A Leap in the Dark

A Leap in the Dark (, and also known as Leap Into the Void) is a 1980 Italian film written and directed by Marco Bellocchio. It stars Michel Piccoli and Anouk Aimée, who won the Best Actor and Best Actress prizes respectively at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival. The film also won the David di Donatello for Best Director and was selected as the Italian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 53rd Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee. Plot Judge Mauro Ponticelli has been raised by his older sister Marta. However, Marta has been having mental problems and fantasizing about committing suicide, which concerns him greatly. Mauro himself is very busy with his job and is in turn complexed by his life to the limits of hermitism. Marta seems to recover when Mauro introduces her to Giovanni Sciabola, a young brilliant actor with a criminal record: the two turn friends and Giovanni takes Marta out with him very often. Mauro then finds himself becoming jealous of their relationship and, feeling even betrayed, dreams of being able to kill her by pushing her from the window of their home. Fearing that being close to Giovanni Marta might squander large sums of money, Mauro signs an arrest warrant against the young man, who, after vandalizing Mauro's office, runs away. The friendship with Giovanni restored Marta's security, and she decides to leave her brother's house. Realizing that Marta has gained an autonomy that he had never hoped she could obtain, Mauro completely loses his lucidity and commits suicide by throwing himself through the window of his house, in the way he had imagined to get rid of his sister.