I spent most of yesterday watching these two Bertolucci films, very different except for in their left-wing political commitment.
Partner, made in 1968 and at the height of Bertolucci’s Godard fixation, is an extremely free adaptation of a Dostoyevksy story. A disaffected young man, Giacobbe, is contemplating suicide when he happens to encounter his exact double, also called Giacobbe, who saves him. There is some nice technique in getting the two Giacobbe’s to appear on screen at the same time and elsewhere, but otherwise the film seems somewhat hermetic, the kind of thing that doesn’t translate very well beyond its particular cultural and historical context in its references to Artaud, the Situationists, Vietnam and so on.
1900 / Novecento, released in 1976, came at the point when Bertolucci had rejected the Godardian excesses of Partner and, in particular, decided not to follow his former mentor in the direction of making political films politically – a decision that, by way of Last Tango in Paris, opened the doors to Hollywood production money. As such, it’s technique is far more conventional – or, if one followed the Godard line, hopelessly compromised ideologically, whatever political points the narrative might want to make. A five hour epic spanning the period from 1900 to 1945, it is the story of two representative individuals born on the same day, one the son of the padrone and the other from peasant stock, their friendships and relationships, all set against the backdrop of the rise and fall of fascism. Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu incarnate the adult characters, while Donald Sutherland is a somewhat cartoon fascist.
Ennio Morricone provides the music for both films, with the difference between them – 1900’s rich, romantic, sweeping themes having that unofficial national anthem quality, whereas Partner’s music is all cut-up, abruptly dropping in and out and including a delicious advertising jingle parody – perhaps emblematic of their overall approaches.
Other points of filone film interest include the casting of Pierre Clementi as Giacobbe, suggesting a line of descent / influence to The Designated Victim, and the presence of Tina Aumont, Alida Valli, Stefania Casini and Laura Betti among others, serving to indicate the crossover of acting talent between the A- and B- cinemas at this time.
Intriguingly Fulci also drew inspiration from Artaud when making City of the Living Dead and The Beyond; one would love to have known what judgements Artaud would have made as to the relative merits of Bertolucci's arthouse and Fulci's grindhouse applications of his theory...
Showing posts with label Bertolucci. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bertolucci. Show all posts
Thursday, 6 September 2007
Wednesday, 22 August 2007
La Commare secca / The Grim Reaper
This was Bertolucci’s debut feature, made when he was barely into his 20s from a scenario by Pier Paolo Pasolini, with whom he had worked as assistant on Accatone. It’s perhaps best summarised as a version of Rashomon set in the universe of Accatone, a deconstructive take on the crime film or detective story; hence its inclusion here in relation to the giallo.
Strong geometric arrangements
The discovery of the body
The film opens with the discovery of a prostitute’s body by the banks of the Tiber and proceeds, through the at times interlocking flashback accounts of five potential suspects / witnesses to the crime, to reveal what happened and whodunnit. In truth, however, this aspect is never really that important compared to the exploration of character, environment and their interaction, along with formal experimentation.
All roads lead to Rome, specifically a river-side park – the sleeping soldier in the foreground, the two youths and the prostitute in the background.
In particular we never actually see the detectives whose voices we intermittently hear within the interrogations, the film-makers instead letting the interviewees speak for themselves, in their own language, with minimal interruptions. The crucial point, of course, is the disjunctions and discrepancies that emerge between the spoken and visual accounts of the same scene, as the character’s monologue or dialogue suggests one thing and the mise-en-scene another, or those between different depictions of / perspective on the same scene.
The interrogation scenes are characterised by an expressionistic rather than neo-realistic mise-en-scene
Sometimes the two aesthetics are combined, however, as in this fragmented, mirrored composition
One consequence of this, however, is also that it’s more difficult to really empathise or identify with the characters to the same extent as in a more conventional narrative. While this doesn’t prevent one from enjoying or appreciating a film – after all, something similar could be said of Bava’s Blood and Black Lace or Bay of Blood and Questi’s Death Laid an Egg, for instance, the important thing is the different social positions of their respective protagonists. In Bava and Questi’s films, we are invited to look on with a detached, critical eye as supposedly civilised bourgeois men and women reveal their material baseness and spiritual bankruptcy. Here, however, we are presumably supposed to feel sympathy for the poor and disadvantaged types, but may find ourselves conflicted as when, for example, an evidently gay character attempts to pick up two youths, who in turn plan to rob him. Then again, part of Pasolini’s brilliance (like that of Hubert Selby Jr.) always lay in making us think about our own reactions to characters and worlds we would likely not want to visit in our real lives.
