The Spider’s Strategem (1970)

          Having made a conscientious exploration of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970s films, I can say with confidence that I’m not impressed. More specifically, while I acknowledge that Bertolucci has a gorgeous visual style and a unique gift for capturing the sensual reality of moments, I find his storytelling consistently murky and pretentious. And even though The Spider’s Strategem lacks some of his usual distracting fetishism (i.e., erotic and scatological elements), the film epitomizes other shortcomings. Adapted from a short story about 1920s Ireland, the movie spins a complex and interesting yarn about the gulf between legacy and reality. As in the source material, a son returns to the town where his revered father was murdered, only to discover that the lore surrounding his father’s heroic demise is largely fabricated, thereby forcing the son to decide whether it’s best to reveal the facts or to leave his father’s inspirational myth intact. There’s enough thematic heft in that premise to support an entire movie, and, indeed, the narrative has shades of John Ford’s classic Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

          Yet this wasn’t enough for Bertolucci. He transposed the plot to contemporary Italy, morphing the dead father into a famous anti-fascist activist. Fair enough. But then Bertolucci took a further step by integrating a trope of surrealism. Throughout The Spider’s Strategem, the protagonist has weird experiences leading him to question whether he’s dreaming or suffering at the hands of perverse conspirators. As a result, the movie starts and ends with clarity, but the middle of the film is confounding and shapeless. Bertolucci plays silly games like having the same actor play the son and the father, often having both characters appear during the same scene, ostensibly to reflect the protagonist’s tormented state of mind while he wrangles the mysteries of the past. All of this is hugely ambitious, and yet The Spider’s Strategem runs just 100 minutes, making it the shortest of Bertolucci’s major ’70s films. On one level, Bertolucci tried to accomplish too much, changing a linear narrative into something dreamlike and fractured, and on another level, he didn’t try to accomplish enough, because The Spider’s Strategem doesn’t have the epic sprawl that would have been necessary to effectively convey so many different layers of meaning.

          Worse, the picture is infused with heavy symbolism that only the most devoted viewers will bother parsing, as well as tiresome speeches about the nature of fascism. It’s not as if the film is impenetrable, but it’s needlessly dense and elusive. Presented without arthouse affectations, The Spider’s Strategem could have been the equivalent of a great Hitchcock thriller, conveying powerful notions about deception, family obligations, and political machinations. As is, viewers must peer through fog to find those themes. That said, The Spider’s Strategem is greatly elevated—as are all of Bertolucci’s major ’70s films—by the extraordinary cinematography of Vittorio Storaro. Employing his signature touches of subtle Rembrant lighting and balletic camera moves, Storaro makes even the most arbitrary and indulgent of Bertolucci’s images seem considered and purposeful.

The Spider’s Strategem: FUNKY

1900 (1976)

         While much has been written about American auteurs of the ’70s derailing their careers with overly indulgent projects, the phenomenon was not exclusive to the United States. After notching a major international hit with the controversial Last Tango in Paris (1972), Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci created 1900, a five-hour epic tracking the course of Italian politics from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of World War II. The movie has all the heaviosity and scale it needs, and Bertolucci’s central contrivance—following an aristocrat and a peasant who were born in the same location on the same day—gives the sprawling narrative a pleasing shape. The film’s images are lustrous, with regular Bertolucci collaborator Vittorio Storaro applying his signature elegant compositions and painterly lighting, and the film’s music is vibrant, thanks to the contributions of storied composer Ennio Morricone. Beyond that, however, 1900 is frustrating.

          The presence of American, Canadian, and French stars in leading roles diminishes the authenticity of the piece; a subplot about a sociopath becoming a sadistic Axis agent leads to laughably excessive passages of gore and violence; and Bertolucci indulges his sensuous aspect to such an extreme that he comes off like a fetishist obsessed with, of all things, excrement and penises. The movie has too much of everything, eventually devolving into a lumbering procession of strange scenes expressing a trite political message about poor people having morals and rich people being assholes.

          The first stretch of the picture, essentially a lengthy prologue, introduces the grandfathers of the protagonists. Alfredo Berlinghieri the Elder (Burt Lancaster) is the benevolent padrone of an estate, and Leo Dalcò (Sterling Hayden) is a peasant in his employ. Both welcome grandsons on the same day in 1900. The children grow up to be close friends, despite one enjoying privilege and the other doing without. Later the boys become young men. Alfredo (Robert De Niro) has learned from both his humanistic grandfather and his scheming father, so he enjoys crossing class lines while also treasuring power and wealth. Olmo (Gérard Depardieu) is a political firebrand, resentful of the ruling class no matter what face it wears.

          As life pushes the childhood friends apart, they watch Italy split along similar lines, with aristocrats forming the backbone of the Fascist movement while laborers suffer. Personifying the rise of the Fascists is Atilla Mellanchini (Donald Sutherland), whom we first meet as an enforcer helping Alfredo’s father maintain discipline on the estate. Naturally, the movie has a love story, revolving around Alfredo’s relationship with the unhinged Ada Chiostri Polan (Dominique Sanda). After many twists and turns, the story transforms into a politicized morality play as vengeful workers reclaim power from the Fascists.

