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To illuminate paternal heroism is to debunk it, that's the Freudian thesis, "il classico mistero." The rural hamlet has De Chirico's mysterious slanting light, the young visitor (Giulio Brogi) goes one way and the panning camera goes another until they meet at the town square before the effigy honoring his father. (The marble bust is given painted eyes and, later, a scarlet ascot.) Papa was a valiant anti-fascist killed by brownshirts, Junior has the same name and face according to the father's mistress (Alida Valli), a barefoot insomniac. Aged crones by the cartload and crumbling buildings (including a roofless movie house with a peeling poster of Aldrich's The Last Sunset) abound in the village, where three lumpy comrades (Pippo Campanini, Franco Giovanelli and Tino Scotti) once planned to dynamite Mussolini during a performance of Rigoletto. (The fantasy is described in a darkened tent like a memory of The Man Who Knew Too Much, and sails right into Inglourious Basterds.) Visualizing three and a half pages of Borges, Bernardo Bertolucci perversely fills the blanks with more blanks, erecting his labyrinth on blackouts, abrupt cuts and temporal shifts. At the bottom of the murky investigation lurks the Noble Lie, a traitor envisioning his own martyrdom silhouetted against the community's skyline. The exhumed secret is swiftly reburied: "Ever open a drawer and smell where mice have nested?" Doubles and phantoms, revolt as feisty foxtrot and history as coup de théâtre. Suspended between past and present, people are forever on the verge of animalist arias, crowing like roosters or charging like goats while a German lion winds up on the banquet table. "All a façade." Bertolucci's companion piece to The Conformist, pointedly analytical and lushly abstruse, a discombobulated vision at the weed-covered railroad where trains no longer run on time. Cinematography by Vittorio Storaro.
--- Fernando F. Croce |