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Film: The Grim Reaper
Year of production: 1962
UK Release date: 25th April 2011
Distributor: Mr. Bongo
Certificate: 15
Running time: 88 mins
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Francesco Ruiu, Giancarlo De Rosa, Vincenzo Ciccora, Alfredo Leggi, Gabriella Giorgelli
Genre: Drama/Mystery
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Italy
Language: Italian
Marlon Brando; Henry Fonda; Sergio Leone. China, Hollywood and, of course, Italy. Bernardo Bertolucci has certainly settled into the film industry with fluid ease, and with titles like Once Upon A Time In The West and Last Tango In Paris to his name it’s no wonder that he has survived four decades in the business. But mighty oaks grow from humble acorns and The Grim Reaper is that very acorn.
Based on a story by Italian artisan Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bertolucci’s writing and directorial debut is a straight forward whodunit. Made during his salad years, the 22-year-old filmmaker stuck to what he knew: the youth of Rome during the swinging ‘60s. The criminal youth of Rome during the swinging ‘60s, that is.
Bertolucci wastes no time getting the facts straight and introducing the murder mystery, getting the plot underway before the credits even make the screen. Led by a faceless officer, an investigation is triggered by the discovery of a prostitute’s body near Tiber River, placing a number of suspects in the spotlight.
Each candidate attempts to clear his name by giving an account of his afternoon’s activities on that fateful previous day. Ranging from whiney, good for nothing teens to renowned offenders, to naïve friends pursuing nothing but romance and a family of their own, a plethora of characters take to the stage. They each make their case, dividing the film into multiple mini sagas that break the film into bite size chunks: the one thing that unites them all is, of course, their presence at the crime scene - and their distinct ‘approach’ to women...
Plot, surprisingly, is mercifully unfussy and quickly established: commendably, time management seems to be one of Bertolucci’s strong points. Exactly why he adopts this tactic, though, is anyone’s guess. To put it bluntly, interest, excitement and engagement don’t exactly fight for the viewer’s attention in Berotlucci and Pasolini’s slow script. What began as a pleasing time saver results in a drawn out, uninspiring investigation that is largely unchallenging and lacklustre. Having made such an efficient job on the narrative, viewers might expect a little more substance from the duo.
In such circumstances, the audience may turn to the characters for a little stimulation and The Grim Reaper surely delivers a wide choice. The problem is that’s all it delivers. Depth and development; insight and expansion - these are all sadly nonentities and, in short, quality has been sacrificed for quantity. No doubt the story would not work without such a range, but viewing doesn’t work because of it. There are too many characters fragmenting the film’s structure, robbing each individual of the time accumulated from plot simplicity - valuable time which could have allowed growth and engagement. Nevertheless, each man is credibly given their own personality, albeit brief and slightly rushed, with a dependence on old ideas. The shifty convict, the innocent youngsters, the solitary soldier, the trouble-maker: if not convincing, they are, at least, identifiable. After all, such a courageously plentiful cast would be demanding of the most experienced of directors, so perhaps viewers may be sympathetic to Bertolucci’s bold move.
The absence of a protagonist, then, is forgivable. Maybe viewers should look a little deeper for value: what is Bertolucci trying to say? Themes, implications, innovative statements - they must be hidden in there somewhere. Alas, if they are, they are hidden well, dominated by the easy story. The collaborative script leaves little to the imagination, although it must be admitted that this is a refreshing change in alternative cinema and makes for accessible viewing. In fact, one might think that this lends itself to a broad reception, open to the mainstream audiences that the director has since gone on to impress. This is not the case. What it offers audiences is so sparse that most viewers - stirred perhaps by Bertolucci’s blockbusters to dig a little deeper into his back catalogue - are likely to be left unfulfilled. Curiosity may be stoked in terms of research, but for its own merit, The Grim Reaper is nothing more than a dull, overwhelmingly mediocre detective story.
Ultimately, for all its minimalism, Bertolucci’s debut may best have been left to its literature roots. Undeniably, this mere acorn is a more than admirable first effort and there are many aspiring directors out there who could learn a lot from it before planting their very own budding oak; in fact, there are many more experienced directors who could learn from it, too. It’s just a shame that Bertolucci’s talents were not based on something more provoking. As it is, with no hero to relate to, no plot to be pondered and no meaning to be uncovered, it is difficult to care just who did do it. RS
Before the Revolution won the Young Critics’ Prize at the Cannes Film Festival (1964) and was, according to the New York Times, the ‘revelation’ of the New York Film Festival the same year. The Italians hated it, but post-Cannes the French critics hailed it as a homage to the school of Cahiers, whereupon the Italian poet-turned-filmmaker Bertolucci found himself adopted by the French New Wave. Loosely based on Stendhal’s ‘The Charterhouse of Parma’, Before the Revolution is also partly autobiographical, and indeed Bertolucci spent much of his youth living in Parma where the film is based. The title derives from a remark made by the 18th century French diplomat Talleyrand: “He who did not live in the years before the revolution cannot understand what the sweetness of living is.”
Before The Revolution centres on the emotional and political conflicts within a young man, Fabrizio (Francesco Barilli), who is contemplating joining the Communist Party. But his personal life is even more unresolved as he breaks away from his planned marriage to Clelia (Cristina Pariset), a perfect bourgeoise, and begins an affair with Gina (Adriana Asti), his neurotic aunt who is visiting from Milan. Bertolucci’s obsession with politics and cinema is openly expressed through this alter-ego and in the extraordinary freedom of his camerawork and editing.