          Bertolucci and his collaborators present some meaningful insights about important historical events, so the film is strongest when it sticks to polemics. Matters of love, lust, and madness are handled less gracefully. The most extreme scenes involve Atilla performing grotesque acts of violence. Rather than shocking the viewer, these sequences render Atilla so inhuman as to be one-dimensional, which stacks the political deck unfairly. Bertolucci is just as undisciplined with bedroom scenes. It’s quite startling, for instance, to see an actress playing an epileptic hooker manually pleasuring De Niro and Depardieu in full view of the camera. Wouldn’t suggesting the action have communicated the same narrative information? Similarly, do viewers need to see the actors playing the younger versions of the leads examining each other’s genitals? And what’s with the scene of Lancaster stalking a young girl into a barn, asking her to milk a cow because it turns him on, rhapsodizing about life while squishing his feet up and down in pile of feces, and then forcing the poor girl to slide her hand into his pants?

          It’s tempting to believe there’s a clue about the source of the film’s excess during an elaborate wedding scene, because a character presents the gift of a white horse named “Cocaine.” After all, doing too much blow was the creative downfall of many a Hollywood director.

          Whatever the reason, Bertolucci lost control over 1900 as a literary statement fairly early in the movie’s running time. Perhaps no single moment captures the ugly bloat of 1900 better than the harshest Atilla scene. After Atillia rapes a young boy, Bertolucci shows Atilia killing the child, lest a potential witness to his crimes survive. Fair enough. But instead of simply shooting the child, Atilla picks up the boy by his feet, spins him around the room, and repeatedly smashes the boy’s head against a wall until it cracks open like a watermelon. In the twisted aesthetic of Bertolucci’s 19oo, too much is never enough.

1900: FUNKY

The Conformist (1970)

          Every so often, a movie defeats me. In some cases, I’m unable to parse the mysteries of a film because the project is so obtuse that it exists outside anything I recognize as reality. (Here’s looking at you, Performance.) In other cases, however, I’m simply not sophisticated enough to receive the message the picture is sending. And so it goes with Bernardo Bertolucci’s political thriller The Conformist. On a textural level, I can say without hesitation that the film is exquisite. Working with frequent collaborator Vittorio Storaro, one of the true magicians of color cinematography, Bertolucci creates one memorable image after another. Using angles, color, framing, movement, production design, and special relationships with masterful precision, the filmmakers present 1930s and 1940s Europe as a living metaphor representing the spread of fascism.

          As the title character moves through his life before and during World War II, he tries to find a niche for himself inside the sleek surfaces of “normal” society, little suspecting that in the process of shaving off his “abnormal” edges, he is sacrificing his soul. Or something like that. You see, the problem is that I felt totally confused within the first five minutes of The Conformist, and never found any true connection with the movie beyond appreciating its beauty on a purely aesthetic level. Apparently, it takes a better man than me to decipher lines of dialogue like the following: “Yes, they would mistake for reality the shadow of reality.” Non capisco, il mio amico.

          Therefore, you might ask, why have I rated The Conformist highly, given my inability to penetrate its storyline? Well, in deference to the film’s reputation and to the unmistakable craftsmanship with which it was made, I’m comfortable heaping praise on what the movie might be—in other words, if The Conformist is half as dense and provocative and symbolic as I suspect, then it’s certainly among the most accomplished and challenging films of its era. Call it benefit of the doubt.

          Based on outside research more than pulling clues from the actual movie, I gather the storyline follows Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a social striver enlisted by a secretive organization to perform an assassination. On his way to the murder, Marcello flashes back through his life, recalling events that brought him to the current circumstances. He recalls a childhood encounter in which he was molested by an adult whom he then shot. He recalls the opportunistic nature of his marriage to a socially well-positioned woman. He recalls his friendship with a blind political activist. He recalls an affair with a married woman (played by the glamorous Dominique Sanda). And in one moment that I actually did understand while watching The Conformist, Marcello tries to confess his sins to a priest—as a condition of marriage—only to discover that the priest is more upset about Marcello having been with a man than about Marcello having committed murder. That particular scene, so chilly and incisive and sad, emboldens me to suggest that The Conformist contains worlds of meaning I was not able to grasp. Or maybe not. If nothing else, The Conformist is the world’s best cinematographer’s reel, because Storaro renders visual miracles during nearly every shot.

