In Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango In Paris, which was the director's most prurient film while simultaneously being his most successful, the film posits the implausibility of permanence in human sexual relationships to the bleakest possible degree, but it is hard to refute its power, provided by a formidable Marlon Brando in a chiefly improvised central performance in concert with Maria Schneider's smoldering sensuality.
Bertolucci's subsequent film, 1900 was a sight more ambitious, it was his lengthiest and at the time, costliest Italian film produced, had an alternative and in my opinion superior title, Novecento, which in Italian also means the twentieth-century. The director was determinant to cover every nook and cranny of the entire century in the film's philosophic if not chronological span. Its mission was to be a film that would both intellectualize and simplify the art of politics as a means of universal understanding because it is couched in familiar story-telling terms. Its sweep is undeniable, the majesty of individual sequences catch the breath, yet somehow the whole does not make up the sum of its parts and sadly falls short of Bertolucci's intentions.
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| Last tinnitus in Paris |
1979's La Luna, seemed to many, all but a hollow and operatic study of modern malcontents, hosting arresting cinematography and beautifully filmed, it was still obfuscated by psycho-drama and the controversy of its oedipal overtones, the transgressive centerpiece of the film still very much paled in comparison with the furor that was created by Last Tango In Paris
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| Taking mama's boy to all new heights. |
Bertolucci returned to political themes with La tragedia di un ridiculo (1981) which focused on the kidnapping of an affluent man's son. A mystery with no resolve and a study of terrorism that neither explained nor condemned this phenomenon, it was ill-received to say the least, domestically, but Italy was certainly no stranger to terrorism on the extreme Left or Right that itself would invoke such an unresolved anxiety.
Bertolucci's central dilemma seemed to be his once wish to be a Marxist filmmaker but was unfortunately in an impasse with an industry whose only belief was unadulterated box office success.