ABSTRACT
Few actual events are the focus of the large corpus of films devoted to the terrorism of the long 1970s, and the Moro kidnapping is unique in having so many films explicitly devoted to it or making notable reference to it. Indeed this is true even of a film that was made before the Moro kidnapping. Most of all, the use made of Moro in Kleinhoff Hotel hints at how the Moro kidnapping had become the key topic to be interrogated for any film with pretensions to political commentary made after and, bizarrely, even before the events it evokes. Notwithstanding the analogies with the Moro kidnap, Ogro had been in preparation for some years and several drafts of the script had been produced before 1978. The general acceptance of the exceptional but necessary nature of the 'Ogre' assassination allows for the vital distinction insisted upon in the film. In essence, this distinction implies a privileging of instrumental over symbolic violence.
