Bernardo Bertolucci – A Quixote in modern cinema
iView Author: SUDDHASATYA GHOSH
(Kolkata, India) EMAIL: withheld
Bernardo Bertolucci – A Quixote in modern cinema
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In his youth he wanted to create ‘Miuras’ or ‘Young Bulls’ as his films and in the end had made a film like ‘The last Emperor’. Bernardo Bertolucci had pompously failed himself in cinema. But was it an individual failure?
The other day I was commenting in ‘Passion for Cinema’ and had a good debate on Bertolucci’s ‘Last Tango in Paris’ or ‘Ultimo tango a Parigi’ (1972). It had started from a very harsh comment of mine to discard this as a trash film and a real pathetic show of Marlon Brandon (not as actor, but as artist who had chosen a bad film with all his conscience). As I got a very interesting reply from Shan there, I thought that space will not be enough to elaborate on my thoughts.
As Shan had said that we all have our rights to disagree I here am just doing that by disagreeing on Bertolucci’s greatness.
He was a son of a decadent bourgeois family and had a poet-writer father. He was a son of a devastated Italy that saw fascism and its tentacles that embraces all sources of life and sucks dearly.
He started as a poet and then in graduation had grown into cinema to say that he had dreamt of living in film. Along with his aforesaid thoughts another realization, that for a bourgeois turned conscious Marxist it was difficult to be a Marxist, had a great role in his cinema. Because there were the bubby traps waiting eagerly for a footstep on it and to the dismay of people like me, Bertolucci had walked on that and was exploded.
But how and why and that is the question, rather puzzle, that I will try to solve here.
I will start with certain personal experiences of mine as Shan had asked a few questions based on that.
When I was a child, the days in West Bengal were turbulent with Naxalism and anti-emergency struggles. People around me were activists, anxious, puzzled, and tortured by poignant and cruel time. Bloods were everywhere. There I had met certain peoples who were very committed to their beliefs in communism. They wore dhuti-kurtas and had a bag by their side. They travel to places where state had not visited even twice in the shape of officials or vote-mongers. They travel to such places to distribute relief in the time of flood or famine. They were there to propagate communist thoughts. Days of hard work and then they won certain friends and comrades there. In much friendlier terrains poignancies of their political work can be imagined easily. Communists, as they call themselves had won elections on the ground of those works. These workers had fought landholders and mill-owners along side farmers and workers and had achieved their faith in them.
Was that a win for communism? In my later years I had tried to understand what exactly it was and I had found a rather interesting answer for that. These men and women, whom I had known through my father as communist party workers were people of very religious nature. Their religion was Marxism and they will be hurt today, that I know for sure, with such an analysis. But I can not help it. Marx is a difficult author to be understood without proper preparation. I realized that without certain knowledge in various discipline ‘Das Capital’ is simply impregnable. Marx was not the first one who had called for equality among individuals in a class ridden society. He was the one who took this call beyond simple humanitarian wanton. If one does not understand Marx properly then how one can differentiate between his call and that of old Christianity! My known world was infested with simple believers of communism, who had no idea how will the economy be if communists have power one day.
To them party and communism was all the same. Party, just like states are run by few people and they may fall from ideologies, which these men had no idea of. When time came and communists had grabbed state power and erstwhile enemy landlords became comrade these party-workers fell short of understanding. At the beginning they had thought this as a psychological change of landlords and finally when they were outvoted in local range intra-party election they had faced a shocker. Their party is in the hand of enemy itself. They, one by one, had left the party and became silent, though with a suppressed anguish and loyalty.
Most of these men were not even half-rich as Bertolucci was. They were professional political workers and had to live on the party’s whole-timer benefits. They had no other alternative profession. But Bertolucci was in a far greater state than them as far as the economy and education were concerned. He had chosen to live in cinema with the help of his cine-critic father. Finally he had a stint with Pasolini as an assistant and he entered in cinema.
Pasolini, a thrown-out of Italian communist Party and a rebel at heart, had taught him cinema. But I hope not Marxism, because like all others Pasolini was influenced with Gramsci, the thinker. Gramsci’s thoughts on ‘Hegemony’, ‘Common-sense’ and ‘Lumpen-proletariat’ or on ‘Southern question’ do need a proper system to understand it. Bertolucci had not had that. A bourgeois by birth can be a communist, but will be challenged in a hard fashion.
