1900: a warning against Popular Frontism ?

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Italian fascists: could only be fought by working class mobilisation not collaboration A recent showing of the film 1900 in Oxford gave our :reviewer Mary Ann Todd the opportunity to see and write about this important Bertolucci film.

Bertolucci's monumental film 1900 is a. two part film-his most ambitious project to date.

It relates an epic tale of two babies born on the same day in 1900-one Olmo-the son of a peasant and the other-Alfredo-the sone of the padrone (landowner).

1900 traces the development of their relationship together through childhood, the First World War, the rise of fascism, the Second World War and the following 'liberation' It is a monumental film in which, through narrative structure where the personal and epic are woven together, we see traumatic experiences of birth, death and revolution portrayed.

When Bertolucci wants to use the film to heighten an expression of class feeling he draws from Eisenstein's example of film structure being a number of şketches executed for maximum emotional impact.

Emotional Like the Odessa steps massacre in Battleship Potemkin, some scenes in 1900 provoke an immediate emotional response.

One example is the violent death of the peasant woman in the compound who in defiance and in scorn of her fascist gropers rips her blouse open to ridicule them despite the outcome.

Another is the image of the charred black melted forms of the peasants burnt to death by the fascists.

At the same time, unlike Eisenstein Bertolucci does not want to devalue the personal elements in his art, either in creation or subject matter.

He does not show the same rejection of the individuality, the sentimentality or aestheticism of ruling class art.

We "are extremely conscious of the charisma and personality of the bourgeois actors and actresses he uses-including Dominica de Sanda and Robert de Niro.

Unknown actors '

It is interesting to note that those characters who show any revolutionary awareness are played by unknown actors, actresses and the peasants by actual land-workers.

There are many weaknesses in the structure of 1900. It is very difficult to judge if this is a result of bad editing-the " original film was a mammoth eight hours long and has been hacked down to 5½½ hoursor whether there is confusion in Bertolucci's overall direction.

Does he want to show us a story of historical realism or a symbolic theatrical commentary on events?

It could be an inherent problem in such an ambitious project. The larger it becomes the more difficult it is to control and. the more flaws appear.

The film does appear to keep changing in midstream, one minute directly using heroic realism 'and then another as in the trial after the liberation using an allegorical stage-managed dance with a massive red flag.

Lyrical

On the whole, however, the film is lyrical, rich and sensuous, using images linked together to convey the intellectual themes of the film.

Paintings appear extremely important to Bertolucci. Just as in Last Tango in Paris he showed two paintings by Francis Bacon over the credits, so in the beginning of 1900 he sets the film with a painting by Pelizza da Volpedo of Italian workers on strike in 1905.

The" 'whole of 1900 is shot through with direct references to paintings in the use of composition, and colour and the strong emphasis on tonality.

Idealistic It. attempts to be an overall 'painting' of workers using idealistic and romantic portraits like Millet's The Reapers and more realistically the work of Courbet's The Stonebreakers.

There is a similarity between the shot of the bandaged head of the peasant who has sliced off his ear, and the self portraits of Van Gogh with severed ear.

And the scene of the same peasant's family sitting round a dark, empty table is very evocative of Van Gogh's painting The Potato Eaters.

But music also plays an important role in the film with one repeated theme throughout interspersed with the revolutionary singing and dance music used at key points in the film to show different stages of the peasants' history.

There is heroic singing from the women who lie down as a human barricade to the cavalry advances, and there is the slow, deliberate playing of the Internationale by a veteran accordian player-a strange remnant of the red army.

Earthy

Many other images in the film are direct, earthy and sensuous, bearing a close relationship to those found in the writings of Emile Zola.

One example is the pitchfork thrust into the genitals of Attilla the fascist by the peasant women. This seems to have been directly inspired by Zola's novel Germinal.

There are extraordinary shots of animal life-flesh wriggling to escape from imminent death-the stunning shots of tens of frogs threaded live on a wire around Olmo's hat writhing around his face like Medusa's hair.

There is a scene of a monumental mass of pink pigs struggling and being held down before having their throats slit. And there is the cat which is tied to a pole, wrestling to free itself before being splattered to death by the fascist's head.

These parallels with Zola are increased by the recurrence of ritualistic shots of mud, manure, milk, sweat, saliva, blood and vomit •and of violently primal acts of birth, sex and death.

