Once Italian cinema’s caustic enfant terrible, now its bravura homme formidable, Marco Bellocchio has made an exhilarating historical exposé, set in 1858 Bologna. That’s where the Roman Catholic Church snatches Edgardo Mortara, six years old, from the bosom of his bourgeois Jewish family. The Inquisition lives, and any Jew who’s been “baptized”—even by an ignorant Catholic maidservant with a sprinkling of water and a rushed paternoster—is considered a son of the Church. Pope Pius IX, still both the pontiff and the monarch of a domain stretching from Bologna to Tuscany, places Edgardo in a Catechumen school that operates like a baroque re-education camp. With Buñuel-caliber ferocity, the movie crystallizes the need to separate church and state while evoking the spellbinding power of Catholic imagery over impressionable youths. Edgardo fantasizes about mounting his school’s giant gory crucifix and removing the spikes from Jesus’s palms and feet. The movie climaxes with a depiction of his warped faith that’s as hair-raising as Carrie’s hand grabbing a girl’s arm from the grave. A Q&A with the director follows the October 8 screening. —Michael Sragow