There are two reasons for that. One lies typically with the formation of apparent freedom in bourgeois society and another in its knowledge system. If you have money you can buy certain freedoms in such a society. Obviously I am very much aware about equality before the eyes of law in so-called democratic or bourgeois state. To the poor this is a hoax for ever and it will be so as law can be bought through lawyers. If one judgment upholds legal system then scores other are there that can show you the farce at its height. Therefore a child like Bertolucci of ‘Surplus sustenance’ often falls into the trap of ‘Free’ society. Wealth and power have given a shield to that child to even be mesmerized by that. By pronouncing rights of ‘Freedom’ of our thoughts we only acknowledge its limitation as there is no such thing like ‘Free’ will. Bertolucci had learnt that lesson in a wrong way in his detainment by Italian state.
The other part, knowledge system, is partly academic and partly observational. If you have never lived in a secluded island ever you just can imagine how it can be and you will definitely be wrong in understanding that. This is an extreme example and I used this just to point out the difference between bourgeois and proletariats. Pasolini, once had accused Italian state in his first feature film ‘Accattone’ had shown us the ‘borgate’ (just like fascist Italy) as concentration camps where lumpen-proletariats live and Accattone himself proclaims that after his first day of work there. Therefore one can easily understand the distance between that and bourgeois world. I must not elaborate. From here our Bertolucci had started his career as a cinema-wala.
How strange was it when he proclaims his dream to live in cinema? A poetic (?) thought indeed. If you live in cinema you will miss the real world and reality. No creator can create without the point of departure of an objective world. Objects we reflect in our thoughts and dreams and acts and in creation with our own interpretations only. In cinema we do not see a chair; it is a mere reflection as it is in the case of our own eyes. Then how can one be creative without being objective in cinema?
If you start from there you can treat your subject with better understanding and so do we, the viewers. Well you can also create your own world too. And that will be interesting to visit. Take Klee’s paintings for that and it will definitely deliver you content in the shape of few thoughts. You can nurture them, you can grow old with them and day after day you will find layers in it.
A withdrawing bourgeois and a failed Marxist even do not have his own say. Shan, my friend, had declared Maria’s (Jeanne) win in the last blow-job she gave to Brandon’s (Paul) character. Paul is beggar and she is the giver now. What had won exactly? A primitive and animal instinct to have sex (though I do not know if animals do know any such forms as blow-job) or self-satisfaction that I am the master of my master, what exactly came out in this win? In psychology and Marxian politics this sort of satisfaction has been associated with typical slave mentality of women in male-dominated society. Well, then we are having a win that is not a win at all. Then, at the last sequence, a shot from a Jeanne’s gun and Brandon (Paul) dies with a chewing gum. Is that the final win?
How pitiful it was! Is this content can be compared to any work of even the ‘Evil’ De Sade or a pitiable ‘La Miserable’? No and there lies its follies in content that even can not surplus Pasolini’s controversial mixture of Sade and Mussolini’s thought in his great film Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Then why will it be a great one in cinema?
As far as the cinematic treatments are concerned I find his language mimicry of Godard and Pasolini at large. On that front he had scored nothing in this Last Tango and I must refrain from discussing it. It will be a waste of time. Bertolucci as a maker was never sure about his place and was always inclined to popular cinema. On the wrong understanding of Marxism he thought being ‘Popular’ is a crime in Marxist thought at his early days. It was not like that at all. Only some intellectuals, bereft of proper understanding had thought so. Ideological goal of Marxism is to be popular to spread its message of equality among workers and peasants of the whole world.
A Marxist becomes a saint only with the lack of understanding of it. My dhuti-cladded warriors of Marxism of childhood had probably thought so. They were washed out when they were out of position in party and had found the loneliness unbearable to some extent. People were used to look at them with awe and they were like gods or sages to them. By the process they had seldom enjoyed life and had become too monkish and Marxism had resembled a church system in this part of the world. When time came people who were against this rigid, dogmatic process (mostly middle class for their comfort and a few for the sake of sanity) had succumbed easily to the traps of system. When confronted then or even today they use these miserable good beings as examples of uselessness of discipline and commitment. Both they and these men had failed to make a striking balance in their act, although Marx did it rightly in his period and writings. He had not only prescription of violence for the world, he even talked of non-violent movements and transfer of bourgeois state to a worker’s state too (in 1832, Amsterdam).
And for sinners (err liberators) like Bertolucci a failure in radical movement is bound to be salvaged by an erotic radicalism. This too I know personally. Many of the revolutionary writers of 1970’s had turned into soft porno novel writers later on and they boast it as subversion in culture. In ‘Last Tango’ this disguise of rebellion was not enough to cover a pure search for own pleasure in disguise of rebellion. Truly names are not needed in brothel and if liberation is in the brothels only then too I remember some similar mediocre creators in West Bengal aka India who had similar point of view.
