Il Cuore Nel Pozzo - Controversy

Controversy

In the post-war Italy, the Foibe massacres were largely forgotten by the greater part of the Italian people. The movie was produced with a poor historic background,with the aim to "inform" the low-cultured people about the Exodus drama. The movie adopts the rules of "fiction", with an extremization of the characters (the "good people" on one side, and the "bad people" on the other). The movie is full of contradictions and involves terrible historic errors, the overall quality being extremely poor.

Whether a neutral point of view being captured is dubious, as the concept of Italian fascism and its association with German Nazism and their crimes in the region are only vaguely mentioned in this war drama. Many (especially Slovenian politicians and some in the left wing of Italian politics) accused the movie of being tantamount to propaganda, presenting Italians as innocent victims and not as the former allies of Nazi Germany. Free from any obligations to real history, the Italian soldiers are pictured as those of the regular army, whereas at the time and in the region the only Italian formations could be that of the Fascist Republic of Salò. The Italian soldiers were presented as merciful and altruistic, whereas Tito's partisans were reportedly presented as ruthless assassins and rapists, the main character among them bein obsessed with taking back the son he had had from an Italian woman raped by him years before.

The director claims to have been completely free of political influences during the film's production. His defenders claim that, in the movie, previous fascist crimes are vaguely recalled but not dwelled upon in order to avoid appearing to promote the idea that one crime justifies another. They point out that both good and bad Italian characters are portrayed in the film, as well as both good and bad Yugoslavs.

The movie was sharply criticized in Italy, even by the Istrian and Dalmatian associations of exiles. It has been told that this delicate subjects had not to be presented with a low quality movie, but with some quality and historically correct productions. It has been told that this movie was a terrible idea, because it was able to reopen sharp wounds between Italy and Slovenia, and in effect the movie was not welcomed in this Country. One year later, as a reaction, Slovenia introduced a new national holiday, for the "Unification of the Slovenian Littoral with Slovenia". This time the Italian political elite criticized the "bad taste" of Slovenian officials.

The movie was also used by Slovene and Croatian nationalistic movements, which claimed that the production was the "typical" Italian point of view about the problem. On the contrary, the movie collected only critics in Italy where it was defended just by its "political sponsor", the "Alleanza Nazionale" party, the real ideator of this politic propaganda action.

The movie received widespread criticism from the Italian left wing of politics and Slovenian public and politicians, as it portrays historical events in the way they have been described for many decades by Italian Fascists. It has been accused of being a work of propaganda, presenting helpless and innocent Italians as victims of the mindless rage of Slavic peoples, without more than just vaguely hinting to the vastly larger atrocities committed by Fascists in Yugoslavia during World War II (see also Italian war crimes) and the oppression of the Slavic population by the Italian Fascist rule of the region (1922–1943).

The movie, set in Istria (today in Croatia) had to be shot in Montenegro, because of opposition from Croatian authorities to a movie that portrayed them negatively. The portrayed scenery differs a lot from the real one.

Most of the controversy is based on the good vs. evil depiction made of the conflict between Italians and Slavs, with many Italians being pictured as positive and many Slavs as evil, with the exceptions of Fabrizio, an Italian, Anja (an Italian's Slavic girlfriend) and all of the children.