Marco Greco e Ottavio Rosati parlano di PSYCHODRAME di Rossellini e Moreno

English edition from the booklet published with the DVD of Istituto Luce Cinecittà - 1019.

ROSATI Your finding is an extraordinary thing! You remind me of Aldo Carotenuto when he found the correspondence between Freud, Sabine Spielrein and Jung in Geneva. The result was "Diary of a secret symmetry". That book made it clear that without the weaknesses and the genius of these three characters the concept of transference which today is obvious to us, would never have been born.

GRECO This film had been sought for years by psychodramatists and cinephiles. And it is thanks to the Anne Ancelin Schützenberger archive, that this could have happened, through the reorganization of which our association that is entrusted with it in Turin is working. During the cataloging we gathered some clues, some traces that led to Paris ...

ROSATI In 1956 Rossellini, had already made Roma Città Aperta, Germania Anno Zero, Giovanna d'Arco al Rogo, Viaggio in Italia... We looked for this video through Claudio Bondi, the TV director of Da Storia Nasce Storia, my series of real psychodramas for Italian Rai 3. Bondì had been Rossellini's pupil and we looked the RTF work in Paris. But in vain. How did you do it?

GRECO We involved Hélène Schützenberger who, with the data we collected to find it, requested the video to the INA, pointing out that her mother was one of the protagonists of the film. This may have been the key. What kind of key they used is not known to us ... Perhaps it was archived, with old parameters ... This is an experimental 1956 video that was never broadcast.

ROSATI The RTF could not broadcast such a complicated recovery but it has the merit of having organized the meeting between two directors / thinkers who were revolutionizing psychology and cinema. Even if it does not derive a creative collaboration but a reciprocal encumbrance. As if Hitchcock were to conduct a Gandi conference aboard a train with a few film rollers on the Turin-Milan route. It is however something mythical.

GRECO Actually, a prestigious venue but a very unsuitable place for the complex experiment to help the spontaneity of the actors who had to experiment with the mechanism of live television: a challenge more than difficult. All this translates into a few improvised minutes in a rather cramped and crowded room ... And the "Vit Vit", on the lips of A.A. Schützenberger in the final, is the refrain that emphasizes the need to hurry because there is no time, as if there were not enough film.

ROSATI Indeed. It is easy to see jumps and inconsistencies in the conduct of Moreno and Schutzenberger who always watches the clock. But it is easy just because we are "dwarfs on the shoulders of giants".

GRECO In fact, in the movie we immediately notice that there was no real group, according to our standards, nor an initial "warming up" of the people, or a preparation of the context; Schützenberger, perhaps safer because she already knows the environment and the language, mentions a definition of the set, making the scene build around a desk. However, the public is not used to dub, for example, or role reversals.

ROSATI While in "The Psychodrama of a Marriage" by Moreno at the Sorbonne there is much of what he did at Beacon's theater as a director of psychodrama. There Moreno is at his best: charismatic but not directive. Instead, entering the RTF Moreno enters the wolf's lair, in the factory of "cultural preserves". Play in the house of the enemy / friend.

GRECO The conduct of the protagonist also appears to be particular. As well as the definition of the arguments, as they arose ... Topics that are, moreover, those of the attention of Man for politics, which is active, creative interest, as he would say, for the Other ... up to the whole humanity that it can be saved only by deciding to focus on relational and creative mutual attention. Perhaps this is also why the distinction between him and the people he works with here appears more nuanced than usual.

ROSATI The theme of the father and of prayer seem to be induced by a projective identification of Moreno on the actor who at first argues with his father who forces him to pray and then, without any elaboration, embodies it if he offered his son an ideal mirroring . Is this a psychodrama or did the actor stage the book "The words of Father" by Moreno?

GRECO Brilliant inventors who took advantage of the opportunity to experiment with each other ... Moreno, however, wrote a document on the television medium from which we deduce a singular level of competence on television even at the technical level

ROSATI It is the nucleus of a revolution that was about to change the world: the expansion of groups through networks. Not just television. Moreno did not invent the Internet but he guessed it. It was his more important intuition. Actually he was a genious.

GRECO It is also on these issues that the film questions us: the prophecy of a communication that spreads education and stimulates creativity and spontaneity, in the end, how much has come true?

ROSATI One more thing: during the presentation of the movie in Rome organized by Istituto Luce and Lazio Film Commission during the 2019 Cinema Festival, I understood something speaking with Adriamo Aprà: what did Rossellini really do as a director of this work, besides giving his prestige and charisma? Not the subject. Not the script. Not the choice of actors. Not the direction of the actors. Not the shots, not the lights, the costumes, the location. Not assembly. Not production. Not the distribution. So?

GRECO Well. Rossellini gave his presence. His carisma. His presence.

ROSATI Yes. He gave the psychic holding of dr. Moreno who seemed to have gone mad with emotion. Rossellini, who detested psychoanalysis, acted as a psychoanalyst. Rossellini gave his holding to the group and to the event. He was the group therapist. He was the King. Moreno was the Jocker.

GRECO And it was an unforgettable event for the story of Cinema and Psychodrama.