Marco Bellocchio Talks New TV Show ‘Portobello’; ‘Rosebush Pruning’ & Fiat-Chrysler Savior Biopic ‘Falcon’

The some 60 credits of Italian director Marco Bellocchio are peppered with features and series inspired by real people caught up in dark chapters of Italian history.

His last movie Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara revisits the case of the titular Jewish boy who was removed by the Catholic Church from his family in the 1850s; The Traitor (2019) starred Pierfrancesco Favino as Mafia informant Tommaso Buscetta: WIN (2009) was about Mussolini’s first wife Ida Dalser, while Good Morning, Night 2003 is inspired by Red Brigade member Anna Laura Braghetti’s account of her involvement in the 1978 kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Moro’s 1978

Bellocchio’s new six-part series Portobellowhich is currently playing on HBO Max, having world premiered the first two episodes at the Venice Film Festival last September, revisits the tragic downfall of real-life popular TV presenter Enzo Tortora.

The TV star was arrested in 1983 following false accusations that he was a member of Naples crime organisation the Camorra. A cause célèbre in Italy, the arrest marked the beginning of a four-year judicial nightmare for Tortora.

Fabrizio Gifuni plays Tortora in his second collaboration with Bellocchio after he starred in the director’s first foray into serialised drama, Exterior Nightthe director’s second work about the circumstances surrounding the death of Moro.

“He’s a marvellous actor… who also has good understanding of the judiciary. He hails from a family of celebrated magistrates, so he knew how to strengthen the drama facing Tortora from a judicial point of view… but first and foremost, having seen his splendid interpretation of Aldo Moro, I knew he could pull off Tortora,” Bellocchio tells Deadline.

The production also reunites him with Lorenzo Mieli ,who executive produced Exterior Night and produces Portobello with Mario Gianani, under their new banner Our Films, alongside Simone Gattoni, CEO of Bellocchio’s Kavak Film.

The new drama takes its name from Tortora’s popular Friday night variety show Portobellowhich would regularly garner 20 million viewers, reaching a peak of 28 million viewers at its height.

The show in turn took its name from London’s Portobello Road market, which chimed with its central premise of connecting people who had something to offer with people who were looking for something, and featured a parrot as a mascot.

“There’s never a particular reason,” says Bellocchio, when asked on how he picks the real-life subjects who inspire his work.

“In this case, it was born out of reading a book of letters he wrote to his partner,” continues the director, referring to the 2016 publication ‘Lettere a Francesa’, gathering Tortora’s correspondence while in jail to his loyal, still living partner Francesca Scopelliti. “That was the first light bulb moment, but it was only later that it came to us how to tell his story.”

Bellocchio says he was never a huge fan of Portobello but like most in Italy he was bowled over by news of Tortora’s arrest.

“My mother and sisters used to watch it. It had a huge audience. I followed it a bit but didn’t pay too much attention,” he recalls.  “But when he was suddenly arrested on very serious charges – drugs, drug trafficking, and membership of the Camorra, the shock was immense.”

“But the shock was also his… this completely innocent man who is arrested, taken to prison, and doesn’t understand, and then, only when he’s in prison, comes to understand that he is completely destroyed, ruined,” continues Bellocchio.

“A famous man, a rich man, a beloved man, a man followed by 28 million television viewers, is suddenly obliterated by this accusation that combines the falsity of certain informants with the coincidence and bad luck of his name being exchanged for someone else’s in the home of a Camorrista, and yet the judges believe it’s him because several informants, first one, then many others, for their own convenience accuse him of being a drug trafficker.”

Tortora was offered a lifeline by Italy’s left-libertarian Radical Party after it’s then leader Marco Pannella invited him to run as one of its candidates for the European Parliament. His landslide victory in a 1984 poll, meant Tortora was spared jail after a first trial in 1985 found him guilty and meted out a 10-year sentence.

“This incredible story won’t have a happy ending. In the end, his complete innocence will be recognized, but he is completely ruined inside and dies… a year after his acquittal,” says Bellocchio.

“The adventure takes away any desire he has to return to light-hearted entertainment. He’s no longer capable of that. In fact, in his final years, he dedicated himself to more noble causes, such as helping people in prison and, as a member of Radical Party, a whole series of battles that ultimately make him a politician he never imagined he would become.”

Aside from reconstructing Tortora’s terrible downfall and efforts to prove his innocence, the drama also offers a snapshot of Italy in the mid-1980s.

It was sea-change period for the country as it transitioned away from the turbulent so-called Years of Lead of the 1970s, marked by political violence, into a period of economic boom in which the dominant Christian Democracy party also started losing its grip on power.

“There was a progressive decline in interest in politics. Basically, it was with the assassination of Aldo Moro that the parties began to weaken,” says Bellocchio.

“Before, the parties were absolute masters, but then, after Tortora, another great figure emerged, Berlusconi, who somehow counteracted the great political landscape of Italy in which political parties had absolute importance,” he adds, referring to late media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi who catapulted into Italian politics in 1994 with the creation of his personality-driven Forza Italia party.

Bellocchio notes that Berlusconi attempted to hire Tortora following his release for his then nascent TV network, which at the time consisted of the recently acquired Canale 5 and Italia 1.

“But Tortora, out of a sense of principle, wanted to return to RAI and get his honor back,” says Bellocchio.

Tortora did briefly returned to the state broadcaster and Portobello in 1987, famously kicking off his first show back with the phrase: “Well then, where did we leave off?”.
“But the drama, if not the tragedy, is that he’s no longer capable of entertaining Italians because the trauma was so serious that, apart from the fact that he’ll get sick soon afterward, he’ll look for other programs, but no longer Portobello,” continues Bellocchio.

By chance, the launch of Portobello on HBO Max on February 20 coincides with the 60th anniversary of the release of Bellocchio’s first feature Fist in the Pocket, and the world premiere at the Berlinale in February of its very loose remake Rosebush Pruning by Karim Aïnouz.

“Someone wanted to make a film with Fists in the Pocket as the starting point. It’s very, very different, and freely inspired by Fists in the Pocket. It’s an interesting film, with its own qualities, and I hope it goes a long way but in short, it’s a coincidence.”

Bellocchio is also working on getting back to feature filmmaking, with another story about a late figure of Italian-Canada automobile exec Sergio Marchionne who is credited with reviving Italy’s Turin-based car company Fiat in the 2000s and then merging it with then ailing manufacturer  Chrysler.

“I’m fascinated by his journey and his ability as an Italian who stood up to American big business big to defend Fiat and then even take over Chrysler, which was bankrupt, to make a major group,” says Bellocchio.  “It’s a complicated, difficult project, but it could be my next project.”

He adds that the previously announced working title of Falcon, is inspired by the fact that Marchionne would always travel on a Falcon business jet.

“He would travel went back and forth from Turin on a Falcon, so we’ve given it this title,” he says. “We’re still on the first version, it’ll take a bit of time, we’re about to finish a first.”

The project is not yet casting but Bellocchio says the actor needs to be an Italian who speaks English perfectly, due to the fact that Marchionne, who was born in Italy and then moved to Canada as teenager.

“Sergio Marchionne was someone who knew English perfectly, perhaps more than Italian, so the actor must be perfectly bilingual,” says Bellocchio.

Six-part series Portabello launched on HBO Max on February 20, with a new episode aired every Friday. Episode 3 airs on March 6.