Il Diavolo in Corpo

Bellocchio further extends his rap sheet on the stultifying bourgeoisie via an update of the Raymond Radiguet novel and its 1947 Autant-Lara adaptation. But he has a job trying to find any equivalent in the contemporary scene for the offence against Family and Country which Radiguet's lovers presented. The student hero (Pitzalis - no Gérard Philipe) embarks on an affair with Detmers, patient of his psychiatrist father and girlfriend of a left-wing extremist facing trial on terrorist charges. The familiar Bellocchio problem - the sense that his characters are being marshalled mainly in the service of some generalising thesis - is aggravated by the flat mise-en-scène. More likely to be remembered for the headline-making on-camera blow job nonchalantly administered by Detmers, than for its polemics, such as they are.