On the occasion of the presentation in Rome of the miniseries Portobello (the first Italian series HBO Original, available from February 20 on HBO Max), Marco Bellocchio told his return to the TV series and the work done to bring on screen the story of Enzo Tortora (played by Fabrizio Gifuni), the television host arrested in 1983 with the accusation of camorristic association and then acquitted definitively.
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How was it for her to return to seriality?
Not traumatic. In this case it was almost mandatory: the story of Tortora needed six episodes, you could not compress in a film without sacrificing fundamental parts. It could have been done, of course, but at the cost of sacrificing elements to which I did not want to give up. The shape of the series was therefore a natural choice, although very complex, because it was still a matter of synthesising a very long story. Six episodes are a lot, but we still had to leave out a lot.
What did you want to do in the stage?
The contrast. It is a story made of conflicts: a man who does not understand what is happening to him, who suddenly finds himself in a continuous nightmare. He doesn’t understand why he’s arrested so he’s handcuffed. The nightmare continues for days, with the prison, then at some point it stops and he regains consciousness, begins to resist, to respond, to react. These are the movements I was interested in most.
How much does the public figure of Tortora count?
One must consider the fate of a man who proclaims himself innocent. Tortora was very popular, had been number one in running that kind of program. He had not only done Portobello: that was the peak of his television success, but he had made many other broadcasts. He moved with great naturalness on television, but he was also a writer, a moralist, an intellectual. It was a more complex figure than it was later remembered in the years of arrest.
The article Marco Bellocchio: “Tower complex figure, that is why <i>Portobello</i>” comes from IlNewyorkese.
