Tag: nineteenth century

Kidnapped
(Rapito)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 22 April 2024
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(Rapito)
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Director – Marco Bellocchio – 2023 – Italy, France, Germany – Cert. 12a – 135m

*****

A boy is forcibly taken from his Jewish family by the Pope to be raised as a Catholic priest because he has been baptised into the Catholic faith – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

Italy, the mid-nineteenth century. The Papal States will have disappeared by 1870 as Italy moves towards unification. In the meantime, they are still under the administrative control of the incumbent pope, Pius IX.

Bologna, 1852. A maid sees off a soldier in the night following a romantic tryst. The soldier is neither here nor there; the maid, Anna Morisi (Aurore Camatti) will play a significant part in what follows. The life of a nine-child Jewish family is about to be disrupted forever.

The home of the very ordinary Mortalo family, who are Jewish: father Momolo (Fausto Russo Alesi), mother Marianna (Barbara Ronchi) and their nine children. The parents are deeply religious and raise their offspring accordingly, teaching them, among other things, to recite the Shema prayer every night before they go to sleep. One night in 1858, they are visited by the authorities under Feletti (Fabrizio Gifuni) who have come to take away one of their children under Papist law.… Read the rest

Tags 1852, 1858, 1870, abduction, antisemitism, atheism, Aurore Camatti, baptised, Barbara Ronchi, boarding school, Bologna, Catholic, Catholic boarding school, Catholic Church, Catholic faith, Catholic ritual., Catholic services, Catholicism, church, Church authorities, conversion, dormitory, Enea Sala, ethnicity, Fabrizio Gifuni, faith, family, Fausto Russo Alesi, hate, heritage, Italian unification, Jesus Christ crucified, Jew, Jewish, Jewish family Pope, Judaism, kidnapped, Latin, Leonardo Maltese, lie, Limbo, liturgies, maid, Marco Bellocchio, Mezusah, Mortalo, nails, nineteenth century, ordination, Paolo Pierobon, Papal States, papist, Papist law, pharmacist, Pius IX, power structure, priest, protest, raised, religious artefact, religious conversion to Catholicism, ritual, ritual of baptism, Roman Catholic, Rome, salvation, Samuele Teneggi, school authorities, Shema prayer, statue, taken, Unification of Italy, upbringing, vision

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Kidnapped

One God, two families

Kidnapped
Directed by Marco Bellocchio
Certificate 12a, 135 minutes
Released 26 April

This Italian drama, based on true events, is set when the papacy was both the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the state authority in parts of Italy, a situation that would change with Italian unification in the 1870s and the instigation of a secular, country-wide system of government. There would be implications for the separation of church and state.

In 1858, six-year-old Jewish boy Edgardo Mortalo (Enea Sala) was removed from his family by the papist authorities following his Catholic baptism (how he was baptised emerges later) and taken to a school run directly by Pope Pius IX (Paolo Pierobon) to educate such ‘Christians’ in the faith and turn them into priests.

The Church’s theological rationale behind this appalling action… [read the rest at Reform]

[Read my longer review on this site]

Tags 1852, 1858, 1870, abduction, antisemitism, atheism, baptised, Barbara Ronchi, boarding school, Catholic, Catholic boarding school, Catholic Church, Catholic faith, Catholic ritual., Catholic services, Catholicism, church, Church authorities, conversion, dormitory, Enea Sala, ethnicity, faith, family, Fausto Russo Alesi, hate, heritage, Italian unification, Jesus Christ crucified, Jew, Jewish, Jewish family Pope, Judaism, kidnapped, Latin, Leonardo Maltese, lie, Limbo, liturgies, maid, Marco Bellocchio, Mezusah, Mortalo, nails, nineteenth century, ordination, Paolo Pierobon, Papal States, papist, Papist law, pharmacist, Pius IX, power structure, priest, protest, raised, religious artefact, religious conversion to Catholicism, ritual, ritual of baptism, Roman Catholic, Rome, salvation, school authorities, taken, Unification of Italy, upbringing

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The Taste of Things
(The Pot-au-Feu)
(La Passion
de Dodin Bouffant)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 14 February 2024
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(The Pot-au-Feu)
(La Passion
de Dodin Bouffant)
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Director – Tran Anh Hung – 2023 – France – Cert. 12a – 145m

