ELIO GERMANO IN THE GREAT AMBITION

OPEN ROADS: NEW ITALIAN CINEMA - ANDREA SEGRE: THE GREAT AMBITION/LA GRANDE AMBIZIONE (2024)

Biopic of Italy's popular communist leader Enrico Berlinguer

The excellent Elio Germano, winner of the best actor prize at the 2020 Berlinale for Hidden Away and at Cannes in 2010 for Our Life, is a decent likeness of Enrico Berlinguer, a man of breathtaking rectitude and the longtime leader of the Italian communist party (PCI). He was its secretary-general during the period of its ascendency from 1972 to 1984. This is the focus of Andrea Segre's compelling, if rather earnest, film The Great Ambition/La grande ambizione. Berlinger was a small, wiry man, and Germano looks like that here, though he looked taller and more rangy opposite the handsome Ricardo Scarmarcio in his star-making early film, the 2007 My Brother Was an Only Child (which also was about a communist familly). The time depicted here was one of achievement for the PCI, but also of aspiration and disappointment, particlarly at the end when the 1978 kidnapping and murder of prime minister Aldo Moro dashed hopes of a powerful union of the PCI and the leading Christian Democrats.

The new film, itself a work of considerable ambition, was directed by Andrea Segre, who has made documentaries as well as feature films, and The Great Ambition freely uses historical footage, especially to depict public events, including large gatherings and street violence. Documentary and reconstructed material are skillfully interwoven in what is a continually engaging film. If there is any shortcoming here, there is a lack of personal drama, family conflict or family passion, for instance. But Berlinguer appears to have been a man in whom public and private were passionately interwoven. This film is like a pocket course in modern Italian political history, and it's an inspiring and engaging one, though not one for the faint hearted or those without an interest in learning about the subject.

This is the story of the rise and fall of a dream. It was a time when the PCI was largest communist party in Western Europe rising in the 1970s, to a third of the country's voters and close to two millian members. It was the second largest party in Italy and the largest non-ruling communist party in Europe. Interestingly, the film never speaks of the party as representing "the working class" but "the popular masses," which reminded me of Gamal Abdel Nasser's famous resignation speech in 1967 when he dranatucakkt declared, "I shall return to the ranks of the masses."

As is pointed out by Chaia Spagnoli Gabardi in her review, Enrico Berlinguer’s ideology was previously depicted in the 1977 Roberto Benigni comedy Berlinguer I love You/Berlinguer ti voglio bene, and he briefly appears in Marco Bellocchio’s series Esterno Notte, but comes across there as unpleasant, something that filmmaker Andrea Segre fixes in his film. Here I'd like to put in a plug for Bellocchio's stunning 2003 film about the kidnapping of Aldo Moro Buongiorno, notte, outstanding for depicting events from the POV of a conflicted female member of the Red Brigades kidnapping band. That is a great film (and a trim 106 minutes) where this is a highly competent one (and 123 minutes).

This is a great role for Germano but it is a political role, not a personal one. Moments with his family are present but not highlighted. He is shown by himself as an emissary of the PCi in Bulgaria at the outset, where he narrowly survives an assassination attempt, and he is most notably seen addressing a vast audience out of doors. Germano really delivers those speeches. They are what you come away from the film, along with his meetings with other party leaders where the future possibilities of grand alliances are discussed a.

The counter force to all this of course was capitalism. The seventies werer coming off Italy's postwar and after economic miracle and we see up close the FIAT multi-milllionaire Gianni Agnelli in an actual address, a grand spokesman for private wealth, since he was the richest man in Italy and was a glamorous and chisrismatic figure. But at the same time Gerlinguer was on the front pages of all the newspapers and magazines of Europe and on the cover of Time magazine.

A subject in itself is the pushes and pulls of relations between Italy's communist party and the Eastern bloc. Berlinguer's great ambition was to achieve a democratic path to communism, which meant cutting off the PCI's ties with Moscow. This is a subject that's intriguingly introduced early on in the film but nat get a bit lost thereafter in the complexity of domestic events. It is inevitable with a topic as broad as this film's that some strands get a bit lost. But this is a fascinating film and one wonders why it has not been dealt with more often. Biopics are a much-maligned but necessary form. In an interview with Screen Daily Segre explained that his extensive preparation for this fim included, two years studyng s Berlinguer’s memoirs and papers from the Communist Party archives and interviews with his family abd assicuates. He also reported in an interview notably watcing Milk and Malcolm X, whose focus on still unresolved issues and extensive use of real footage fed into his process in The Great Ambition.

The Great Ambition/La grande ambizione, 123 mins., premiered at the Rome film festival Oct. 14, 2024, and was nominated for 15 Donatello Awards. Germano won Best Actor (Migliore Attore Protagonista). Screened for this review as part of Open Roads, the Italian film series co-sponsored by Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center (May 29-Jun. 5, 2025). Showtimes:

Friday, May 30 at 3:00pm – Q&A with Andrea Segre
Thursday, June 5 at 6:00pm[/b]

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.