On Blu-ray/Reissued on DVD: 1900 (1977)

1900
(Italy/France/Germany, 1977)

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.  Written by Franco Arcalli, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Bernardo Bertolucci.  Cast: Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Burt Lancaster, Donald Sutherland, Stefania Sandrelli, Francesca Bertini, Laura Betti, Werner Bruhns, Stefania Casini, Sterling Hayden, Anna Henkel, Ellen Schwiers, Alida Valli, Romolo Valli, Giacomo Rizzo, Paolo Pavesi, Roberto Maccanti, Maria Monti, Jose Quaglio, Pietro Longari Ponzoni, Piero Vida. (Unrated, 315 mins)

In recent years, Paramount hasn't been known for showing an interest in making its back catalog available, so they've been licensing titles out to the upstart Olive Films label (recent releases include a batch of Jerry Lewis comedies and the '70s cop thrillers HIT! and BADGE 373).  Back in 2006, Paramount listened to fan requests and made the surprise decision to release the uncut version of Bernardo Bertolucci's European political epic 1900 on DVD.  It wasn't in print very long and now they've farmed it out to Olive Films for a DVD re-release (minus the bonus features on the 2006 DVD but with a 2002 documentary on Bertolucci that wasn't on the previous release) and a debut on Blu-ray.  It looks mostly good on Blu-ray, framed at 1.78:1, a change from the DVD's 1.85:1 (IMDb claims the original aspect ratio is 1.66:1, so who knows?).  The difference is pretty minor, and I only noticed one shot where the change made a difference and something seemed oddly-framed (we should just be thankful that cinematographer Vittorio "2.00:1" Storaro wasn't put in charge of the Blu-ray transfer)  There's some scenes where there's a bit too much saturation and the caked makeup and wig-cap glue lines on the actors' heads are plainly obvious, but overall, the colors are bolder and the textures better-defined than the occasionally washed-out DVD.  Probably worth the upgrade for fans of this long-neglected masterpiece, but the transfer is not perfect. If ever a film deserved to be rescued by a Criterion restoration, it's this one, but the Blu-ray's visual inconsistencies may be inherent in the film itself.  You know how sometimes the higher-resolution of Blu-ray doesn't help?  This might be the case here, depending on one's tolerance for grain.  Still, this Blu-ray is probably as good as it'll ever get for a film that may come to be regarded as either Bertolucci's finest work or his ultimate act of madness.

De Niro and Depardieu as best friends torn
apart by political upheaval in 1900

I do think it's Bertolucci's masterpiece and it's also one of the great epics in all of cinema.  It never ceases to amaze me that a film this mind-bogglingly expansive and ambitious even got made, let alone distributed by a major Hollywood studio, but after LAST TANGO IN PARIS, Bertolucci clearly had enough clout to do what he wanted.  It's a densely-plotted, graphically violent, sexually explicit film with major Hollywood stars and a pro-Communist agenda and it's over five hours long and took over a year to shoot.  Of course, the US release was cut down from 315 minutes to 243 minutes, losing a little over an hour but still running four (a 255-minute version also exists).  Bertolucci didn't cut any scene in its entirety--he just shortened them or toned down some of the more graphic material to avoid an X rating.  The 2006 DVD and this new Blu-ray have the director's complete 315-minute version, restored and shown in the US for the first time in the mid 1990s and given an NC-17 rating, which was dropped in favor of simply going without a rating.  How graphic is this film's content?  I don't know what necessarily constitutes an abundance of nudity, but even Sterling Hayden's dick gets some screen time.

Burt Lancaster as the padrone

Beginning in 1901 on the day of Verdi's death, the film chronicles the following 44 years of political turmoil in Italy, centered on the wealthy, landowning Berlingheri family and the peasant Dalco family who work their wheat fields and their farm.  The patriarchs--padrone Alfredo Berlingheri (Burt Lancaster) and peasant leader Leo Dalco (Hayden) have grandsons born on this very day.  As youths, the boys, the Berlingheri child also named Alfredo (Paolo Pavesi) and Olmo Dalco (Roberto Maccanti) are close friends and despite his bourgeois upbringing, Alfredo feels more at home with the field workers than with his family, especially his cold father Giovanni (Romolo Valli).  The boys grow, and Alfredo (Robert De Niro) and Olmo (Gerard Depardieu) eventually find themselves at the center of a Fascist uprising, started by greedy Giovanni, who uses religion and patriotism to rope in the rich in his quest to keep profits high and the peasants under their thumbs.  Giovanni hires a sadistic foreman, Attila (a demonic Donald Sutherland) to lord over the Dalco clan, who see jobs eliminated and wages reduced while the Berlingheris get richer and more decadent by the year.  All the while, the politically active Olmo fights the Fascist movement while Alfredo passively steps aside and looks the other way while Attila's power grows.

