Fists in the Pocket

Fists in the Pocket – Marco Bellocchio made this melodrama about a savagely dysfunctional family in 1965 and critics were astounded and appalled. Today, it’s hard to see what the fuss was all about. But in 1965, audiences were alternately enthralled and repelled by the incestuous and murderous antics of Sandro, often called by the pet name, Ale, an epileptic who conspires to murder his entire family. If this film were made in the United States, it would be categorized as some form of southern Gothic, a fantasy by Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, or Tennessee Williams. Indeed, the film resembles a prosaic, northern Italian version of several of Williams’ plays. Isolated in a chateau high in the mountains, a blind matriarch presides over her squabbling brood, four adult children, two of them apparently epileptic and a third mentally retarded. Lou Castel plays violently unpredictable Sandro. Sandro seems to worship his older brother, the only arguably sane member of the clan, and to protect him from the shame of associating with the others, all defective in one way or another, plots to kill everyone else in the family. Sandro seems to be involved in incest with his beautiful sister, although they have some spectacularly violent fights. Ultimately, Sandro pushes his mother off a cliff, drowns his retarded brother, and driven into a frenzy by a duet from La Traviata – this is, after all, Italy – succumbs (perhaps) to an epileptic seizure. The film is shot in icy black and white. The house in the mountains is surrounded by snow and fog. Periodically, the characters descend into the valley where there is a big industrial city with a river, prostitutes loitering by the waterfront, and more rain and sleet. The picture’s focus is on Castel’s Sandro and, certainly, the actor’s performance is wildly charismatic, scary, and peculiar – Sandro displays all sorts of strange physical tics, is prone of obscene outbursts, casually tortures people, and laughs hysterically while weeping. Castel was thought to have the acting “chops” of a young Marlon Brando, a player that he resembles in pygmy form. But Castel is too freakish-looking to be much more than a special effect – he has an disproportionately huge head and the pale bland handsomeness of a Nazi storm-trooper. His performance is riveting but grotesque. Ultimately, the picture is impressive – many people hail it as a landmark – but claustrophobic, Unlilke his compatriot and contemporary, Bernardo Bertolucci, Bellocchio doesn’t strains for any political subtext, there is no philosophical or historical allegory – the film is exactly what is shows: a grotesque family destroyed by a violent, pampered man-child. Bellocchio has the courage of his convictions; he doesn’t stray from his theme, but the theme, as is the case with many plays by Tennessee Williams, doesn’t seem quite interesting enough to sustain two hours of film. (Castel’s career is worth further study—the child of a Colombian and Swede, his peculiar appearance made him suitable for roles involving bizarre and grotesque characters – he is memorable in the spaghetti western A Bullet for the General in which he plays a homicidal psychopath somewhat like Billy the Kid; he was in a few other pictures, generally playing weirdo thugs of bad guys, a wicked film director in Beware the Holy Whore by Fassbinder and a gunman in Wenders’ The American Friend. He began as a sort of faun and ended as Peter Lorre).