I first saw this egregiously brilliant film by an egregiously talented young director at a private screening for members of the American Federation of Film Societies at the 34th Street East Theatre in Manhattan in 1965. I was overwhelmed by so many things in it and longed to see it again. When it opened commercially I kept going back to see it in the way fans of "Star Wars" go repeatedly to see what they love. I love it, though it often makes me as nervous and unsettled as the character of Gina in the film each time I re-see it on video.
The movie is very loosely based on Stendhal's "The Charterhouse of Parma." Parma is where the film is set, where Bertolucci is from, in the region of Giuseppe Verdi, whose music is heard in the film. At its core is a rather uncomplicated story of a young idealist, Fabrizio, who realizes his ideas will probably never be realized. He is adored by his neurotic and probably nymphomaniac aunt Gina, sent to Parma to visit family by her psychiatrist in Milan, where she lives...to have her "get away" for a while. Adriana Asti gives a dynamic performance that steals the movie from everyone else, especially from Fabrizio, who seems a boring dullard throughout, probably Bertolucci's intention, though played convincingly by Franco Barilli.
The lyric elements of the movie and its persistent aural/visual poetry are what struck me the most. There is a scene at the start of the movie when Fabrizio finds out his friend has committed suicide through drowning. Fabrizio stands at the swim-hole area by some pylons and and watches in dazed iciness as a group of young boys in bathing suits make their way out of the water. Camera dissolves are accompanied by rapturous music of Ennio Morricone (one of his best scores and never issued on disc, as far as I know.) Fabrizio asks a young boy "Does it seem right to you?"...as if a pubescent kid could answer questions about life's tragedies. On every level I find that scene and those moments stunning.
Many point justly to great set pieces in the movie, such as the one with the aging land-owner Puck, now on hard times, who is about to lose his heavily mortgaged estates. He begins a lament for the past (the true theme of the movie!), and just when you think he's said enough for us to understand, the scene lurches into a sudden leap, expanding and becoming utterly mad and grandiose, even haywire, as the lament continues and the camera swoops over the soon-to-be-lost-lands in a helicopter shot and as Morricone provides an operatic counterpoint and propels us all into some unspeakable dimension of regretful melancholia.
Operatic the movie is, stylistically, and in a fabulous scene at the Parma Opera, quite literally. At the opening night of Verdi's "Macbeth" the various strata of Parmesan society are seen at their levels in the theatre, the bourgeoisie at the orchestra level, the aristocrats in posh side boxes, even the communist party members clustered closely in their own upper "people's box." The scene suggests the La Fenice opera scene in Visconti's "Senso." So much in the film is an homage to other directors, Godard, Rossellini, Hawks, all of whom are referred to specifically, occasionally by his film buff friend. Fabrizio's closest friend and role model is the gentle leftist teacher Cesare.
By the end of the film, Gina goes back to Milan, Fabrizio loses faith in the party and marries his dull but well-positioned childhood sweetheart, Clelia. No revolution for Fabrizio. He is, with his "nostalgia for the present" condemned to live "before the revolution" as most of us are who have no appetite for revolution, only for living.
The final scene has Fabrizio marrying Clelia. It is hard to believe that Bertolucci could top what has preceded it in the movie, but he does, I think. In it the brief marriage scene is inter-cut with Cesare reading to his young pupils from the "Moby Dick" story of Captain Ahab in pursuit of the while whale. As Ahab pursued the impossible, the characters of this film pursue the impossible. Gina is at the wedding, wrenched, jealous, crying. In a series of moments which Andrew Sarris referred to as "electrifying," Gina repeatedly kisses the young adolescent brother of Fabrizio. Over and over. On the face. On the head. Her young nephew. She cannot stop. She is driven, by envy, by regret. She cries. The harpsichord-enriched musical moment of Morricone underscores the Euripidean hysterics. There is a freeze-frame. A film masterpiece ends.
The movie is very loosely based on Stendhal's "The Charterhouse of Parma." Parma is where the film is set, where Bertolucci is from, in the region of Giuseppe Verdi, whose music is heard in the film. At its core is a rather uncomplicated story of a young idealist, Fabrizio, who realizes his ideas will probably never be realized. He is adored by his neurotic and probably nymphomaniac aunt Gina, sent to Parma to visit family by her psychiatrist in Milan, where she lives...to have her "get away" for a while. Adriana Asti gives a dynamic performance that steals the movie from everyone else, especially from Fabrizio, who seems a boring dullard throughout, probably Bertolucci's intention, though played convincingly by Franco Barilli.
The lyric elements of the movie and its persistent aural/visual poetry are what struck me the most. There is a scene at the start of the movie when Fabrizio finds out his friend has committed suicide through drowning. Fabrizio stands at the swim-hole area by some pylons and and watches in dazed iciness as a group of young boys in bathing suits make their way out of the water. Camera dissolves are accompanied by rapturous music of Ennio Morricone (one of his best scores and never issued on disc, as far as I know.) Fabrizio asks a young boy "Does it seem right to you?"...as if a pubescent kid could answer questions about life's tragedies. On every level I find that scene and those moments stunning.
Many point justly to great set pieces in the movie, such as the one with the aging land-owner Puck, now on hard times, who is about to lose his heavily mortgaged estates. He begins a lament for the past (the true theme of the movie!), and just when you think he's said enough for us to understand, the scene lurches into a sudden leap, expanding and becoming utterly mad and grandiose, even haywire, as the lament continues and the camera swoops over the soon-to-be-lost-lands in a helicopter shot and as Morricone provides an operatic counterpoint and propels us all into some unspeakable dimension of regretful melancholia.
Operatic the movie is, stylistically, and in a fabulous scene at the Parma Opera, quite literally. At the opening night of Verdi's "Macbeth" the various strata of Parmesan society are seen at their levels in the theatre, the bourgeoisie at the orchestra level, the aristocrats in posh side boxes, even the communist party members clustered closely in their own upper "people's box." The scene suggests the La Fenice opera scene in Visconti's "Senso." So much in the film is an homage to other directors, Godard, Rossellini, Hawks, all of whom are referred to specifically, occasionally by his film buff friend. Fabrizio's closest friend and role model is the gentle leftist teacher Cesare.
By the end of the film, Gina goes back to Milan, Fabrizio loses faith in the party and marries his dull but well-positioned childhood sweetheart, Clelia. No revolution for Fabrizio. He is, with his "nostalgia for the present" condemned to live "before the revolution" as most of us are who have no appetite for revolution, only for living.
The final scene has Fabrizio marrying Clelia. It is hard to believe that Bertolucci could top what has preceded it in the movie, but he does, I think. In it the brief marriage scene is inter-cut with Cesare reading to his young pupils from the "Moby Dick" story of Captain Ahab in pursuit of the while whale. As Ahab pursued the impossible, the characters of this film pursue the impossible. Gina is at the wedding, wrenched, jealous, crying. In a series of moments which Andrew Sarris referred to as "electrifying," Gina repeatedly kisses the young adolescent brother of Fabrizio. Over and over. On the face. On the head. Her young nephew. She cannot stop. She is driven, by envy, by regret. She cries. The harpsichord-enriched musical moment of Morricone underscores the Euripidean hysterics. There is a freeze-frame. A film masterpiece ends.