With your fist in your pocket

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Movie
German title With your fist in your pocket
Original title I pugni in tasca
Country of production Italy
original language Italian
Publishing year 1965
length 103, 105, 108 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Marco Bellocchio
script Marco Bellocchio
production Enzo Doria
music Ennio Morricone
camera Alberto Marrama
cut Aurelio Mangiarotti
occupation

With a fist in his pocket is a socially critical Italian film in the form of a family tragedy. The production from 1965 was directed by Marco Bellocchio , who made his directorial debut here.

action

At the center of the action is an Italian middle-class family who are sick in many ways and exposed to internal decline. And yet every effort is made outwardly to maintain the appearance of decency: The mother is blind, three of her children suffer from epileptic seizures , above all the intelligent and narcissistic Alessandro. Only the oldest son Augusto is completely healthy. This health is presumably just as envious of the younger brother Alessandro as Augusto's social supremacy within the family structure. This is the starting point.

Augusto's friend Lucia shows him an anonymous letter she had received. In it, the anonymous Lucia suggests to part with Augusto, because the sender is pregnant by him, and so he has to acknowledge her. It is immediately clear to Augusto that only his sister Giulia can be the author of the letter. When he confronts her with his suspicion, Giulia does not deny this fact either. She wrote this letter with the best of intentions, because she neither likes Lucia nor that she has a relationship with her brother. Augusto would like to move to the nearby city with Lucia, but he cannot afford an apartment and therefore lets the other family members feel that he is the only one who could integrate normally if he does not feel responsible for this "broken" family and you would let him.

Augusto's presence has a lasting impact on the intelligent Alessandro in particular. His deep dissatisfaction with his immediate environment grows to a hatred that culminates in a final rebellion against the life lies held up in the family, so that one day he kills his mother as well as his brother Leone. Whether this is an attempt at liberation for the benefit of the “normal” Augusto or rather a rebellion against his “normality” and the thus cemented, interfamily dominance, remains uncertain. Giulia, paralyzed on one side, to whom Alessandro then confided, initially acts unexpectedly. She is not scared or disgusted, rather she is fascinated by the way he acts. But soon she fears that she will also become a victim of Alessandro. When the brother has one of his epileptic seizures again, she does not come to his aid, although it is in the immediate vicinity, but lets him die - whether it is an expression of her liberation or simply the physical inability due to her partial paralysis remains unclear.

Production notes

With the fist in the pocket was premiered on July 28, 1965 as part of the Locarno International Film Festival . The mass start in Italy's cinemas was October 31, 1965. On December 5, 1969, Fist in Pocket was seen for the first time in Germany.

The film won several awards; For example, he received the Silver Sails in Locarno in 1965. For leading actor Lou Castel this was the first film lead role.

Reviews

The critics reacted very benevolently to this first album by the 26-year-old Bellocchio.

Reclam's film guide judged: “The gruesome and cruel game stands as a sign of the decadence of a bourgeois order, whose defenders are accelerating its downfall through blind actionism. But these socially critical references are never explicitly emphasized - to the advantage of the film. They arise, incidentally and inevitably at the same time, from the suffocating atmosphere of a lonely old villa, the inhabitants of which vegetate dully. Bellocchio designed the stages of the plot with brutal clarity. (...) "I pugni in tasca" is the beginning of a new development in Italian film, a role model for directors who critically examine the fundamentals of Italian society. "

In the Lexicon of International Films it is written: “Marco Bellocchio's directorial debut tells of the almost hopeless situation of the Italian post-war generation, who want to use an anarchic destructiveness to gain independence from psychological and social constraints. An angry pamphlet of impressive radicalism and consistency. "

Bucher's encyclopedia of the film summed it up: “Bellocchio's first film is a mystery. In a political interpretation it appears as an analysis of the stagnation in contemporary Italian society, but history is also telling in itself. Played by amateurs or drama students, it conveys the claustrophobic aspect of the family and their relationships with an intensity that is remarkable. "

The announcer of the Bellocchio retrospective in October 2012 at the arsenal kino states: “Bellocchio's furious debut was nothing less than a frontal attack on Italian post-war society, its rigid bourgeois morals, its hollow conventions and hypocritical piety. Made far from the official film industry and made with the simplest means, the film continues to impress. Relentlessly, the family is dissected here as the nucleus of social and societal grievances. "

The Protestant film observer drew the following conclusion: “Marco Bellocchio uses the microsocial model of the decline of an Italian aristocratic clan to articulate his psychopathological study of an epileptic as well as his criticism of certain existing orders in his country. Anyone who accepts this extreme concept as a transferable example will not be able to escape the charisma of Bellocchio's powerful, naturalistic and subtle staging. "

Individual evidence

  1. Reclams Filmführer, by Dieter Krusche, collaboration: Jürgen Labenski. P. 481. Stuttgart 1973.
  2. With your fist in your pocket. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 7, 2015 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films, Verlag CJ Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 621.
  4. With your fist in your pocket on arsenal-berlin.de
  5. Evangelical Press Association Munich, Review No. 53/1970

Web links