Partner.

Movie making is a form of expression that has in recent years been subject to a mold of narrative. The Partner is a genuine example of a film that does not comform to the standard. As always Bertolucci was able to draw performances that transform t characters he created into tangable moments. Particularly remarkable is Pierre Clementi's performance of a man with two identities. Made at the early age of 22, this film is a window into an artist mind. Open your mind and just allow yourself to enjoy the ride.

I had always wanted to watch this rarely-seen (and most Godardian) of Bertolucci films ever since I read about it in an old British film magazine of my father's. However, having caught up with it now thanks to No Shame's 2-Disc Special Edition, I have to say that I was underwhelmed, finding it overly didactic and, unfortunately, Godard's trademark dynamism and humor (in his early work, at least) are seldom evident here.

While interesting and quite admirable in itself - being a loose updating of Dostoyevsky's "The Double" - the film feels dated today (especially its consumerist critique, represented by a silly musical number about "Dash", a detergent which ironically is still in use nearly 40 years on!); having said that, Godard had already attacked the same targets in 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (1967). Besides, Pierre Clementi's cold and arrogant personality doesn't allow much audience sympathy. Bertolucci's technique is suitably experimental - one of his most surreal touches is having Clementi's large shadow, cast on a wall, turning against him and, in a remarkable sequence, despite Morricone's lush romantic music, a date between Clementi and Stefania Sandrelli consists of them being "driven" in a stationary vehicle with Clementi's butler making do as chauffeur i.e. acting out the machine's sounds with his mouth! Incidentally, a similar scene was depicted in Jerzy Skolimowski's LE DEPART (1967), another experimental film I caught up with recently and which also left me somewhat disappointed.

Apart from reflecting on politics and modern society, the script contrasts contemporaneous attitudes in theatre and cinema. Sandrelli, although looking positively gorgeous as a blonde, seems uneasy in this environment (even if she did go on to make 3 more films with the director) but Tina Aumont's contribution (who expires unconventionally at the hands of Clementi at the end of the afore-mentioned musical number) is rather delightful. The film's colorful widescreen photography makes great use of its Rome locations, while Ennio Morricone's eclectic score serves more often than not as ironic comment on the action.

Not an easy title to appreciate, therefore, and Bertolucci has certainly made more involving films but, at least, the DVD extras prepared by No Shame (this is their first release I've sampled) - particularly the fascinating and lengthy interviews with Bertolucci and film editor Roberto Perpignani - are excellent indeed! An interesting piece of information gleaned from the supplements is that the film's script was rarely adhered to and neither were current conventional Italian filming techniques (the sound was recorded live); besides, Pierre Clementi flew every weekend to Paris and reported back to Bertolucci with the most up-to-date slogans spouted by the protesters in those famous May 1968 riots, thus enabling him to incorporate them into his film like "Vietato Vietare" (It is forbidden to forbid) and "Proibito Proibire" (It is prohibited to prohibit)...

This rather ludicrous exchange takes place at the end of David Lean's adaptation of Boris Pasternak's epic novel DR. ZHIVAGO:

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: Tonya, can you play the balalaika?

Tonya's Boyfriend: Can she play? She's an artist!

This dialogue, as well as the scene within the framing device of Yuri Zhivago's brother Yevgraf finding Yuri's love child with Lara and telling her about her "past," appears nowhere in the novel. Instead, in an epilogue in the novel, two of the many characters, after the end of the Great Patriotic War (World War II), talk about how one had met this love child at the front. Their ruminations illustrate the great dislocations caused by the Revolution, Stalin's Terror, and the War. Nowhere does something as silly and trivial as the question "Can you play the balalaika?" appear in the novel.

Movies that use great events as backdrops to personal stories tend to trivialize the great events and make the intimate lives of their characters rather absurd and trivial (ironically, the very charge Strelnikov makes to Zhivago, in reference to his poetry, in Lean's movie). Great events such as revolutions wash over everyone and have to be handled with the greatest care to avoid this fundamental absurdity of the events being greater than the individuals.

Before "The Dreamers," Bertolucci already made his film that ruminates on the events of '68 and its aftermath in the year itself:

"Partner" ("Il Sosia"), based on Dostoyevsky's "The Double." It is very interesting, and very honest, look at the spirit of the times and I highly recommend it.

"Bertolucci's juvenilia, his Venice Golden Lion-nominated third feature PARTNER, made when he was 28, released months after the May 68 unrest, is an antisocial, subversive manifesto re-moulded out of Dostoevsky's novella "The Double" and has the Vietnamese flag prominently featured in it.

Clémenti plays Giacobbe, a young college professor, cynical, unstable, romantically frustrated, even psychotic and homicidal, meets his alter ego. Like two peas in a pod, they live together in Giacobbe's book-stacked apartment, but dissimilar to Dostoevsky's text, PARTNER doesn't overtly demarcate their disparate personalities, for most of the time, audience cannot tell which Giacobbe is present when only one of them is shown. "

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While the often noticed aping by Bertolucci of his hero Godard in this early film is quite true (even the film itself admits its debt to Godard right on screen), there is more here than mere imitation. Whether intentional or not I saw plenty of other influences from Bunuel, to the paintings if Rene Magritte. A loose, examination of schizophrenia; an inhibited intellectual young man spawns a separate self who is confident, aggressive and revolutionary.

While vaguely based on Dostoyevsky's "The Double", this is very much it's own story, and a hell of a lot of fun. I found Bertolucci's surreal playfulness more inviting than most of Godard's work from that period. It asks many of the same questions, and has much of the same distain for modern consumer society, (and film narrative conventions) but does it with an absurdist sense of humor that give rise to some moments that now seem as much "Monty Python" as they are French New Wave.

The most egregious Godard rip-offs can be annoying (sudden inappropriate music, etc), but they are for the most part mercifully brief. Mostly this is more influence and homage than theft, and creates a time capsule that still has relevance and interest, and pleasure in the watching. Pierre Clementi does a fine job playing the two different versions of the hero Giaccobe.