Les recrues

Bertolucci, while a cinephile, had spent very little time on actual movie sets before making this film at age 21.

It's a Rashomon like exploration of the murder of a prostitute. We see various men being questioned by police in a stylized way – we never see the questioner, only the witness, sitting in a pool of harsh light. We hear the man begin to tell what he did or saw on the fateful day, while cutting to images of his actual experience, often at odds with what we hear him telling the police. By the end of the film we get a picture of what happened that night for each of these men and the woman who was killed. Beautifully photographed,, with a strong sense of composition, it's a pretty strong little film.

There are weak spots; the acting is variable at best, in a few cases cringe-inducingly over the top. Also, much of the dialogue was evidently post recorded, so even though the actors are Italians speaking Italian, their mouths are sometimes out of sync with their voices, and the dialogue often has a tinny artificial quality.

But quibbles aside, the film has a haunting quality that marks the start of a great film- maker's career, and makes this well worth seeing.

Essentially a murder mystery with a RASHOMON-esque narrative structure involving a prostitute's death - THE GRIM REAPER makes for a supremely impressive debut for Bernardo Bertolucci. The ensuing investigation focuses on the unreliable testimonies of various bystanders through flashbacks, as they recollect their movements on the previous day. However, unlike RASHOMON there's very little contradiction in the suspects' accounts and are merely disjointed by time. The elaborate digressions into each suspect's personal life get tiresome after a while but Bertolucci never loses track of the event that brings all these characters together. Based on a story by Pier Paolo Pasolini and shot in chilling B&W — THE GRIM REAPER offers a fascinating glimpse into marginalized Rome of the 60s - thieves, petty mariners, pimps, prostitutes, homosexuals and assorted disgruntled folk living on fringes. It's primitive Bertolucci to be sure lacking the visual flamboyance and aesthetic vigour of his subsequent epics but when viewed through the neorealist prism: the intentional pseudo documentary—rough edged—slice of life approach, works wonderfully. For a neophyte, Bertolucci displays extraordinary maturity and uncanny command over the medium attested further by his ability to extract effective (if occasionally inconsistent) performances from virtual amateurs.

This movie occurs mostly the interrogation scenes, which makes viewers a bit interesting to watch throughout their real or unreal statements. The movie style have been influenced in lots of movies, before and present days. Again, its slow paced movie which needs to be watched patiently. But, if the debutant director, 21 yrs. did such impacts. Encouragement is must. Worth to watch it.

Not very solid, yet coherent work for a directorial debut. Better actors would probably have made a major difference in this Italian Rashomon. The story (Bertolucci and Pasolini) is about what's the truth and what is subjective perception. Who tells what story and why? More important: who hides what and why? Of course this film has nothing to do with the much more enthusiastic 'Rashomon' (Kurosawa, 1950) apart from the matter, but it may at least have been inspired by that masterpiece. If you like the subject you'll like the 'I saw the whole thing'-episode (1962!) from the series 'The Alfred Hitchcock Hour' too. Finally, this also slightly reminded me of 'Les Mistons' (Truffaut, 1957, short), probably because we are shown some street and environmental scenes of the place where a crime was committed.

Besides Pasolini (Salo, Medea) for the story, I think cinematographer Giovanni Narzisi did the most interesting work on this film. A worthy Bertolucci film and definitely worth seeing on the big screen.

8/10

Bertolucci, at one time production assistant of "Accattone" (1961), here makes use of a Pasolini story and does it with that style will be characteristic of this director works. "La commare secca" is simply the death, the death who visits a roman prostitute using the violence of the emargination and disperation. The reconstruction of the facts, through probably inspector voice that interrogates the witnesses, is based on flashback and shows us some people on the border of that time society. Everyone is suspected but only one saw the killer. Very interesting debut by Bernardo Bertolucci, who is able to recreate the right atmosphere e make playing no professional actors letting express their spontaneity and simplicity.