The Conformist: GROOVY

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

          Few ’70s films have provoked as much discussion as Last Tango in Paris, for myriad reasons. The movie’s filled with rough sex, leading man Marlon Brando’s performance has been described as everything from juvenile silliness to Method-driven genius, and the opaque storytelling leaves all sorts of room for interpretation. Plus, thanks to the sophisticated images created by director/co-writer Bernardo Bertolucci and master cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, Last Tango in Paris looks like art of the highest order—so it’s hard to reconcile the film’s elegant sheen with its exploitive nature. Because, make no mistake, Last Tango in Paris exploits leading lady Maria Schneider to an absurd degree. Although Brando never flashes more than a brief glimpse of his derriere, Schneider reveals every inch of her body, often performing scenes wearing nothing but a scarf. On a deeper level, she exposes cringe-inducing vulnerability, especially in the notorious scene of Brando’s character sodomizing Schneider’s character.
          And just as Schneider portrays a sexual plaything, it seems she was a pawn in Bertolucci’s and Brando’s macho mind games. The stench of male ego is everywhere in Last Tango.
          Set in modern-day France, the picture begins with fortysomething American Paul (Brando) screaming in the streets, obviously lost in some sort of private grief. Then pretty young Frenchwoman Jeanne (Schneider) walks by him and continues on her way. Moments later, they both end up examining a vacant apartment. As they haggle over who’s entitled to rent the place, an attraction develops between them, and they have intense sex within moments of meeting each other. Paul then proposes an arrangement—he and Jeanne shall meet in the apartment regularly for trysts, but they won’t share any personal information with each other. As this unusual relationship develops, the movie shows the lovers in their private lives. Paul is a hotel owner whose unfaithful wife just committed suicide, and Jeanne is a confused youth on the verge of marrying a narcissistic filmmaker.
          Paul’s existential crisis is clear, but the reason Jeanne agrees to the illicit relationship is never explained in a satisfactory fashion. That is until one reads about the making of the film, and discovers that the storyline grew out of Bertolucci’s sexual fantasies. Since the film shows Paul tormenting his lover by violating her in painful physical ways and by demanding that she do the same to him—to say nothing of calling her demeaning names and flailing a dead rat in front of her face—Bertolucci’s fantasy life seems a horrific place, or at the very least a realm highly unfriendly to women.
          In fact, were it not for the scenes of Jeanne in her private life, Schneider’s character would come across as little more than a bag of flesh that Brando’s character periodically fucks. That’s because Brando’s performance seethes with egotism. Yes, Paul’s in agony because of betrayal and loss, but he inflicts his pain on everyone in his path, as if he’s the only person who’s ever been hurt by life. Thus, unsuspecting Frenchmen and Frenchwomen are subjected to his tantrums and whining, and viewers of Last Tango in Paris are subjected to nonsense dialogue that reportedly arose from a combination of improvisation and scripting. At one point, Paul advises Jeanne to “go right up in the ass of death to find the womb of fear.” One suspects this stuff meant a lot to Brando (and Bertolucci) while they were in the crucible of artistic creation, but seen from a more rational perspective, certain behavior and dialogue comes off as dross.
          Still, because of the fundamental tension between its cinematic beauty and its narrative ugliness, Last Tango in Paris is a unique statement. And for some, obviously, it’s a powerful one—among other accolades, the movie earned two Oscar nominations, for Bertolucci (Best Direct0r) and Brando (Best Actor). Therefore, it’s impossible to arrive at a full understanding of what ’70s cinema means without investigating the mysteries of this startling picture, which bore an X-rating during its original release. Just beware: You’ll never look at butter the same way again.

Last Tango in Paris: FREAKY

Luna (1979)

          Jill Clayburgh made intriguing choices during her brief run as a box-office attraction, bouncing between commercial fare like Silver Streak (1976) and arty projects like Luna, a provocative drama from Italian auteur Bernardo Bertolucci. It took nerve on Clayburgh’s part to play Caterina, an American opera star who embarks on an incestuous relationship with her heroin-addicted teenaged son, Joe (Matthew Berry), while the duo recovers from the sudden death of Caterina’s husband, Douglas (Fred Gwynne). Clayburgh commits to the role without any reservation, putting all of her considerable dramatic resources into every scene, whether she’s mimicking the grandiose performance style of an opera diva or getting handsy with her onscreen son.
          If only the material was as vibrant as Clayburgh’s performance.

          Co-written by Bertolucci, the story is meandering and pretentious, unfurling across a nearly interminable 140 minutes. Bertolucci’s camera probes every trivial nuance of character interaction, so many scenes feature pointless shots swishing around actors as they contemplate whether to step forward or simply stand in place with angsty expressions on their faces. The movie also includes long visual sequences that add nothing to the story, like montages of characters wandering aimlessly through picturesque Italian neighborhoods. Some of these random visuals have flesh-and-blood intensity simply because the cinematography by frequent Bertolucci collaborator Vittorio Storaro is so magnificent; he creates a palpable sense of heat and texture in almost every frame, lending gravitas to scenes whose actual content is of no real interest.

          The large supporting cast of European actors (including, very briefly, a young Roberto Benigni) gets overshadowed because the picture is obsessively focused on mother and son. Although newcomer Berry is naturalistic as Clayburgh’s petulant offspring/paramour, he is incapable of making his character’s absurd mood swings believable, so his weak performance is yet another one of the picture’s fatal flaws.

          As for the picture’s most lurid aspect, even though Bertolucci eases viewers into the incest material (the duo doesn’t get physical till halfway through the movie), the plot development feels ridiculous because the opera singer’s choices are incomprehensible: Instead of seeking treatment for her addict son, she provides heroin and comforts him with her body. So rather than being daring and memorable, Luna comes across as unfocused, forgettable, and more than a little distasteful.

Luna: LAME