I will rather read Jean Genet or Sade again. Straightaway they can tell at your face that they can harm you to buy happiness for them and that is not the case with Bertolucci. He, at the best is a Quixote who poses himself as a knight. Probably the system that had made him out as a failure will produce a poet or maker to tell his story (partially told in ‘The Pornographer’) like Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra one day and I am waiting for that.
Tags: Bernardo Bertolucci, Brandon, Das Capital, Last Tango in Paris, Pasolini, The last Emperor, World Cinema
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A man who never compromised on crime,sex,politics and incest relationships in his movies.One of the best director of Italian Cinema
Do you personally think Salo is a great film ?
i though his “little budhdha” was complete rubbish…i had seen “the last emperor” a long time back but what i remember of it is still a beautiful memory…
@Mitch,
Salo is a great experiment to blend thoughts and time and political scenario et subversion.It had failed due to certain situational deficiencies of Pasolini.Though I like him very much as a honest and thoughtful maker,I dont think I will keep Salo in my list of great films. It,interestingly had taught me a different lesson alltogather. Whatever amount of force may be apllied by my external tormentors,as a maker I must learn to react in a certain cohesive manner.Otherwise, those detractors would get what they wanted to have- that is my debacle.
Well I dont like Passolini at all. I think Salo is a piece of shit (no pun intended). Couldn’t sit through more than 25 mins. I also couldn’t read past the first two chapters of 120 days of sodom coz I was so revolted by it.
I’m also a Bertolucci fan and while your liking or disliking him is your right and pregorative I must admit I’m puzzled by your reasons. You haven’t discussed his films at all but rather painted him as a poseur coz apparently he is a bad communist. That doesn’t really make sense to me. I don’t believe in communism at all yet Alexander Rodchenko and Diego Riviera are amongst my fav artists. You are judging the artist and not the art which seems kinda strange.
Bertolucci along with Storaro are responsible for some of the most incredible images in the history of cinema. His ouevre speaks for itself. Any cinematographer worth his salt swears by The Conformist as one of the most visually influential films ever. He’s made turkeys as well but even his lesser films like The Dreamers consist of indelible images.
Unless you find the content of his films offensive the way I do of films like “21″ or “Gunga Din” why are Bertolucci’s political beliefs and failings important ? That’s about as relevant to me when watching his films as what kind of sexual position does he like the most or what is his fav cigar.
Pardon me if my argument sounds plebian or bourgeois to you but I don’t come from bhadralok stock so really can’t help it.
Mitch,
you found it revolting and couldnt sit through it and you still can come out and say its a piece of shit??
all talk about greatness apart, Salo, has its mark in the history of films especially cuz of its sickening frames whether you think of it as an exercise in subversion or not..
In that case “I spit on your grave” or “Flower of Flesh and Blood” which is equally sickening and revolting has made its mark on film history as well. I know for a fact that these two films have a cult following too.
As far as not watching the entire film goes, a taste of shit is enough to let u know whether it’s shit or not. You don’t have to eat the entire public toilet to be able to judge how bad it is.
@Mitch,
you had me wrong when you said that I had judged him not the film.In actuality none so far is beyond his class,time, society and tyerefore works of arts has its own point of departure from the position of that artist concerned.This is not a communist theory, this is a classical theory that had its root in Aristotle and Vishwanath alike.When he had made films he had theories spelt for those.He loved this play and I think if I have to critic(not judge) him then I must take on to his fallies of theories.His beliefs had let me to discuss Communism, not my own wishes.
Well,to make it more simple let me explain.When one starts to place a camera it is not only a mechanical process, it is the last frontier from where one has to take one’s THOUGHTS to a tape or a film.So,a cinematography or an edit is a posterior product(comes after thought).I had judged his thoughts,and that too on concrete evidences of his words only. Cinematography or any other part of Cinema also come later on.First a thought and then the process too.I still do not feel any need to judge his techno-abilty only if it is not a cinema of that calibre.i will not go to a cinematographer to understand Cinema and then swear by that.All technicians are commendable when I need them to make a film and I will love to encourage them to contribute also.But as far as the understanding or the final decissions are concerned it is obviously will be of mine.
