La storia e i cortocircuiti tra presente e passato

Marco Bellocchio’s film deals with a historical episode in history, Italian as well as international, which is re-proposed to an audience whose reactions transcend the event itself. And yet, those who unfamiliar with the story of Edgardo Mortara, upon seeing “Rapito”, get an idea that, by the director’s explicit statement, does not want to address factual history. This paper aims to highlight the short circuits in the ways the Mortara case is debated as a mirror of memory — short circuits within which “Rapito” is situated and with which it engages in dialogue. On the other hand, from its onset, the Mortara case was an affaire, a kind of media event that historiography has long since learnt to distance and analyse. Therefore, it prompts scholars and historians to reflect less on the event itself, than on how it is revisited in the present.