Andrea Segre • Director of The Great Ambition
"We wanted to make a film with Enrico Berlinguer, not about Enrico Berlinguer"
- The director talks about his film, charting the innovative project led by Italian politician Enrico Berlinguer, a little-known name from the world of deeply democratic communism
This Wednesday, Andrea Segre’s new film, The Great Ambition [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andrea Segre
film profile], is being released in French and Belgian cinemas (by Nour Films and Brightfish, respectively) after proving a hit with audiences in Italy, charting the evolution of the innovative project led by Italian politician Enrico Berlinguer, a little-known name from the world of deeply democratic communism.
Cineuropa: How would you explain what Enrico Berlinguer represents in Italy?
Andrea Segre: He’s a very important politician who left a mark on Italian history, but who was somewhat deleted from collective memory following the attacks carried out by the Red Brigades. The film gives us a key to understanding how historical and political memory works, especially with regard to the history of communism in Italy, which is now associated with the Red Brigades’ terrorist communism, to the detriment of the democratic communism touted by Berlinguer who dreamed of a free and democratic, socialist society. Berlinguer was a unique character, as secretary general for a party boasting two million members. He had a very special way of talking to people, without using flashy slogans or calculated approaches to play on their emotions, and a far cry from the kind of political grandstanding we might be more familiar with. I think that’s what created such a strong relationship between him and the Italian people. Italian families remember him; we all have older relatives who have a story to tell about Berlinguer.
Berlinguer’s words play a significant part in the film. How did you go about conveying these words through images?
That was a really crucial point for us. It involved a balancing act to preserve the specific language Berlinguer used, but finding a slightly more modern rhythm for it. We chose certain speeches and broke them up to respect the pace of modern cinema. But all of the words are his, we didn’t add anything.
Words are also vehicles for ideologies. There’s the word “Eurocommunism”, for example, which covers all kinds of things.
In his speeches, Berlinguer showed he had a gift for analysis; he sees the transformations and trends taking place in society with real prescience or clairvoyance. Like when he talks about the relationship between austerity and capitalism, and the need to limit consumerism to create economic justice and balance. The same goes for the need to move on from the Cold War, to create a world without military tension between the superpowers. It made him a very open politician compared to the other communist leaders at the time, who were trapped in their dogmatism.
He also uses words and language as a tool for dialogue. And with dialogue comes the potential for compromise, which really strikes home today.
He understood that the path to justice lay in the ability to find compromises. But that only works if you have a clear idea of what kind of society you want. If you don’t have any kind of ideal, compromising just becomes a technique to retain power. The historic compromise he proposes to Aldo Moro was very modern in that sense, because it enters into the real and profound substance of democracy, which involves working day-in-day-out on comparing different ideas in order to come up with proposals and useful solutions for the common good.
How did you decide which period of Berlinguer’s life to focus on?
We chose to focus on the period which coincided with the Great Ambition, at a time when the meaning of his life seemed to be linked to a common goal. It’s really interesting dramaturgically-speaking to study the choices he ended up making in his personal and professional lives, sometimes in the interests of the party. It’s something which still resonates strongly today, when it feels almost impossible to identify a collective ambition in our hyper-individualistic society. I think the film’s enormous success in Italy is also linked to that: the fact that it’s also a film about a crisis in democracy.
So, this archive material is like a poetic language for you, which fleshes out the story. And obviously you also needed to find an actor, Elio Germano, to tell this tale.
Elio was the first person I spoke to about what I wanted to do, I always felt that he’d find a way to get into Berlinguer’s head, to embody his humanity. We wanted to make a film with Berlinguer, not about Berlinguer. About the human condition in a wider sense, and the reality of having a great ambition, a collective dream. We weren’t looking for imitation but immersion.
(Translated from French)
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