Fists in the Pocket
(1965)
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Fists in the Pocket
(1965)
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| Cast overview: | |||
| Lou Castel | ... |
Alessandro
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| Paola Pitagora | ... |
Giulia
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Marino Masé | ... |
Augusto
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Liliana Gerace | ... |
Mother
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Stefania Troglio | ... |
Chambermaid
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Jeannie McNeil | ... |
Lucia
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Mauro Martini | ... |
The boy
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Gianni Schicchi | ... |
Tonino
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Alfredo Filippazzi | ... |
Doctor
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Gianfranco Cella | ... |
Young man at the party
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Celestina Bellocchio | ... |
Young Woman at Party
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Pier Luigi Troglio | ... |
Leone
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Irene Agnelli | ... |
Bruna
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Sandra Bergamini |
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Lella Bertante |
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Alessandro, a young epileptic with paranoid inclinations, decides to relieve Augusto, the only sound brother, from the burden of a numerous family plagued with hereditary diseases. After a first aborted attempt, the dreadful series of accidents/murders is started by pushing the blind mother into a ravine. Then comes the turn of Leone, the idiotic brother. Will Alessandro be able to bring to completion his obsessive project ? Written by Stefano Cristiani <cristiani@astrpd.pd.astro.it>
This picture has a plot that is disturbing, and I've had to let 24 hours pass before deciding what the story is about. First off, the reviews to date appearing before mine are excellent in explaining the movie's artistic merits and themes. My take benefits from having read them.
The plot is straightforward, although extremely unusual. A young man who is epileptic is part of a family with deep problems. He determines to take everyone's lives. This doesn't work out as planned, so he instead murders his blind mother and then his younger brother, who is of subpar intelligence. The movie ends in midstream without his having completed his designs, his sister being next in line apparently. He and his sister have a close to incestuous relationship. Their older brother doesn't know what his younger brother has done, but the sister does, and she does nothing about it.
This tale is told in a normal and matter of fact fashion for the most part, although naturally the characters have emotional outbursts and oddities.
The characters are thoroughly removed from almost all hope of regaining any semblance of normal human creativity. The beauty of La Traviata serves as a background to an epileptic seizure. The brother and sister trample on every symbol of their family, their mother, material possessions, religion and so on. They have no shame and no sense of something valuable to hold onto. The killer has no sense of redemption other than through his murders.
The writer and film makers have used this family as a microcosm or metaphor of Italy, Europe and Western civilization in general. They are saying that all the old values are dead. World War 2 following upon World War 1 following upon the philosophic death of God have seen to that. The suffocating bureaucratic welfare states have seen to that. The flawed church establishments have seen to that. The family has proved unable to withstand the pressures, it too having its own share of dysfunctionalities. What is left, we are shown artistically, is suicide and death. These are the new normal. They are the direction of these trends and their underlying thrust, and this family reflects it all. The killer's energy is released only by removing what he sees as the obstacles. He can no longer think straight. He can't see any other alternatives. If youth is ever the hope, and if this is youth, then there is no hope. The civilization will go to its degraded end. All of this is the message.
And while it is being told, the surroundings remain as always. Nature's beauties remain. Things seem normal, even when they are not. A mother can be pushed off a beautiful cliff and nature doesn't blink. God doesn't strike the murderer dead. There is no blood, no gore. There is not even any joy in the killer. He in fact is frustrated that no one else recognizes his cleverness in getting away with it. His look is surely wicked and devilish at times, even as he is boyish. The actor did a great job at conveying that. Evil looks normal. The message is that the evil in Europe has so permeated every institution, including the family, that there are no paths left to redemption.
The movie ends with this downward spiral in progress and incompleted, as if to say, wait and watch the rest of this tragedy unfold in real life. The movie is therefore very much an intensification of noir themes in these destructive directions of an obsessed young man.