Operatic Operators

Cinema, like the other arts, fosters overblown reputations, but, being both high and popular art, can puff up from both above and below—nowhere else, then, can one become so entirely overrated. Exemplary, in this respect, is the career of Bernardo Bertolucci. The son of a Parmesan poet and film critic, Bertolucci shot his second short subject at age 16 in 1957: a 15-minute silent film about pig slaughtering. Gratuitous violence was to become one of his hallmarks; the other, a lyricizing effeteness. In 1961 he became an assistant director to the late Pier Paolo Pasolini, distinguished for pretentious films blending Catholicism, Communism, and pederasty. In 1962 Bertolucci won the Viareggio Prize for his volume of poetry, In Search of Mystery, and brought out his first feature film, from a story by Pasolini. This was La comare secca (The Grim Reaper), an attitudinizing piece of claptrap about dark doings in the Borghese Gardens after dark, involving generous dollops of prostitution, sadomasochism, and homosexuality.

Bertolucci’s filmography proceeded along lines that soon added pretentiousness to unmotivated brutality and enervated aestheticism. He made movies loosely based on prestigious literary works: Before the Revolution, a narcissistic and sophomoric version of The Charterhouse of Parma; Partner, an obscurantist travesty of Dostoyevsky’s The Double; The Spider’s Stratagem, a similar distortion of a short-short story by Borges, who, as he told me, was never informed of this adaptation. The Conformist stuck closer to Moravia’s novel—unfortunately; it did, however, underscore the homosexual motif, and add some gratuitous bits of surrealism. As is fashionable among Italy’s pseudointellectuals, Bertolucci has veered more and more to the Left; his brother and frequent collaborator, Giuseppe, has made a cinematic tribute to the head of Italy’s CP entitled Berlinguer, I Love You.

JS

About the Author

John Simon

Featured Tags

Cinema, like the other arts, fosters overblown reputations, but, being both high and popular art, can puff up from both above and below—nowhere else, then, can one become so entirely overrated. Exemplary, in this respect, is the career of Bernardo Bertolucci. The son of a Parmesan poet and film critic, Bertolucci shot his second short subject at age 16 in 1957: a 15-minute silent film about pig slaughtering. Gratuitous violence was to become one of his hallmarks; the other, a lyricizing effeteness. In 1961 he became an assistant director to the late Pier Paolo Pasolini, distinguished for pretentious films blending Catholicism, Communism, and pederasty. In 1962 Bertolucci won the Viareggio Prize for his volume of poetry, In Search of Mystery, and brought out his first feature film, from a story by Pasolini. This was La comare secca (The Grim Reaper), an attitudinizing piece of claptrap about dark doings in the Borghese Gardens after dark, involving generous dollops of prostitution, sadomasochism, and homosexuality.

Bertolucci’s filmography proceeded along lines that soon added pretentiousness to unmotivated brutality and enervated aestheticism. He made movies loosely based on prestigious literary works: Before the Revolution, a narcissistic and sophomoric version of The Charterhouse of Parma; Partner, an obscurantist travesty of Dostoyevsky’s The Double; The Spider’s Stratagem, a similar distortion of a short-short story by Borges, who, as he told me, was never informed of this adaptation. The Conformist stuck closer to Moravia’s novel—unfortunately; it did, however, underscore the homosexual motif, and add some gratuitous bits of surrealism. As is fashionable among Italy’s pseudointellectuals, Bertolucci has veered more and more to the Left; his brother and frequent collaborator, Giuseppe, has made a cinematic tribute to the head of Italy’s CP entitled Berlinguer, I Love You.