture hall full of bored students before being interrupted by a group of Maoist radicals.

In the spirit of Zéro de conduite (1933) and If…(1968), In the Name of the Father follows the descent into chaos of a Catholic boys’ boarding school in the late 1950s. While a new student sows discontent among the boys with skillful manipulation, the school’s working staff plans a strike. The success of each rebellion depends on the other, but such solidarity is in short supply. The film was inspired by Bellocchio’s memories of the boredom and resentment of his own school days, infused with the rage and audacity of the 1960s student movement. Bellocchio’s theatrical mise-en-scene both underscores and enlivens the film’s pessimism. We will present Bellocchio’s recent re-editing of the film, which shortened it by more than 20 minutes, thereby heightening the work’s satirical sense of the grotesque.