1900

Novecento is the Gone With The Wind of Italian cinema with enough American stars and one French one to make sure of its international market. It has the epic feel of Gone With The Wind, you can also compare it to any number of films based on Edna Ferber novels. It begins at the beginning of the 20th century in Northern Italy with the birth of two boys on the same day. One is the grandson of the local Padrone, Burt Lancaster who grows up to be Robert DeNiro. The second is the illegitimate grandson of the head man among the workers on Lancaster's estate, Sterling Hayden and the boy grows up to be Gerard Depardieu. This had to be Northern Italy or no one would have believed Gerard's baby blues in Sicily or Calabria.

Despite the difference in class which Americans have trouble comprehending, but as Marlon Brando said in The Young Lions mean a great deal in Europe, the boys grow up to be friends. But it's not only politics that pushes them apart, it's the love of Dominique Sanda. She marries DeNiro, but he can't believe she's not get a yen for Depardieu.

Like Gone With The Wind with the Civil War and Reconstruction, Novecento is set in the period from 1900 to 1945 which were tumultuous years for Italy. Until 1870 Italy was a geographical expression not a country, until the Pope surrendered sovereignty of the Papal States. Like Germany which also united at the same time it now wanted to be recognized as a leading power, Italy even got into the colonial game in Africa. Unlike every other European power it met defeat at Adowa when trying to takeover Ethiopia. That too had a major impact on the Italian psyche, something Bernard Bertolucci curiously enough did not mention.

He concentrated on the age old grievances of peasants against the landlords and the internal problems it was bringing Italy. Abusive landlords and the peasants they controlled, a feudal system that was badly out of date in the industrial age which came to Italy, a bit late, but there in time to throw a lot of peasants off the land and make socialists and communists of them. The gentry, the growing middle class, the church responded in kind with its own counterrevolution, Fascism.

In fact the film's villain is Donald Sutherland as a Fascist overseer that DeNiro hires and who basically takes over running the estate and politics of the locality. This is one of Sutherland's best screen performances, he will chill you to the bone with his cruelty and arrogance. He's essentially a thug who's been given political power.

Running a close second is Laura Betti as DeNiro's sister who marries Sutherland and becomes a true believer in the Fascist cause. At least she sees the peasant discontent and believes Fascism will protect her privileged position.

The original running time of this epic is over five hours and really should have been a mini-series. Maybe in that format we'll see the director's cut some day. It's still a powerful piece of film telling the epic story of a country for almost half a century.

An epic about Italian political history of the first half of the 20th Century, detailing the lives of two men born on the same day. Olmo (played by Gerard Depardieu as an adult) is the bastard child of peasants and is raised to be a socialist. Alfredo (Robert De Niro) is the son of a wealthy family and will someday become lord and master of all the peasants on his land. He's a pleasant man, not cruel like his father, but he won't go out of his way to help those below him in status (including Olmo, who is his closest friend and companion). It's a huge film, and very sloppy. I would guess it would be very sloppy even in its original version (the English language version is an hour shorter at least). My biggest problem with the film is the character of Olmo. As a child (played by Roberto Maccanti), he exhibits daring and independence. As an adult, he seems like a sponge and he kind of drops out of the last third of the picture, it seemed to me. My interest dropped in the character because, first, the character does not seem to follow from childhood to adulthood, and, second, Depardieu gives a dull performance. He's handsome, but in the kind of way that makes you forget that he even exists. Maccanti, as young Olmo, leaves a much bigger impression. My second biggest problem with the film is the treatment of politics. It's no secret where Bertolucci's sympathy lies, with the communists. That's fine by me, and it's good that he has Alfredo not as the villain but as a man who turns his back and continues to live his life as a wealthy man. But there are Fascists in the film, and they are lead by Donald Sutherland. Sutherland is so evil in this film it becomes amusing. He'll do anything to get what he wants, including killing old women, children, and he even headbutts a cat! I have no real problem with showing the Italian Fascists as evil, but this is cartoonishly evil. Sutherland's character's name: Attila. No sh*t! On the other hand, I cannot help but admit that Donald Sutherland has all the most memorable scenes in the film. He may be more or less one dimensional, but I'll never forget his wicked grin, and I'll never forget the splattered blood on his forehead from that cat! Robert De Niro does a lot with his role, which is the most complex in the film, probably. His performance here matches his best work. Alfredo's wife is played by Dominique Sanda. She also gives an exceptional performance, although her character could have been (and might have been, in the full version) better developed. While I have some major problems with the overall substance of the film, there's no doubt there's a genius at work here. Several, actually. Bertolucci's direction is as good as it ever was, and his ambition seems, at least for a while, peerless. He may have had several better films, but this is as much a peak in his direction as Last Tango in Paris or The Conformist. Helping him achieve greatness far beyond what should have resulted are Vittorio Storaro, providing gorgeous, sweeping photography, and Ennio Moricone, ever the trooper with another exceptional musical score. 1900, despite heavy flaws, is indeed a great film.

