1900--Novecento (1976)

One of cinema's greatest epics!

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

 

One of the great epic films of all time, lasting some 5 hours. It required 45 weeks to shoot (which is an eternity in terms of the length of time it takes to shoot the average feature. As the director has noted, many of the crew were married and divorced during this time.

 

It explores the political and social history of Italy from the death of Giuseppe Verdi in 1901 through the rise of the Fascists.  It is done through the story of how the  group of peasant workers rise up against the wealthy landowner.

 

However, the story opens on Liberation Day in Italy, April 23, 1945. A young boy is walking into the forest and he is gunned down by a man in a gray uniform. However, the war is over. In the fields, women chase down two people whom we later find out are Attila (Donald Sutherland) and his wife, Regina (Laura Betti). They are stabbed with pitchforks and captured. A young boy with a rifle threatens Alfredo (Robert De Niro), who at this time has gray hair and is the current landowner. The boy takes him out to the cow shed. Though the boy is called Leonida, he tells Alfredo his name is now Olmo (“elm”). The mention of the name causes Alfredo to begin telling the story.

 

Then we move back to the dawn of January 27, 1901. A hunchback, whose name is Rigoletto is staggering drunkenly down a road, bemoaning the fact that Verdi is dead.  We arrive at the estate of Alfredo Berlinghieri (Burt Lancaster) for whom the younger Alfredo is named.  Giovanni (Romolo Valli) is the father of the younger Alfredo and the heir to Alfredo the Elder. He is a rather greedy man who looks down his nose at the peasants who work for him.

 

The first 70 minutes is taken up with the childhood of Alfredo and Olmo, played by Paolo Pavesi and Riccardo Maccanti, respectively. We watch them going through the typical boyhood competitiveness, but Olmo is never willing to bow down before Alfredo as a child or as an adult, even though he is employed by Giovanni. Olmo is defiant of Alfredo’s insistence that he is more intelligent, and therefore superior to mere peasants.

 

There are three parallel scenes of the two. As young boys, after W.W. I, and in their final years, they pretend to fight with each other, grappling on the ground.  An important thing that Olmo does is to lie parallel in between the railroad tracks and allow a train to pass over him. He survives, but Alfredo is horrified.  Later Alfredo does let the train pass over him when Olmo leaves to join the Army.

 

The focus of the story are the lives of Alfredo Berlinghieri (played by Robert De Niro from a young adult to old age) , son of the landowner Giovanni. Alfredo is born on the same day (Jan. 27, 1901) The other focal point Olmo Dalco (played by Gérard Depardieu from a young adult to old age), the b*****d son of the peasant family that cares for the estate’s land and livestock. The patriarch of the peasants is Leo (Sterling Hayden), who says that at the dinner table there are 40 family members.

 

The primary female characters are Ada (Dominique Sanda), who imagines herself to be a rather uninhibited crazy modern poet. She meets Alfredo at his uncle Ottavio’s (Werner Bruhns) house. He thinks she is his uncle’s mistress, though she is actually a virgin whom Alfredo deflowers.  Anita (Ana Henkel) is the woman who attracts Olmo, and she waits for him during W.W. I. She is his ideal of a working class woman and is pregnant with his child.  

 

Alfredo’s cousin Regina (Laura Betti) has known Alfredo for his entire life. It is her dream to be his wife. She is quite disgusted when he marries Ada. She tries to keep her father’s spirit alive by marrying Attila, the foreman of the Dalcos who is a brutal Fascist who sides with the landowners.

 

While Olmo joins the Italian Army in World War I, Alfredo remains behind to learn how to run the family plantation from his father. When the workers go on strike, Giovanni tries stubbornly to mobilize the other landowners against them.  Even his son resists his desires. 

 

Ultimately, he inherits the family land. When Olmo returns, their friendship continues. However, there is tension because his father hired Attila (Donald Sutherland) as his foreman. Attila is a brutal and sadistic Fascist. He is in charge of the Dalco family and treats them very cruelly.

 

As time passes, the workers slowly come into greater conflict with the landowners. The influence of the Communist Party and Josef Stalin are greater. After Alfredo is put on “trial” by the workers, he is finally freed when Olmo convinces the workers that he is dead.  At the conclusion, a scene is duplicated that resembles the childhood of the boys. Olmo dared Alfredo to lie in between the railroad tracks and allow the train to pass over him. Olmo, as a young boy, did it successfully. Now, Alfredo as an old man, lies across the tracks but positions himself so he will be decapitated. However, we do not see that as the film ends.

 

Bertolucci designed arranged the film to evolve as the seasons change. The film opens in the summer with the childhood stories. Then as the Fascists take more of a prominent role, the seasons change to fall and winter. Finally, as the war ends and the Fascists are defeated, the season changes to spring.

 

Equally important is the extremely uninhibited way in which life is portrayed. The director does do certain things to shock the viewer, but there is never a sense of exploitation.  Sexual moments are shown in a VERY honest way. The result is an expansive and beautiful film by one of cinema’s great creators.