In making Before The Revolution, Bertolucci assembled a remarkable wealth of young Italian talent: cinematographer Aldo Scarvarda, who had shot Antonioni’s L’Avventura in 1960, actress Adriana Asti, who had appeared in Pasolini’s first feature Accattone (on which Bertolucci was production assistant), and composers Ennio Morricone and Gino Paoli.
Film: Before The Revolution
Release date: 8th April 2011
Certificate: 12A
Running time: 112 mins
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Adriana Asti, Francesco Barilli, Domenico Aldi, Allen Midgette, Morando Morandini
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: BFI
Format: Cinema
Country: Italy
Film: The Dreamers
Release date: 11th October 2004
Certificate: 18
Running time: 110 mins
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, Eva Green, Robin Renucci, Anna Chancellor
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Format: DVD
Country: France/Italy/UK
This is an English-language release.
“I was one of the insatiables. The ones you'd always find sitting closest to the screen. Why do we sit so close? Maybe it was because we wanted to receive the images first.” (Michael Pitt as Matthew)
The Dreamers follows the relationship of three cinephiles – the French/English twins Theo and Isabelle, and an American student named Matthew – as they find their temple, the Cinémathèque Française, destroyed, and exile themselves into their parent-free apartment for a few weeks of insular hedonism, as the events of May 1968 rage around the Paris outside their windows…
The Dreamers was criticised on its release by those bemoaning Bernardo Bertolucci’s preoccupation with sex, cinema and teenage kicks, as opposed to the political events of May ’68, which they argued would have made for a more substantial film. But the point is that these four disparate concerns were what fused to the reaction of those radical times. After all, it was the complete lack of social activity for a young post-war generation that found the initial revolts kick off at the Nanterre university campus. In this sense, Bertolucci, working from a clever script by Gilbert Adair (adapted from his novel), captures the heart of the matter, beginning his movie with the closure of Henri Langlois’ film institute (a pivotal event in the protests), and then honing in on the sexual politics of this first generation born without memory of World War II - a generation inspired by the freedoms apparent in the US pop culture that paints their walls with posters, and their floors with the records of Janis, Hendrix and the Doors.
That most of the action takes place within this apartment built of Coca-Cola and cinema gives insight into the often forgotten – or revised – intentions of the initial youth revolt, where getting a handjob was as important as Mao’s red book (read ‘Power And Protest’ by J. Suri). And with the conclusion that finds the riots – literally – smashing through their window, the film ultimately offers a critique of the insular nature of the motivations that originally drove the rebellion – which was as much against adults and their traditions, as it was against capitalism. As Theo rants, all mock theatrical, about his parents, or parents in general: “They should all be arrested, put on trial, confess their crimes, sent to the country for self-criticism and re-education!”
The symbiotic relationship between Theo, Isabelle and Matthew, an experiment soon encroaching upon each of their comfort zones, recalls that of Jules et Jim (et Catherine), which finds betrayal and calculation cutting at a familial (if not incestuous) level. And amongst these subtle, or at least thematic, nods to the cinema of the New Wave, and the films that inspired them, Bertolucci intercuts the action with actual clips from the classic movies that had driven him as a filmmaker, and these three restless kids into increasingly outlandish play-games - re-creating scenes from their favourite flicks, we find the three beating the record run through the Louvre depicted in Godard’s Bande A Part, and consolidating their friendship with the chant from Freaks.
In a sense, it’s surprising that while Nicholas Ray is cited in the dialogue, Bertolucci didn’t outright cut to a scene from Rebel Without A Cause, considering the American kid at the centre of this story is a foreigner’s vision of West Coast boyhood torn out of a reel of film. Michael Pitt is as physical in his approach to the character of Matthew as James Dean was to Stark, though less in an outward writhing of angst but instead in his feline slinking, often from mattress to carpet, a voyeur in a house of open doors and unfurled bed covers.
A young, pre-Bond, Eva Green is as subtly intense as ever, at turns presenting Isabelle as a bonafide starlet – smoking cigarettes in a misty cinema, feigning a chaining to its front gates when we first meet her – at other times a seductress of prohibited deeds, and, ultimately, as a child lost in games she can no longer differentiate from reality. “I was acting, Matthew,” she says, the words unfolding languidly, exposing herself more at that moment than any amount of lingering offered by the camera over her naked body. Louis Garrel meanwhile presents Theo with the man-child beauty that has become something of his trademark, his outrageously good looks never subduing the violence of his acts. Theo is played with a remarkable knowingness that is concealed behind his every action.
And as implied by the beauty of the three leads, and the circumstances of the narrative, the film steams with the tantalising ambiguity of the relationship between the twins – whether they have actually ever engaged in sexual acts, beyond mutual masturbation, is left undisclosed – and the innocence of Matthew first corrupted, then corrupting. But to class this merely as eroticism would be a disservice. As argued earlier, the sexual urgency is as much a call of arms against the (then) established morality as a petrol bomb flung at a cop.
A confusion of sex, politics, cinema and youth; and each of these concerns has something to say about the other. Chances are you too will get a kick out of the hip rendering of film geeks as wild, sexual and young at heart. JGZ
