#17
Post
by Dylan » Tue Feb 08, 2005 4:06 am
Just received this today, and I watched it this evening. This Italian murder mystery is a beautiful debut feature for Bertolucci. A little rough around the edges (the first two vignettes in particular) but it achieves brilliance in many areas.
The quiet vignette on the lonely soldier scouring for women on the street is slow and haunting, and for me very much echoed Antonioni. What you're doing here is following this soldier around this town for a little while. Not so much happens to him, but it's the observation that is brilliant. He's passing through town, and he is very much in need of a woman to keep him company, it's both humorous and solemn to watch him quietly talk to almost a dozen women before ending up in that tunnel (what an amazing shot, how the camera back tracks to reveal so many people surrounding him in the deep, silhouetting vastness), and ultimately asleep on a park bench at night. I also recognized that actor, Allen Midgette, from other Bertolucci films.
My favorite vignette was definitely the one with the two teenage boys (Francolicchio and Pepito). It's beautiful how we follow the two of them through their park encounter with the two girls (eating jelly sandwiches), to laying on the pass overlooking the entire town (singing that popular Italian song), and ultimately back at the apartment where the two girls briefly dance together. It made a great prelude to the interlocking scene in the park where the two boys steal that guy's jacket. SPOILER ahead. Though this ending does end in the most Pasolinian of the vignettes. Francolicchio is seen swimming away, not wanting to get caught from the police, while Pepito is seen beautiful mourning that he cannot swim, and suddenly, Francolicchio disappears for about five seconds under the water, and we cut back to Pepito...I'm assuming Francolicchio didn't drown, but we're never told.
While there is an ample Pasolinian feel throughout (as well as that of Italian neorealism, Rossellini, and Antonioni), the final dance scene is a fantastic establishment of the style Bertolucci came to be known for. The pacing, the cutting back to the guy searching the dancers, the use of music, the wonderful dancing (the dancing, with the couples continually passing in front of the camera with their arms around each other, echoed the slow dance scene in Visconti's "White Nights"), and the eventual capture of the murderer. Very nice! Composer Piero Piccioni provides a low key score with some fine dance pieces. All in all, a fabulous debut for Bertolucci.
Oh, and a great interview as well. Very much enhances one's appreciation for this film, and what Bertolucci's intentions were with it at such a young age.
Dylan
