The kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara was also a crime against a peaceful, upper-middle-class family that respected authority, which, in Bologna, was still the authority of the pope-king, at a time when an air of freedom was spreading throughout Europe and liberal principles were being affirmed all over. Everything was changing, and for this very reason the little boy’s kidnapping represents the desperate, and thus extremely violent, attempt of a moribund authority to resist collapse, and even to go on the counterattack. Declining totalitarian regimes often achieve small triumphs that momentarily delude them into believing they are winning (a brief spasm of life preceding death).

Besides the extreme act of violence to which little Edgardo was subjected, I would like to delve into the loss and pain he suffered after his forced removal, as well as his continual attempts to reconcile the will of his second father, the pope, with the diametrically opposed will of his parents to bring him home. His mother exhibits tenacious determination, whereas his father, thinking only of his son’s welfare, is less rebellious.

Attempting to achieve an impossible reconciliation throughout his life, Edgardo never disavows his parents or his origins, nor does he ever accept the fact that his mother will remain Jewish until her death.

Edgardo’s conversion is always resolutely affirmed, but is punctuated by sudden, unexpected, more-or-less subconscious rebelliousness. Edgardo never becomes the pope’s puppet, and this manifests itself in his suffering and the numerous prolonged illnesses that leave him bedridden for long periods of time…

Edgardo also pays a physical price for unquestioningly affirming his faith. Happiness remains but an increasingly fading memory of the years before his abduction (Edgardo was not yet seven years old when it occurred).

As I mentioned earlier, the other enigma of this story is Edgardo's conversion. As a child he converts to Catholicism (very young and impressionable, so the prevailing narrative asserts, he did so in order to survive; we would now call this “Stockholm syndrome”), remaining faithful to his second father, the pope, in the person of Pius IX, throughout his life.

Now, I don’t wish to seek a “middle” ground, but Edgardo’s conversion, so absolute and seemingly without the slightest doubt, certainly makes his character all the more interesting… And it introduces us to worlds that for us do not exist, but that are very real for so many people… We can observe the “phenomenon” objectively or, with love and empathy, try simply to portray a child whose soul has been violated and who, as an adult, remains faithful to those who have violated him because he believes them to be his saviors. Ultimately, a character emerges who defies all rational explanation. This is a film, not a work of history or philosophy, nor an ideological argument.

Marco Bellocchio