'Portobello', the series that portrays Italian justice as an absurdist comedy

A living legend of Italian cinema, Marco Bellocchio, at over eighty years old, is enjoying a new golden age in his career, which has recently expanded to include television fiction. Four years ago he premiered Exterior nit, a series revolving around a recurring theme in his work: the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro and the impact it had on the political map of his country. Now he premieres the equally splendid Portobellowhich shares several points of contact with the previous title. Once again, we have a miniseries focused on the real-life ordeal of an Italian politician, in this case Enzo Tortora (Fabrizio Gifuni, who also played Moro), a member of the Radical Party but much better known as the presenter of a hugely successful television magazine program in 1970s Italy, the Portobello From the title.

At the height of his fame, Tortora was accused of belonging to the Camorra by some "repentant" and "former members," ex-affiliates of the criminal organization who were cooperating with the justice system. Despite the lack of any evidence linking the politician to the mafia, Tortora was imprisoned and tried in one of the most shameful trials in the country's history. When his innocence was finally proven, he was so ill that he died a few months later, at the age of 59.

The violence of the system

Bellocchio, therefore, returns to focusing on a public figure who is a victim of systemic violence, allowing him to offer a portrait of Italy through the role played by the art of representation. This is a series that barely moves outdoors. The Italy of Portobello It is the one that socializes from home through television programming. The director of Vincere (2009) is not as critical of the role of television in the drift of Italian culture and politics as some of his colleagues, from Federico Fellini to Matteo Garrone. But it does show the role of television in shaping a new form of popular culture that unites the country and fosters the protagonist's success, to the point that a small-time Camorra member in prison, Giovanni Pandico, becomes obsessed with him and decides to frame him to the police.

Tortora thus became the victim of an absurd accusation that, instead of being clarified, grows increasingly serious. In one of his last feature films, The traitor In 2019, Bellocchio recreated the major Mafia trials of the 1980s. Here he returns to this theme, but from a different perspective. Instead of celebrating the heroic role of so many judges in pursuing these criminals, he shows how the judicial system ultimately swept away innocent people like Tortora. The director captures it all by turning the trial into a comedy of the absurd, showcasing that distinctly Italian penchant for rhetoric—in this case, the rhetoric of lies.

It's fascinating how Bellocchio and his screenwriters place at the center this capacity for oral performance, each in their own style, of the Camorra members clinging to their fabricated narrative. They don't need to emphasize the farcical nature of it all, because it's self-evident, also thanks to the actors' sublime performances. Especially Lino Musella in the role of Pandico, one of those antagonists crafted with every nuance to become a diabolically fascinating character. With the pacing characteristic of the best contemporary series, Portobello It also recalls those early television dramas, almost always set in interior locations, in which top-notch screenwriters and actors of theatrical origin put themselves at the service of creating the best possible television fiction.