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| “ | A great crowd of peasants flocked into the square! Almost all of them from your Fulmara district and they went wild. They ran into the church and they threw stones to break the glass of my brother's tomb. Then they dragged his poor body into the square and they pulled it apart! And it seemed that they had no other thought in their mind for years and that this to them was... an act of liberation... And you ask me, why I hate them. | „ |
| ~ Bellocampo explaining the reason for his resentment of the village. |
Antonio Bellocampo is the main antagonist of the 1975 Italian film The Flower in His Mouth. Bellocampo is a prestigious attorney and the landlord of arriving schoolteacher Elena Bardi, who's used as a pawn in his ultimate political plan for revenge with his hired goons and other accomplices.
He's portrayed by the late English actor James Mason.
Biography[]
Bellocampo held a severely begrudged hatred for the impoverished classes of the Sicilian village he called home. His son was killed when his war plane was shot down and fell into the sea during WW2, his death implied to have been slow. When Allied forces arrived to liberate the village from the dictatorship, the poor welcomed them with cheers. Bellocampo was irreparably traumatized when the villagers stoned the church, pulled out his brother's body, and yanked it pieces in the village square, his horror twisting him into a hateful need for revenge. His status was lost from his sympathy with the fallen regime, so he retired and became a landlord, still with manservants from his wealth. In hopes of trying to reclaim his prestige, he came to build a rapport with the politicians of the village, then arranged for business partnerships with development companies in Switzerland. Knowing the residents of the slums were growing more desperate, the eventual tenant of the apartment he possessed, schoolteacher Elena Bardi, seemed like a great asset by the time she was repeatedly harassed by Calogero Villara, a man who rode the bus into the village with her.
Villara was found killed in the center of town, posed in a chair with a shot in his forehead, a flower stuffed in his mouth. The signature totem of the crime is an old-fashioned degradation of a murdered man responsible for offending a woman. Naturally, Elena is the prime suspect, so as much as the town's paranoid by the killing in her name, they genuinely revere her as a new woman to respect in their home. Students come to her classes more, and Bellocampo personally has Elena driven to the slums to meet the destitute, who plead with her for going to the politicians to provide assistance. A reporter named Profumo tries to report to Elena the growing conspiracy using her, but Bellocampo's goons beat him into temporary silence. Bellocampo eventually sets up Elena's increasing credibility and status by after two goons working for the politicians jump her on a motorbike, beating her and dragging her across the pavement by her hair. Bellocampo's henchmen then kill the two assailants, which gives Elena even more powerful influence, which she had already successfully argued for a destitute family's financial aid.
Although the local magistrate, Pretore Occhipinti, is furious by no answers in the murders, going on a tirade about his hatred of the village and insisting on its disassembly, he's promoted to keep him quiet. Bellocampo, while introducing Elena to his grandson Nicola, informs her of a "Special Law" Parliament can pass that reportedly will save the impoverished with new policies. Once Elena successfully convinces for the law's passage, Profumo reveals to her only a specific plan of the law went into effect: international developers will only come to improve the village's economy by destroying it, paving developments and canals across the land. A share is held under the name of an 11-year-old boy, who Elena realizes is Nicola. Once she reaches Bellocampo's mansion, she confronts him with realizing how she was played. He hated the poor, so used her influence from the first murder to ingratiate herself with politicians, reportedly in the interest of the lower classes, and then he ordered later killings to solidify her status so the "Special Law" would wipe the slums out of the city instead. He takes her to a war plane crash site, where his son's memorial is located, and he vehemently professes his hateful classism. He then boasts he doesn't have to even kill her, as she's been a useful pawn, but the village is too scared to believe her, even Professor Belcore, her lover and one of her colleagues at school.
Elena realizes there's one witness, and that Bellocampo's arranged a hit on his life: Pituro, a petite streetsweeper who saw Bellocampo's goons commit the last two murders. Rushing back into to town, Elena tries to save Pituro, but the henchman beat and stab him to death. Elena pounds on the villagers' doors, screaming for them all to come forward and defy what she and they were all used for, resulting in Nucio, Bellocampo's right-hand man, striking her down into the street. Elena plans to leave the next day, but she finds Nucio was also killed like Villara, Elena realizing it was over how he attacked her. Bellocampo watches through his shutters, horrified she still has influence and respect in the town. As Elena is about to go and board the bus and forsake the village, she changes her mind and refuses her own choice so to behind, not going away until she finally beats Bellocampo's ultimate plan.
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