And for your take of ‘Bhadrolok’, I too do not belong to them.I know my limitations and powers too.So if it is my take then let me call the shots.And ofcourse I do not treat myself as a fan to this and that maker.To me all are in the journey in cinema, as I am.And again Cinema at any day is greater than any of us, so why fall by some guy or other?If I love, I love cinema only.To me there is no cinema-incarnate Mitch.
As far as Pasolini is concerned I think his works are able enough(though I do not lik all) to stand up to a criticism.
Thanks for your critic of mine.I have enjoyed it thoroughly.
‘As far as not watching the entire film goes, a taste of shit is enough to let u know whether it’s shit or not. You don’t have to eat the entire public toilet to be able to judge how bad it is.’
that is usually the case, but if u r prone to such a generalisation, then u will lose out on a lot of good stuff..
and if u equate the films mentioned by you, to Salo, in terms of significance, thats a pretty shallow argument (im going by imdb info here since i havent seen either of them) and u r far better than that
Sometimes one cannot seperate the Filmmaker & his ideology & his background from his films. Esp for Serious Filmmakers who try to say something through their cinema & not just entertain themselve.
P.S-I need to get over my Action Film watching & watch some Bertolucci.
@Mainak,
Thank you.That is very true.If I am an entertainer then I will not demand any serious consideration as a Cinema maker.Othewrwise I have to be careful about my words and deeds too.They will be interpreted and weighed obviously.
Dear Comrades… Was watchin ur battle of words since few days… some good energetic debates, good for health, no doubt! Right Suddha?
Now I jus want to say jus one thing.. ie Communist or not Communist, I jus luv Last Tango in Paris… who knows, for might be the treatment of passion, illness, restlesness and sex in an apparently very objective manner.. ya, I love it…
And Suddha, as far as being a Marxist Artist is concerned, I really dnt knw how far it can go. A theory, belief, socio-political standing is something that works whenever u try to understand or interpret happenings around u… That’s fine. But at the end, does ART limits itself in the boundary of interpretetions? Really? I doubt.. I like a great part of Godard, Ritwik and jansco, keeping aside Eisentein. But I dnt think that’s bcoz they were Marxists (rather I dislike when they force something into the films)but jus bcoz they made Good Films, in a very filmic sense and that’s all…
Actulally Suddha, this is a very old and ever-lasting debate… It is always same when u talk about a Belief behind an art.. But What really matters to me if Bergman was a Catholic or not?!! A good Christian or not? An Ant-communist or not?! Ritwik might call him a satan with the brains of a genius, but u luv both of them… isnt it?
Long Live Cinema!!
@Somesh,
I was not debating on communist artists.I was discussing Bertolucci’s self professed stand that took him so far from being a maestro.In actuality I do agree with you that if I wish to put things forcefully then I am bouind to irritate some viewers.Bertolucci, in his typical time just had done that.But as he was no Godard or even a Pasolini he had failed in it.Godard had kept on preeching and he clearly intends to do so.That was his style.But you can not follow one and think that you will be counted as original as him(remember Bertolucci’s shot in Louvre that mimicked/immitated/paid homage to Godard).I was seeing him from his viewpoints only.
To be an artist you need to open up to your outside or inside.When you do that with a camera, you are just takng pictures, not the object itself.And my dear friend you decide about camera placements,angles,lenses etc etc.Is not that an interpretation from the very begnnig?I was mentioning that in my discussion earlier. Definitely Art does not interpret only, it envissions something else out of that camera perspective.That is beyond doubt.In Last Tango I had not find anything that is beyond my knowledge or understanding.I was not surprsed at all.Any greatwork has ths capability to surprise you,give sudden shocks or to cast you in serious thoughts and so on, such is my understanding about it.
As far as Art is concerned, even life too,I love some so-called reactionaries too.But not on their beliefs, just on their deeds.I had mentioned some in my discussions too.I do not care whether one is Marxist or not, I am not a proletcult, but I care about what one does in Art and to me that is life itself.
Bertolucci has no Locus Standi in it til now.If I find anything in his future works that appeals to me I have no problem to accept that.I am not a fascist my friend and Definitely I am not the one to put the last word about anything.
Re-read the article after two months. The critical elan pushed me forth to read Bertolucci further.
An intelligible hit at the post-marxist crazed swarm of bees those who are faux-naive at style and banal self-pampared narrators. A journey from microscopic to historic.
The article worked to express the never hitherto expressed authorial voice to appease readers’ hunger for meaning, letting your essay speak out of its dubious earlier silence.
Just came across this post, was searching for Pasolini and ended up reading about Bertolucci…suddhasatya u should write more. It was more of a good chapter out of a book to me…