MARIA MONTESSORI is a 2023 French–Italian dramatised bio-pic written and directed by Léa Todorov, which is showing as part of the 2024 Italian Film Festival.
In WA alone there are about 40 Montessori schools or early childhood centres, so there is an immediate audience for this historical drama about the founder of the Montessori Method, a child-centred education approach.
But the film’s qualities make it appealing to a wider audience.
The setting is Italy’s era of inconsistent capitalist development following unification in 1871.
In the shadow of Papal authoritarianism there was a wide-spread thirst for modernism, science, individual freedom and mystical, experimental spiritualism and radical politics.
We see Maria Montessori (Jasmine Trinca) moving among all these avant garde elements.
A wonderful aspect of the film is the casting of children and teenagers with motor or cognitive delays and sensory issues.
It was with such children that Montessori began her teaching work.
The disabled children were called “idiots” by the establishment, but she recognised that if children were placed in an environment where activities were designed to support their natural development, they had the power to educate themselves.
Only later did she branch out to teach children without disabilities, starting with street urchins in Rome’s toughest working-class areas.
Writer/director Léa Todorov has closely researched Montessori’s life who, before she became an educator, was the first Italian woman to train as a doctor.
While at least one of the film’s major characters is fictitious and there is some dramatic licence with the timeline of events, it is certainly true to the spirit of Montessori’s life and her early struggles.
Montessori defied sexism and broke through enormous barriers at great personal cost, as the movie aptly shows.
The film’s titles in other languages highlight these issues, while the blander title chosen by the English language distributors somewhat dulls the edge.
The Italian title, Maria Montessori: una vita per i bambini (A Life for Children) emphasises her radical pedagogical achievements while the French title, La Nouvelle Femme (The New Woman) focuses on her courageous, trail-blazing, feminist accomplishments.
Montessori defied society in choosing medicine as a career and she broke with conventional morality by having a child out of wedlock with her colleague, Giuseppe Montesano (Massimo Poggio).
They agreed that they would not marry because, if she married, Montessori would be legally forced to stop working as a doctor.
But they also agreed to not marry anybody else, so as to remain true to each other.
The film highlights the unbearable social pressures associated with that choice.
The film ends with Montessori’s triumph in establishing her first school on her own terms.
In later decades Montessori was feted by the early Mussolini Fascist government and her teaching methods were fostered for a period, until her anti-war attitudes caused friction.
In 1931, when Mussolini demanded that Montessori-trained teachers had to make the Fascist loyalty oath, Montessori fled to the Netherlands.
She escaped the German World War II occupation there by the skin of her teeth, leaving for India in 1939, where she was interned by the British.
Maria Montessori is a valuable introduction to the early life of a great feminist and reflection on the fractured society that she challenged.
A sequel showing the drama of her later life would be a worthy addition.
Maria Montessori: La Nouvelle Femme
St Ali Italian Film Festival
Luna Leederville, Palace Raine
Square, Luna Windsor, Luna SX
Screenings this weekend
Tix: italianfilmfestival.com.au
by BARRY HEALY
Perth Voice Interactive 
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