*****

A nineteenth century, French gastronome tries to persuade his live-in cook to become his wife – in cinemas in the UK and Ireland from Wednesday, February 14th

1885. Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) is the live-in cook for celebrated gastronome Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel). Over the years, he and his male friends have enjoyed her culinary skills. They are in a relationship: some nights, her bedroom door is unlocked and he can gain admission, other nights, it’s locked. She likes things the way they are and has no plans to marry him. However, he has other ideas…

This opens with a bravura cooking sequence in a huge, French chateau kitchen as Eugénie and her assistant Violette (Galatéa Bellugi) and Violette’s younger, visiting cousin Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), with a degree of assistance from Dodin, prepare the most amazing French meal you’ve ever seen. You start to think you’re in for two and a half hours of hunger-inducing food porn when the tone starts to shift, and the threads of a plot impose themselves ever so subtly on the proceedings.

Dodin accepts a challenge from a foreign prince, used to lengthy meals that last longer than 24 hours, to cook a meal the challenger will never forget.… Read the rest

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Godland
(Vanskabte Land)

Director – Hlynur Pálmason – 2022 – Denmark, Iceland – Cert. 12a – 138m

***1/2

Winter is coming. In the late nineteenth century, a Danish priest who is also an amateur photographer travels to an Icelandic island to oversee the construction of a church before Winter comes – out to rent on Amazon Video, Sky Store, Chili, Rakuten TV, BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, May 5th

The late nineteenth century. Lutheran priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) meets with his Church of Denmark bishop regarding his forthcoming ministry to a remote village in Iceland where he is to oversee the construction of a church building before the harsh winter sets in. While that’s his official, designated task, the young man being something of an enthusiast for the newly emerging art of photography decides to take a camera and tripod with him to document his journey, and to this end, rather than take the simplest, safest and quickest route to his destination, he resolves to travel cross-country. (Although the film is a work of fiction, it was inspired by an actual series of photographs taken on a similar journey around this period.) He is allocated an Icelandic guide Ragnar (Ingvar Sigurðsson) to accompany him.… Read the rest

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The Woman King

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 6 October 2022
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Director – Gina Prince-Bythewood – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 135m

****

The warrior women of Dahomey defend their people against capture by neighbouring nations for the white foreigners’ slave trade – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 7th

Outside of the Greek myth of the Amazons, we don’t really think of armies as being made up of women rather than men prior to the last few decades, yet historically this actually occurred in a West African country, the Kingdom of Dahomey (further info: National Geographic; wikipedia) between the middle of the seventeenth and the end of the nineteenth centuries. These warrior women are the subject of this film which takes place in 1823.

A prologue shows a small unit of the women in action under their General Nansica (an unforgettable Viola Davis) as they attack and slaughter a unit of (male) soldiers [Read more…]

Full review published at DMovies.org.

The Woman King is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, October 7th.

Trailer (please note that the irritating, ill-judged pop soundtrack is not representative of the film):

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Bright Star

Director – Jane Campion – 2009 – UK – Cert. PG – 119m

*****

The early nineteenth century romance between prospectless young poet John Keats and the younger Fanny Brawne – in cinemas from Friday, November 6th 2009

Bright Star‘s title comes from an 1819 love poem written by 23-year-old John Keats for 18-year-old Fanny Brawne, his next door neighbour. The poet (historical spoiler coming) contracted tuberculosis and died at the tender age of 25, before the couple could be married. Brawne subsequently mourned him for several years.

As you might expect from a filmography including both The Piano and In The Cut, Jane Campion is never one to match standard expectations and often overturns them to advantage.

There is scarce little (verbal) poetry here either spoken by the actors onscreen or in voice-over. The source materials are Andrew Motion’s biography Keats and the poems themselves. Reading Motion’s book, Campion was very taken with his material on the love relationship between the poet and Brawne and thought there could be a film there. Without any real idea as to how such a film would work at the time. She eventually opted for telling the couple’s story through the eyes of the girl.… Read the rest

Tags Abbie Cornish, Andrew Motion, Ben Whishaw, Fanny Brawne, houses, Jane Campion, John Keats, Kerry Fox, love affair, nineteenth century, poet, romance, tuberculosis, UK