1900 Movie Review

Novecento

Bernardo Bertolucci's impassioned, sprawling, operatic epic about two Italian families, one aristocratic, the other peasant. With enormous ambition, Bertolucci's attempts to portray nothing less than the changes brought about by the history of the 20th century, beginning with the trauma of World War I and culminating with the arrival of socialism and the corresponding death throes of fascism. Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu are the lifelong friends—born on the same day in 1901—who turn against each other as adults as a result of the class structure that controls their lives. The political and symbolic baggage that the film's cast must haul around eventually drains the picture of human drama, and we stare at the screen not really out of interest in the characters but amazed by the sheer bulk and physical spectacle that parades before us. Not the disaster some would claim, but exasperating nonetheless, mainly because one feels so many elements of greatness are here for the plucking—and yet, as Martin Balsam said in Psycho, “If it doesn't jell, it's not aspic. And this ain't jelling.” With Dominique Sanda, Burt Lancaster, Sterling Hayden, Alida Valli, and, as the fiendish, sadistic cat-murdering fascist Attila, Donald Sutherland. Despite the stellar cast, the real stars of 1900—the artists who try to supply the feeling that the script does not—are cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and composer Ennio Morricone. (Originally shown at Cannes in a five-hour version, it was shortened by an hour for American release and dubbed into English. The missing hour was put back for a 1991 reissue.)

NEXT STOP … The Leopard, Before the Rain, Underground

1976 (R) 255m/C FR IT GE Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Burt Lancaster, Donald Sutherland, Dominique Sanda, Sterling Hayden, Laura Betti, Francesca Bertini, Werner Bruhns, Stefania Sandrelli, Anna Henkel, Alida Valli; D: Bernardo Bertolucci; W: Giuseppe Bertolucci, Bernardo Bertolucci; C: Vittorio Storaro. VHS, LV PAR