Donald Sutherland as the sadistic Attila

Many characters weave in and out of the story, which unfolds and progresses like a great novel.  With Storaro's stunning cinematography and a majestic score by Ennio Morricone, 1900 looks and sounds incredible.  And rarely has a film this long been so consistently engrossing.  It's truly a film like no other.  It's remarkably ambitious, grandiose, operatic, overwrought, and profoundly moving in equal measures.  Every few minutes, there's some beautifully-staged sequence or some inspired bit of crazed acting or some unexpected transgression happening.  The sexual content is surprising at times:  young Alfredo and Olmo compare erections in a controversial scene; as young adults, they visit a prostitute (Stefania Casini) who gives them simultaneous handjobs and there's no effects or camera trickery...she's really stroking both De Niro and Depardieu; there's a weird scene where De Niro's Alfredo uses the butt of a shotgun to masturbate his horny cousin Regina (Laura Betti), who's also seen going down on Sutherland while he rants about Fascist ideals.  There's also some almost-Pasolini levels of scatology:  Lancaster buries his feet in cow shit before asking a peasant girl to feel his impotent penis; Bertolucci gives us a close-up of a horse taking a steaming dump and the piles of manure get thrown at Sutherland.  The violence is also very disturbing at times, especially the fate of a little boy raped and killed by Attila and Regina, and a rough, non-faked scene where Depardieu kills and guts a large pig.

Sterling Hayden as peasant leader Leo Dalco

There are shocking elements in 1900, but it's never exploitative.  The film is not just a political history of Italy, but it also functions as a history of cinema.  Rarely has such an eclectic group of actors been brought together on the same film.  Young breakout stars like De Niro and Depardieu, an established box office star in Sutherland,  Hollywood legends Lancaster and Hayden, acclaimed European stars Dominique Sanda (as De Niro's wife), Romolo Valli, Alida Valli, and Stefania Sandrelli (as Depardieu's wife), and perhaps most interesting, the inclusion of Francesca Bertini in a rare screen appearance as Lancaster's older sister.  Bertini, born in 1892, was the first major star in Italian cinema, with a screen career dating back to 1907.  In her 80s and long retired by this point, Bertolucci talked her into taking a small role, and in a film with history as its central theme, Bertini's appearance, limited to maybe three scenes, really does feel special. Bertolucci also establishes a connection to his own inspirations in Lancaster again being cast in an Italian film as an aging patriarch lamenting the passage of time and the changing of values, which he'd portrayed so masterfully in Luchino Visconti's THE LEOPARD (1963).  With a mix of actors speaking English, Italian, French, and German (mostly English), the English-dubbed option is probably the way to go, as you get the voices of De Niro, Sutherland, Lancaster, Hayden, and a few others.  Depardieu is dubbed by someone else for the English version, but his voice can be heard on the French track.

De Niro's Alfredo, the landowner put
on trial by his field workers

1900 took over a year to film.  Shooting began in May 1974 and ended in September 1975.  De Niro had finished THE GODFATHER PART II but it hadn't been released when he started shooting 1900.  He made TAXI DRIVER immediately after 1900 (and late in 1900's shoot, he would fly from Rome to NYC on weekends to drive a cab to prep for his role as Travis Bickle), but TAXI DRIVER ended up coming out a full year before 1900's US release in late 1977, in its truncated 243-minute version.  It obviously didn't do well and vanished from sight for years until the 255-minute cut got released on VHS in the late '80s.  Even though the uncensored version was ultimately given a brief release in the '90s, it wasn't until the 2006 DVD that Bertolucci's full version was made widely available in the US.  It's an incredible, one-of-a kind film the likes of which we'll never see again, and one that still resonates today.  Decidedly not for all tastes, but adventurous cinema fans who have yet to tackle it should consider it essential viewing.  You've never seen anything like it.

New from Criterion: THE ORGANIZER (1963)

THE ORGANIZER
(1963/Italy-France)

Directed by Mario Monicelli.  Written by Age-Scarpelli (Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli) and Mario Monicelli.  Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot, Gabriella Giorgelli, Folco Lulli, Bernard Blier, Francois Perier, Vittorio Sanipoli, Mario Pisu, Kenneth Kove, Giampiero Albertini. (Unrated, 130 mins).


Famed Italian director Mario Monicelli (BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET) was never identified with the Neorealist movement but was occasionally on the periphery, usually as a script contributor on films like THE CHILDREN ARE WATCHING US and BITTER RICE.  But Neorealism's influences can be seen in THE ORGANIZER, released this week in beautiful DVD and Blu-ray editions by Criterion.