This also connects with another repeated theme in Bertolucci's films-his attempt to integrate in his work lessons from Marx or Freud.

Bourgeois family

We see expression of this in his indictment of the bourgeois family which Bertolucci feels represses us psychologically and emotionally in its attempt to civilise us.

Bertolucci attempts to express that only under socialism will we see the development of sexuality unfettered where sexual needs are not repressed.

Alfredo says of Olmo when they are in bed with an epileptic laundress 'Olmo's a Bolshevik; they believe in free love' There is continual comparison between the sexual repression and backwardness of the bourgeoisie and the sexual powers of Olmo, the token 'communimpossible to escape.

Bertolucci also takes up the Freudian view of personality-that childhood is always with us and unavoidably chains us despite attempts to defy and transcend it alone.

This is shown by the way the childhood relationship of Olmo and Alfredo dominates their adult relationship in contradiction to the class felationship of peasant to landowner. The film uses the technique of the epics, by focussing on one or two carefully characterised • individuals whose personal life tragedies and relationships reflect the greater events in which they are inevitably involved.

But Bertolucci inevitably chooses two males.

Women Similarly he centres solely on the repression of male sexuality. Women are yet again relegated in his films to recognisable secondary roles, their character development cut short and stereotyped.

Even the educated woman revolutionary teacher and Olmo's lover who showed signs of possible development as a committed leader operates on a completely emotional and spontaneous basis full of fervour and passion but little else.

That her development in the story is ended by death in childbirth comes as no surprise.

To Bertolucci, women are chained to the womb, the complete focus of their life being childbirth.

Dominic de Sanda beautifully portrays Alfredo's wife, a neurotic flower of exquisite hot-house sensitivity.

Unable to cope with the brutal ugliness of decayed society she seeks refuge in assumed blindness, sniffing cocaine, drink or riding on her white horse.

She is shown unable to have children, a poor, infertile, rich girl, rootless, lost and desperate for the simple strength and security of the peasant . family hearth.

The other major woman in the film is Regina, the fascist mistress portrayed with burning embittered intensity within the mould of Lady Macbeth, ambitiously driving her man through bloody murder recurrent nightmares guilt, all the time horrendously existing . only through him.

Hence her greatest torture at the 'end of the film is not to be killed after his death.

Contradiction

The major theme of the entire film is the struggle between labour and capital.

There is a contradiction between the crucial lessons Bertolucci attempts to teach us in the film and his membership of the Italian Communist Party.

The film shows the loss of the independent action of the working class through Olmo's friendship and involvement with the bourgeoisie and the subsequent results of this-the rapid development of fascism and the defeat of socialism.

Olmo turns to his 'friend' and landowner/employer. Alfredo, portrayed by Robert de Niro as a likeable, 'open' friend.

He asks him to remove Attilla the fascist foreman before it is too late.

Olmo thinks his friend will be a different sort of padrone-but in placing his father's luxurious fur coat over his shoulder, Alfredo shows he has inherited all the rules of ownership. As in Before the Revolution, Bertolucci shows that for the children of the bourgeoisie there is no escape from the destiny of their class, they represent capitalism.

The film also shows categorically that no matter how much the bourgeoisie may dislike fascists as upstarts, vulgar unfair or distasteful, they will never take the action to remove them but on the contrary will retain them as 'guard dogs' of their interests.

No defence.

The filin also shows that no matter what previous relationship the affable bourgeois has with the worker he will not lift a finger to defend him from vicious fascist attack.

The scene of Olmo being brutally thumped into the ground by blackshirts while his so-called bourgeois "friends" look on, should be seen as a warning against the popular front policies of the Italian CP and other popular front organisations such as the ANL which seek to destroy fascism with the aid of "progressive' liberals and members of the bourgeoisie.

What misplaced trust and cooperation with the ruling class can bring is shown again by Olmo's class collaboration.

He effectively disarms the working class, literally and metaphysically ending their hopes of socialism.

By refusing to shoot the padrone and his agreement to • disarm the workers handing over their guns to the allied imperialist forces, he enables capitalism to win the day.

The 'padrone' lives, Olmo 'the peasant' livesthe future of the class struggle is depicted within their lifetime as labour (Qlmo) ineffectually tugging at the sleeves of capital (Alfredo).

It's a halfhearted friendly tustle which capitalism can always shrug off-a fitting symbol of the role of the Italian CP and international

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Report by John Liste ROMAC CANO AX OW END