Les recrues

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.

Even though for whatever strange reasons Bertolucci sliced three years from his age - it was originally claimed around the time of its release the Director was but 19 - La Commare Secca is a stunning debut for any film maker.

In a nutshell, then, here's the proposition and it's a grand one: Five suspects, (well, there is a "pair" of suspects in one instance) are questioned about a whore's murder. We all lie. So do they. The suspect's lying versions of events are depicted; reality as they would have it. All it happens, are guilty of something, as is everyone in this world, Bertolucci's point and almost never seized upon.

Frankly, this is also Bertolucci's best film. Throw out wholesale, such criticisms as: "not a bad try for a beginner," or, "better things were to follow," ...they weren't and they didn't ...

Economical use editing tricks as well as its compact run-time, mean that unlike the 'masterpieces,' The Spider's Stratagem, and especially, Before the Revolution, this film enjoys a continuity which - 60's (and his own) ethos aside - the masterpieces lacked. Though of course disjointed film-making was what was later intended in this director's canon, it hasn't aged well. It worked for Antonioni, (usually) and Fellini, (sometimes) and Italian cinema generally (with greatly uneven results), but it didn't work often, for our BB.

The performances - in some scenes by real street urchins, are superior. All ring true, particularly when the second crook tells his 'version' of events. As the camera gives the lie to his protestations of innocence, we see through the casual violence of his life, the essential truth: most crime is fueled by boredom, rather than bad breaks or genetic disposition. And while photorealistic acting in the hands of say- late Al Pacino, is dry as dust, in this director's hands, his absolutely true-to-life observations are small beauties.

The haunting soundtrack - nice cliché, right? actually haunts. It works perfectly. It fulfills the purpose of a cinematic score - it enhances the film - frequently raising the dramatic stakes all on its lonesome.

Particularly memorable, is that in this movie, background details are utilized for their own sake. Unlike Antonioni's Ecclise for example, where 'incidental' detail is of course the real foreground detail, Bertolucci's approach seems to be: While such details don't bear on the story, why not use them to best effect? Indeed, why not?

Thus, in some ways overshadowing all others, the teenage dance party and the "two boys two girls" scenes of innocence that precede it, are simply indescribably hypnotic. Seldom has the big screen been graced with such perfect realizations of adolescence. The facial expressions of the girls when the boys refuse to dance are not only peculiar to Europe - there are no comparable expressions on the faces of young America ... but, as the world becomes a common, drag-filled strip mall, such pulled faces may soon - like certain Italian dialects, (Milanese) be extinct.

My only beefs are for a scene in which an Italian boy takes to the Tiber to elude the police; the actual outcome of his swim is not made clear, indeed I had to see the thing twice to understand. And two ... when the villain, the murderer, is caught, it is without any twists - he was simply one of the suspects and he did it. There are no red herrings, no surprise innocence or guilt He DID it. Minor gripes.

This film, while regarded a poor sister to Bertolucci's alleged later masterpieces, is truly Before the Revolution - the title of his next film, a, yep, 'masterpiece' that isn't. Like so much of art generally, and unhappily film especially, cute proclivities in Commare Secca, all-to-soon became compulsive and dull, mannerisms.

A Director too often lauded and far too often castigated (Pauline Kael's insane rants against Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man) this film is a confident tour-de-force of very young film maker as virtuoso.

A spectacular must see.

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.

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

I bought this movie from Criterion thinking a film accepted by them couldn't lead me astray (only later did I learn Armgageddon and The Rock were part of their collection), and boy was I wrong.

This is really one of the most pointless films I've ever seen. It took a big risk trying with it's innovative non linear structure (ala Rashamon) and gambles like this are usually hit or miss; Rashamon was a hit, this was a miss.

The plot is quite similar to Rashamon in that it's told by four separate accounts of the same event, a murder of a prostitute by a soldier, a pimp and wife, a devious night club worker, and a punk kid who were all near the scene and interrogated as suspects. One of the chief problems though is it is missing characters who actually care or discuss what happened, making it hard for a viewer to relate to what he just saw.

In Rashamon the character's discussion at the beginning and end of the trial as it be validated the themes of that movie, not to mention the hollowed out building they sat in to avoid the rain was the chief visual metaphor of the film. There were constant cuts back to that structure throughout the length of the film.

The Grim Reaper really doesn't have that basis so the cinematography and editing just wander around aimlessly, and I use the word wander because the camera is quite free moving about in this film, apparently thats supposed to be one of the virtues of this film.

Overall the central problem of this film is that it's non linear structure and subjective accounts of the same event generally just don't work unless there are common themes and setting throughout or any way for the audience to relate to what just happened. Normally if a film tells a good linear story with beginning to end plot it doesn't have to be particularly meaningful; this film put itself at risk by trying to be innovative and suffered the consequence.