I pugni in tasca

The family in Marco Bellocchio's startling debut "Fists in the Pocket" make the Femms of "The Old Dark House" seem normal. These indolent Italians laze around all day taunting each other at every opportunity while son Allessandro, (a truly terrific Lou Castel), contemplates the best ways to rid himself of the others, including his blind mother, for the sake of the one brother he cares about. This darkly funny satire wasn't like other Italian films of the time, taking an almost putrid look at the family values Italians hold most dear; a comedy about matricide, fratricide and possible incest that actually manages to be quite touching at times. It's also a movie that takes its time. For a director making only his first feature, Bellocchio bravely put narraitve on the back-burner opting instead for an atmosphere as lazy as his characters and killing off a number of sacred cows in the process. The Establishment hated it while young critics loved it though not enough to make it anything other than a cult movie and it's seldom revived. Perhaps its reputation outweighs its numerous qualities but however you look at it, it's a one-off and well worth seeing.

Pimpin places a call to his favorite writer Michel Houellebecq.

Pimpin: Hello.

Michel: Hello. Who is this?

Pimpin: Michel, its me Pimpin.

Michel: What do you want?

Pimpin: Sorry to disturb. I wanted to discuss a film that I watched. I wanted to hear your thoughts on it. Its this Italian film - Fists in the Pocket by Marco Belloccio. Came out in the 60s.

Michel: OK.

Pimpin: What do you think about it?

Michel: It did have a couple of nice pieces of ass. Paola Pitagora was unforgettable.

Pimpin: Hahahha. I agree. What did you think about the film?

Michel: Well, it was one of those films where the protagonist rebelled against his family and Catholic values. You know what I think about all that stuff, Pimpin. Nothing good came out of it. Sure, a lot of people escaped their families. And then they went and lived alone. Did drugs. Drank a lot. Individuality and personal freedom. Look at where all that got Europe now.

Pimpin: I thought the film was quite slow.

Michel: Its a piece of crap. But then, it was made in the 60s.

Pimpin: I did some research on it. The film apparently predicted the student and youth riots of the late 60s in Italy.

Michel: Hahahah. You really bought into all that crap?

Pimpin: I know its a bit like how Indian social commentators use crappy films like Deewar to explain the 70s and 80s.

Michel: Exactly. Its completely phony Pimpin.

Pimpin: I'm still confused. I don't know what to think about the film. I mean, the film is quite depressing.

Michel: Well, tell me something about the cinematography, pacing and background score. That would help us interpret it better.

Pimpin: It was a very stark film. Morricone's score was very bleak. The score is played during all the murder and post-murder scenes. It is one of Morricone's bleakest scores. I liked the way some of the scenes were framed. Like at the party where the rebellious protagonist is sitting alone and there are a lot of people dancing. He does not even drink. He has no bad habits. But he wants to kill off his family. The pacing was slow.

Michel: Did you identify with the film?

Pimpin: Sort of. But like I said it was too slow. The actors were great. The director was quite successful in capturing the claustrophobic environment in which the family lives.

Michel: Did you get married recently?

Pimpin: Yes.

Michel: So you are not to be trusted.

Pimpin: Why?

Michel: You would have liked this film a lot more during your wild bachelor days.

Pimpin: Thats probably true, Michel.

Michel: It is.

Pimpin: I did think that it was a very personal film. I mean, the director is very talented. He did portray the ills of the bourgeois life and the life lived on pure instinct quite well. I don't think he was rooting for either.

Michel: Did it work as a murder mystery?

Pimpin: No. I think it works best as the zeitgeist of that time in Italy. But it was quite boring for me.

Michel: OK. Is there anything else that you want to discuss?

Pimpin: The actors were great. I mean, most of them were better than the ones in the worst Indian movies. But I would not watch another movie because anyone of them were in it.

Michel: OK.

Pimpin: Read about he Paris attacks. Quite scary.

Michel: (Silence)

Pimpin: Hello?

Michel: Pimpin, you weren't too impressed by this film. In fact, you were bored to death. You only called me because it had an 8 rating on IMDb.

Pimpin: You are right, Michel.

Michel: Take care, Pimpin.

Pimpin: Bye, Michel.

Michel: Bye

This first effort by writer/director Marco Bellocchio has been called a drama by some, and a horror film by others. It is both. It is neither.

It is a view of a dysfunctional family. I almost had the impression they cam from a long line of incest like The People Under the Stairs. One wants to get away, another has epilepsy, the mother is blind, one seems to be developmentally disabled, and the last, Giulia (Paola Pitagora)is really not classifiable, but she sure seems to spend a lot of time very close to her brother Ale (Lou Castel).

Ale feels sorry for his older brother, Augusto (Marino Masé) and hatches a plan to drive the rest of the family, including himself off a cliff so his brother can get on with his life.

His plan fails, so he starts doing them in one by one.

Watching him is mesmerizing. You just have to see what he is going to try next. In the meantime, the family just acts as crazy as you would expect.

Bellocchio went on to direct many more great films including A Leap in the Dark, The Prince of Homburg, and The Religion Hour. It is amazing his first was so good.

I quit watching after 30 minutes, wasn't interested in the storyline and it seemed to be going nowhere. I found it boring and I wasn't interested in the characters.

Beautifully filmed, with nice cinematography and camera movements, mostly in indoor footage, the novienis also interesting in its unique subject. While the development of the story is perhaps too slow in the beginning (although with some grat scenes), the film becomes incrisingly disturbing. Hatred for family, order and tradition is portrayed as aiming a final solution - if you understand what I mean... All members of the family (in different ways, all of them are overly self-centred) are well developped in their dysfunctional relationship, phisically represented in blindness, intellectual disability and epilepsy. Curiously, a "handicapped" himself is moved by a creepy cleansing impulse. Even his closest person, his beautiful sister, with whom he has a complicity relatiinship, is not out of danger.