Andrea Segre

THE GREAT AMBITION

It seems inconceivable, but at midway point in Italian political history between Benito Mussolini and Giorgia Meloni, the Italian Communist Party had 1.5 million members and could summon 12 million votes at the polls. The primary reason for the popularity of the PCI was the non-dogmatic leadership of Enrico Berlinguer, whose influence on Italy in the 1970s comes under scrutiny in Andrea Segre’s docudrama, Berlinguer: la grande ambizione/The Grand Ambition, which is screening some time in June at the Regent Street Cinema in London under the auspices of CinemaItaliaUK.

Several films come to mind while watching Andrea Segre’s first dramatic outing. Respectively starring Gian Maria Volonté and Roberto Herlitzka, Giuseppe Ferrara’s The Moro Affair (1986) and Marco Bellocchio’s Good Morning, Night (2003) provided potent insight into Aldo Moro’s ordeal, while Toni Servillo brought a lugubrious pantomimic menace to Giulio Andreotti in Paolo Sorrentino's Il Divo (2008). Yet it’s Giuseppe Bertolucci’s comedy, Berlinguer, I Love You (1977) that strikes the loudest chord, as this story of a luckless left-leaning worker (Roberto Benigni) living with his mother (Alida Valli) is perhaps more immediately instructive about the national mindset during Enrico Berlinguer's bid to recast Italian social and political life in the 1970s.

He is played with dignity and conviction by Elio Germano, who poignantly conveys the personal sacrifice that Berlinguer made in devoting so much time to his mission. The courage with which he defies the Kremlin comes across, but more might have been made of the suspicion with which he was viewed in the West, where Italy was threatened with NATO sanctions if the Communists got too close to power. In the screenplay co-written by Segre and Marco Pettenello, Berlinguer sometimes seems as naive as he is trusting and it might have been interesting to learn whether the PCI's appeal was rooted more in Party policy or the leader's personality.

Segre and Pettenello can’t be faulted for their research, as they have drawn on biographies, PCI records, and interviews with Berlinguer’s colleagues and children. By presupposing knowledge of the period and its major players, however, the pair fail to establish the structure and nature of the PCI hierarchy so that those unfamiliar with Berlinguer's career could judge who were his allies and who harboured doubts. Labelling figures mid-scene doesn’t really help those unfamiliar with the names (which will be true for many younger Italian viewers, as well as outsiders), especially when they only appear in single scenes. Yet, by utilising archive footage, Segre (who is best known for his documentary work) and editor Jacopo Quadri capture the look and feel of the period, while Benoît Dervaux keeps the camera on Germano's face as he's delivering extracts from Berlinguer’s speeches in order to reinforce the intensity and integrity of his words. As a consequence, they sink in and will leave viewers with much to ponder.