Shadows on the wall; the platonic myth of the cave is a theme that recurs in The Conformist, although perhaps via Moravia rather than Bertolucci himself.
At times the camera attains its own presence and consciousness, as when a tracking shot starts with the point of view of a character only to end with their inclusion within the same shot (this character being the one ultimately revealed as the murderer, thus possibly connoting their fragmented “self”), or the observation of two girls dancing back and forth left to right, moving in and out of the frame; “poetic” elements not surprising if we again consider the influence of Pasolini, but forging perhaps unexpected connections with more obviously generic gialli.
The dancing girls and the exploration of screen space – presently invisible does not mean absent
Fans of the filone cinema may also want to note that Jimmy the Phenomenal has a blink and you’ll miss him appearance in a café near the end, while Nico Fidenco is credited as the vocalist on one of the diegetic musical numbers.
Jimmy
La Commare secca is available on NTSC DVD as part of The Criterion Collection.
Strong geometric arrangements
The discovery of the body
The film opens with the discovery of a prostitute’s body by the banks of the Tiber and proceeds, through the at times interlocking flashback accounts of five potential suspects / witnesses to the crime, to reveal what happened and whodunnit. In truth, however, this aspect is never really that important compared to the exploration of character, environment and their interaction, along with formal experimentation.
All roads lead to Rome, specifically a river-side park – the sleeping soldier in the foreground, the two youths and the prostitute in the background.
In particular we never actually see the detectives whose voices we intermittently hear within the interrogations, the film-makers instead letting the interviewees speak for themselves, in their own language, with minimal interruptions. The crucial point, of course, is the disjunctions and discrepancies that emerge between the spoken and visual accounts of the same scene, as the character’s monologue or dialogue suggests one thing and the mise-en-scene another, or those between different depictions of / perspective on the same scene.
The interrogation scenes are characterised by an expressionistic rather than neo-realistic mise-en-scene
Sometimes the two aesthetics are combined, however, as in this fragmented, mirrored composition
One consequence of this, however, is also that it’s more difficult to really empathise or identify with the characters to the same extent as in a more conventional narrative. While this doesn’t prevent one from enjoying or appreciating a film – after all, something similar could be said of Bava’s Blood and Black Lace or Bay of Blood and Questi’s Death Laid an Egg, for instance, the important thing is the different social positions of their respective protagonists. In Bava and Questi’s films, we are invited to look on with a detached, critical eye as supposedly civilised bourgeois men and women reveal their material baseness and spiritual bankruptcy. Here, however, we are presumably supposed to feel sympathy for the poor and disadvantaged types, but may find ourselves conflicted as when, for example, an evidently gay character attempts to pick up two youths, who in turn plan to rob him. Then again, part of Pasolini’s brilliance (like that of Hubert Selby Jr.) always lay in making us think about our own reactions to characters and worlds we would likely not want to visit in our real lives.
Shadows on the wall; the platonic myth of the cave is a theme that recurs in The Conformist, although perhaps via Moravia rather than Bertolucci himself.
At times the camera attains its own presence and consciousness, as when a tracking shot starts with the point of view of a character only to end with their inclusion within the same shot (this character being the one ultimately revealed as the murderer, thus possibly connoting their fragmented “self”), or the observation of two girls dancing back and forth left to right, moving in and out of the frame; “poetic” elements not surprising if we again consider the influence of Pasolini, but forging perhaps unexpected connections with more obviously generic gialli.
The dancing girls and the exploration of screen space – presently invisible does not mean absent
Fans of the filone cinema may also want to note that Jimmy the Phenomenal has a blink and you’ll miss him appearance in a café near the end, while Nico Fidenco is credited as the vocalist on one of the diegetic musical numbers.
Jimmy
La Commare secca is available on NTSC DVD as part of The Criterion Collection.
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