Fists in the Pocket (I pugnii in tasca)

Marco Bellocchio, 1965

I watched this Criterion DVD last night, and frankly I'm still processing the film I just watched. Films on dysfunctional families are not rare (Lucretia Martel's La Cienega and Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions come to mind), but this film which preceded the other two by a least a quarter century, is about as originial as it gets.

The protagonist -- who evokes the physicality of Doogie Howser yet the emotional instability of Stanley Kowalski -- is a moody epileptic who can be kind and gentle only to follow those feelings with unimaginable cruelty. Yet, like most protagonists in cinema, he's charasmatic and charming as well.

At some point in my 'education' as an actor I learned that it's the contradictions in people that make them so interesting (Isn't it ironic that most of us spend the majority of our lives trying to conform to some self-mposed or societal 'norm?). Bellochio, who purportedly drew much of the substance in his script from personal experience, recognizes this oddity, that in all of us there are bad/good, upright/immoral, etc. characteristics. In this film, Bellochio lays bares the entire personality of his main characters, warts and all.

Another fun touch was the ending: set to the same music from La Traviata that was lip-synched by the three queens on top of the bus driving through the outback in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, this scene is not one you'll forget easily. It involves a moral decision, and having had a few hours to reflect on it, I understand why it was included. Also, the scene was almost entirely improvised by the protagonist, Lou Castel.

My favorite line in the movie comes from who else -- the retarded brother: "What torture it is living in this house."

Two more things: Luis Bunuel, the Spanish/Mexican director who made a career out of blasting the bourgeoisie commented disparaginly about this film after first viewing: "I don't agree with this kind of profanation." Hmm, I'd love to know the context surrounding Bunuel's statement, primarily because everyone from the Pope down to local governments probably said the same about Bunuel's film at one time or another.

The other thing -- and I always try to remind my students of this -- is you must look at a film in terms of its historical moment: Nashville, although it has nothing to do with Watergate, is a scathing rebuke of American culture following the Vietnam War and Nixonian political mess of the early Seventies; In the Company of Men is a violent and ugly look at the male species that took its direction from Ronald Reagan's influence during the Eighties.

This film was a precurser of the anger, violence, and primal scream that characterized 1968 and its aftermath. This was no longer the Italian neorealism of De Sica or Rossellini, or even Visconti.

I strongly encourage everyone to pick up this dvd (always choose the Criterion label if given a choice) and experience what great cinema can be (this being Belocchio's first film, it was shot on a shoestring budget, used nonprofessional actors, and interestingly, was NOT edited by the director or with the director's input).