'1900' is a historical film that has a history of its own, one that probably hasn't ended yet. The perception of critics and the public about this film seems to have changed several times already during its hectic launch in 1976. Made four years after the success but also after the scandals sparked by 'Last Tango in Paris', the film has benefited from generous funding and full creative freedom for director Bernardo Bertolucci. How did he use the freedom and the funds he had at his disposal? Making a monumental film. Monumental in terms of duration, which made it non-screenable in cinema halls in its full format over five hours. Monumental with a distribution gathering on screen some of the great international movie stars of the 70's. Monumental also in style and as a cinematic genre - a 45-year historical fresco of the history of Italy, between the day of Verdi's death in 1900 and the day of Mussolini's death in 1945. Those who study historical monuments know well that even the most beautiful and the more impressive are in most cases programmatic, insist on transmitting a political or patriotic message or both, and are not a good source for discovering and presenting historical truth. This is what happens with '1900' which is a spectacular film, with many memorable scenes, with wonderful actors in generous roles, but which is deeply distorted by a much too explicit political message, reflecting the director's political ideas in an almost propagandist style.

I viewed the full version of the film, which is presented today at festivals or cinematheques in two series, each over two and a half hours. This is different of what most viewers saw on screen in the 1970s - shortened versions (there were several) - perhaps more accessible for the endurance of the viewers, but also losing much of the epic construction of the film, which has its purpose. It is the story of two boys born on the same day of the first year of the 20th century. Alfred Berlinghieri (who will grow to be Robert De Niro) is the offspring of a big land owners family in an agricultural area of Italy, whose patriarch is his grandfather (Burt Lancaster, as descending from 'The Leopard' in the role he had played 13 years ago). Olmo Dalco (who will grow up to be Gérard Depardieu) is born into the family of peasants deprived of any property and rights, who work on the estate under semi-slavery conditions. The conflicts of the grandparents are transmitted from generation to generation until the two boys born under the same sign and separated by a social abyss. The relationship between them, marked by friendship, rivalry and class struggle, will develop throughout Italy's troubled history, which includes two world wars, the rise and fall of fascism, and the popular revenge that followed.

From an artistic perspective, '1900' has many sublime moments, it can be said that it is almost a masterpiece. First of all the acting performances: De Niro who was acting here just after 'The Godfather: Part II' and 'Taxi Driver' lends to his character all the parasitic insecurity and the degenerate vulnerability of the descendant of a social class that is fighting oblivion. Gérard Depardieu creates here, I believe, his first big role, full of strength and passion. Exceptional is also Donald Sutherland, an actor who has never hesitated to take on negative composition roles, here being the fascist Attila Mellanchini, an exemplary villain. It adds much authenticity to the use of amateur extras, the inhabitants of the Italian region where the story takes place. The cinematography includes many memorable takes, in some cases serving as backdrops for scenes carefully constructed and choreographed, in the good style of Italian operas, even including songs and dances. What works well in operas on stage, however, is not necessarily suitable for a cinematic historical fresco. The excess of propaganda rhetoric finally harms the message and sounds strident and unconvincing today. There are far too many revolutionary speeches in '1900' of the kind that were more suited to Soviet films of the 1930s or scenes that touch the ridicule such as the one in which a simple peasant hero chooses death for the pleasure of whistling a revolutionary song in the nose of the fascists. The Marxist Bertolucci chose to present an explicit revolutionary vision, which was more in line with the propaganda on the other side of the Iron Curtain in those years, but as far as I know his film was not successful there or not even distributed in many Communist countries because of its naturalistic approach soaked with too much nudity and violence for the puritanistic communist censors. Only today, in perspective, from the historical distance created by time, we can enjoy the many cinematic delights of '1900'.

A too much long but beautiful movie, showing the political changes in Italy in the Twentieth Century. These changes are presented and reflected through the friendship of Alfredo (Robert De Niro) and Olmo (Gerard Depardieau), from the end of World War I to the end of World War II, from the ascent of the Fascism to its decline and the ascent of the Socialism. Alfred and Olmo were born in the same day and in the same place, landowner and peasant respectively. As far as they grow up, Bertolucci presents the changes in the political scenario in Italy, affecting the relationship between these two friends. The film is a little exhaustive, but it deserves to be watched more than one time. Recommended to viewers who like European movies and particularly Italian history and Bertolucci. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "1900"

One of the most perfect historic contemporary pictures ever made. Wonderful performances of the actors Robert de Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Burt Lancaster and Donald Sutherland. This film tells us a story of two mans (Alfredo and Olmo) born in the same day back in the beginning of the twentieth century - Alfredo is a landowner, Olmo is a peasant- and their relation with friendship, love, politics. ( I think this is a film about how friendship can be true in a cruel half century that was the fist half os the "novecento").

There is a Marxist view about life and about cinema itself in this Bertolucci film: the two main characters, Alfredo and Olmo, symbolize the strike between the two classes of the capitalism - the high bourgeosie that owns the land where live the proletarian. The picture tries to prove that their lives are different in the way that their different social condition can interfere. In the beginning Alfredo and Olmo are very close, because they are only child. Alfredo tries to be like Olmo. He sees in his friend the freedoom that he hasn't. He wants to be a socialist.

I recommend this picture to all who like good cinema.