When one is born to a renowned Italian poet and writer (said writing also branching into the realm of film criticism) like Attilio Bertolucci, it’s only natural that a similar flair for poeticism should infiltrate his own work, regardless of medium. In Bernardo Bertolucci’s case, said medium would eventually come to mean film–in large part due to the friendship Attilio formed with the ultimate Italian bambino terribile (if you will) of cinema, Pier Paolo Pasolini. It was this friendship that also benefitted Bernardo, who served as the first assistant director on Pasolini’s 1961 film, Accattone. It was, in fact, a direct result of Attilio helping Pasolini to publish his first book that the latter felt inclined to repay the favor in some way. With the Pasolini relationship established as a result of Attilio, Bernardo would go on to direct his first feature from a screenplay by Pasolini called La Commare Secca in 1962. In keeping with both men’s consistent fascination with the perverse (they were the answer to Rainer Werner Fassbinder before said German made his mark on cinema later in the 60s), the premise of the story is centered around the murder of a prostitute near the Tiber, as police question several of the parties who were at the scene during the time the crime was committed. In many respects an Italian-style Rashomon, Bertolucci denied having ever seen the acclaimed Kurosawa film at that point in his life–perhaps only further proof of how natural the Rashomon phenomenon is in every culture.
Attilio’s literary association with Alberto Moravia (and, ultimately, Enzo Siciliano) on the famed Italian journal, Nouvi Argomenti, is also what had a hand in leading Bernardo to adapt Moravia’s lauded The Conformist into a movie version. It was possibly the unrealized vision of becoming a poet like his father that continuously led Bernardo down the most literary paths possible in his filmic choices–not just the aesthetic and devices used, but the very material he chose. In addition to adapting Paul Bowles’ 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky for the 1990 film of the same name, there was even a long period of toying with how to adapt Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, with Warren Beatty at one point the strongest contender for playing the lead role in a screenplay that would never materialize in a usable form.
That Bernardo never completed his studies in Modern Literature at the University of Rome in part stemmed from a film career rather falling into his lap thanks to Attilio, who secured him that initial gig as first assistant director. In some ways, this could have very well been Attilio’s own psychology preventing his son from truly competing with him in the same art–for one knows how adversarial fathers and sons can be when they’re attempting to prove which party is better at something. In lieu of the other side of the spectrum of how this can manifest (e.g. Franz Kafka remarking of and to his father, “What was always incomprehensible to me was your total lack of feeling for the suffering and shame you could inflict on me with your words and judgments.”), Attilio took an approach almost coddling in nature so as to assure his son’s artistic success. Yet an artistic success redirected away from poetry (hence Bernardo’s fixation on establishing a language of poetry in film).
It would seem that Bernardo was aware of how much his father had a hand in his ascent, subconsciously parodying it in his 1981 feature, Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, in which the son of the owner of a cheese factory is kidnapped for ransom, only to prompt his father to engage in a scheme that will allow him reinvest the money in the failing factory. In point of fact, the majority of Bernardo’s later work would address in some way the manner in which parents (particularly artist parents) affect their children in a manner that leaves them sooner or later longing to fill some void with art the same way their parents did, finding said pursuit somehow less satisfying than they imagine their progenitor must have. The most prime example of this is what could easily be billed as the hetero Call Me By Your Name of the 90s, Stealing Beauty, one of Bertolucci’s more under appreciated works, not to mention a lush and sensual two hour poem honoring virginity (and its loss)/sexual awakening, first love and, of course, Tuscany (Emilia-Romagna, after all, is the region Bernardo hailed from).
The Dreamers, too, addresses the pursuit of “children” invoking the power of the bohemian lifestyle through the lens of the political (Attilio and Bernardo both were of the Marxist bent). Incidentally, Pasolini himself wasn’t as sympathetic with the uprising students during the infamous May 1968 riots, calling out hypocrisy among the petit bourgeoisie protesting, and instead proffering that the police were the true proletariat in the scenario. That our main characters–brother and sister Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green)–are caught in a compromising position with their newfound American friend, Matthew (Michael Pitt), by their largely absentee parents is, to a certain extent, the expression of Bernardo’s own fear of being caught…for doing something wrong, not being as he should be in the eyes of his own father (and, one supposes, mother–though no one talks much about Ninetta Giovanardi).
Yet it would seem Bernardo certainly got more praise and attention in his lifetime than his fellow director and brother, Giuseppe, who was, granted, more playwright and theater-oriented despite having an impressive filmography under his belt as well. Maybe Attilio simply didn’t feel as threatened, therefore close to, his youngest son enough to push him in the same way as Bernardo. That push being greatly manifest in the sweeping 1976 historical epic, 1900, or the groundbreaking (for getting the Chinese government’s approval alone) 1987 period piece, The Last Emperor. As one reflects on the auteur’s filmography, it’s plain to see that at every new career turn, there was an apparent drive within Bernardo to one-up not just himself, but the achievements of Attilio. Something that could never truly be done in that Bernardo did not seek to re-explore poetry in the same regard after university.
While cinephiles might thank Attilio for pushing his son into the world of cinema, Maria Schneider (no relation to Rob), who died seven years ago at age fifty-eight, likely wished he hadn’t, for it might have spared her lifelong emotional trauma over the precious “butter scene” in Last Tango in Paris that Bernardo and Marlon Brando were in on together, springing the key detail of using this particular condiment right before the scene was to be shot in one of many endless examples of the male abuse of power in the film industry. But yes, there is Bertoluccian poetry even in this pantomime of rape. For, as Bernardo once explained, “My father basically had two ways of judging anything. Either something was poetic or it wasn’t.” Hence, the over-the-top poeticism of every feature the director ever rendered to the screen (again, Stealing Beauty being arguably the most stylized of his later years).
