92: Before the Revolution (a.k.a. Prima della rivoluzione – Original Italian Title)

            The work of Bernardo Bertolucci is never particularly easy to digest, often difficult in both structure and content.  In a peculiar irony, his most acclaimed work is perhaps his most commercial film.  1987s The Last Emperor, which took home nine academy awards, including statues for Bertolucci’s writing and directing, might be, as a foreign language film, one of the least seen Best Picture winners of that or any decade.  The Italian auteur is probably best know, or at least most discussed, in stateside film circles for his direction of Last Tango in Paris (1972), the final X –rated film to ever garner serious Oscar attention, in which Marlon Brando lubes up ingénue Maria Schneider’s rear end with a stick of butter before having his way with her.

              Bertolucci rose to prominence with The Conformist (1970), and on the strength of that Italian-language political thriller his earlier Before the Revolution (1964) was given a major release in 1971.  Foreshadowing his 1970 film, Before the Revolution is a drama with political undertones that can be exceptionally difficult to follow.  Indeed, entire segments of the development of the primary relationship in the film seem to be missing.  Though not as directly as with The Conformist, we see here the political ideologies of an individual shape and contort his personal relations, without any specific interaction between the two facets.

            The young Fabrizio (Francesco Barilli) is distraught after the death, and possible suicide, of a close friend.  He finds comfort and excitement in forming a sexual relationship with his unhinged aunt, Gina (Adriana Asti), ten years his senior, who is visiting Parma for the Easter Holiday.  The film’s slow start gives way to several beautifully composed visual and musical interludes, that using minimal dialogue partially express the progression of Fabrizio and Gina’s affair.  Their attraction is torrid, but Gina’s actions often confuse and frustrate her lover/nephew.  As his involvement with the Parma communist movement increases, his jealousy within the relationship follows suit, nearly boiling over when Gina takes him to visit an old friend of hers, Puck.

            At Puck’s serine property the older man confesses that he is no longer able to pay his mortgage, and that the land will soon revert to collectors.  Bertolucci plays his own political cards rather close to the chest in this sequence, neither fully lamenting the loss of Italy’s feudal system nor totally supporting the communist land ideal.  Regardless of politics, the scene is stunning, expressing both the beauty of the Italian landscape and the sorrow of the failing land owner.

            After Gina departs from Parma, Fabrizio is engaged to a woman from a prominent family.  He sees his former lover only once more before the wedding, staring down at her in the audience from his fiancé’s private opera box during a performance of Macbeth.  The two meet in the lobby of the opera house for a brief moment, but have little time to discuss anything before the show ends.

            Bertolucci is in many ways the director that film snobs dream about; one who “doesn’t spell everything out for you.”  This is certainly true.  Before the Revolution moves slowly at first, and then gives way to a frenzied, almost fragmented visual collage of sequences that only feel loosely connected at times.  Visually, it is absolutely breathtaking, with Bertolucci filming his hometown in a soft black and white that expresses the love of cinema which I feel is absent from the work of Buñuel.  A minor character in a short scene here tries to discuss movies with Fabrizio, and I’m overcome with the feeling that he’s meant to represent the director.  Bertolucci was only 22 when he began shooting this picture, but his lifelong love of film is already on full display.

Language: Italian

Runtime: 115 Minutes

Available @ Youtube.com

Grade: 3 Hats Off