THE ORGANIZER (Italian title: I COMPAGNI, or The Comrades) wears its socialist politics on its sleeve with the story of a late 1800s strike at a Turin textile factory.  The workers, worn down by 14-hour work days with one 30-minute lunch, revolt when an aging, exhausted worker loses his hand in a machine accident.  Uneducated and with a good number of them illiterate, their initial attempts at dealing with management--first with the glad-handing, manipulative supervisor (Vittorio Sanipoli) who keeps trying to convince them that he's on their side and he's "one of them," and then with the openly condescending manager (Mario Pisu)--get them nowhere.  But one day, a grubby-looking stranger calling himself Professor Sinigaglia (Marcello Mastroianni) arrives in town and immediately latches himself to their cause.  But who is Sinigaglia?  He has a friend in schoolteacher Mr. DiMeo (Francois Perier), and may be on the run from police in Genoa. He may even be a con artist.  But he's a natural, charismatic leader, and he inspires the factory workers to stand up for themselves and helps them put together a strike from the planning stages to implementation. Their demands?  A 13-hour work day with a one-hour lunch break, and accident insurance  But the factory management, and the old, angry owner Mr. Luigi (Kenneth Kove) aren't about to play ball.

While the subject matter is serious and the finale a grim, powerful gutpunch, complete with a brilliant final shot that's cynical and heartbreaking, Monicelli and co-writers Age-Scarpelli (the name used by the writing team of Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli) spend a lot of time with these characters, allowing us to know them and their backstories (Mastroianni doesn't appear until 30 minutes into the film) and this establishes a feeling of warmth and familiarity with the workers.  And there's a lot of humor as well.  It's often very funny but never slapsticky, and the filmmakers do a magnificent job of balancing the humor with the serious drama in a way that feels natural and compassionate and never stoops to screaming "Message!"  The script got a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination after the film's 1964 US release, losing to the Cary Grant film FATHER GOOSE.  Giuseppe Rotunno's black & white cinematography makes for a stunning HD presentation in 1.85:1.  Extras include a booklet with a short essay by longtime Village Voice critic J. Hoberman and a 2006 introduction by Monicelli, who committed suicide in 2010 at 95 years of age by jumping from the window of his room at a hospital where was being treated for prostate cancer. 

Criterion have done their usual masterful job with this acclaimed-in-its-day but now somewhat forgotten film whose rediscovery in the US seems perfectly timed with today's economic and political concerns.  Highly recommended.

One-sheet for the film's 1964 US release

New on DVD: CONVERSATION PIECE (1974)

CONVERSATION PIECE
aka GRUPPO DI FAMIGLIA IN UN INTERNO
(Italy/France - 1974)

Directed by Luchino Visconti.  Written by Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Enrico Medioli, Luchino Visconti.  Cast: Burt Lancaster, Helmut Berger, Silvana Mangano, Romolo Valli,  Dominique Sanda, Claudia Cardinale, Claudia Marsani, Stefano Patrizi, Elvira Cortese, Guy Trejan, Umberto Raho, Enzo Fiermonte.  (Unrated, 121 mins)

The penultimate film by legendary Italian director Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) has been derided as one of his worst and most pretentious works for nearly 40 years.  It was shot in English, with much of the Italian supporting cast dubbed, and despite acclaim in Italy, film festival screenings abroad resulted in such bad word-of-mouth that it took three years to find a US distributor.  When then-fledgling New Line Cinema released it in the US in 1977, a year after Visconti's death (his final film, 1976's THE INNOCENT, wasn't released in the US until 1979), they released a version dubbed in Italian with English subtitles, which most agreed played a little better.  Raro USA's new DVD release only has the original English-language audio, and that was the way Visconti intended it to be shown (Raro's Blu-ray, due out in April, will have both audio options).  CONVERSATION PIECE has remained relatively obscure in comparison to Visconti classics like THE LEOPARD (1963), but its reputation has improved since its original release, and the essay in the package's accompanying booklet by film historian Mark Rappaport makes a pretty strong case for it being considered essential Visconti.

1974 Italian poster

Watching the film and with the benefit of perspective, CONVERSATION PIECE is, in hindsight,  a hauntingly personal, elegiac baring of Visconti's soul.  Visconti suffered a debilitating stroke shortly after completing 1973's LUDWIG and was partially paralyzed from then on.  CONVERSATION PIECE was his next film, and it's clearly the work of a man who knows he's facing the end, and it's all there on the screen.  Rappaport even goes so far as to write that the film itself is Visconti's Last Will and Testament.   Admittedly, it's uneven at times, the English dubbing of the supporting cast is an ill fit, and there's some pointless shoehorning of Italy's then-volatile political situation into the crucial final sequences, but, with the passage of time, and years of film students studying Visconti and others of the Italian neo-realist movement, perhaps it's easier to focus on what does work in CONVERSATION PIECE, which is most of the film.  It's not without flaws and problems, but what it gets right is too powerful to simply dismiss.

Poster for the film's 1977 US release

A retired American science professor (Burt Lancaster) lives alone in a grand, opulent Rome palazzo filled with the books, music, and art he's collected over a lifetime.  He has a maid and his only acquaintances seem to be art dealers with whom he occasionally does business, collecting "conversation piece" portraits of informal family or group gatherings.  The professor's solitary existance is disrupted by the Marchesa Bianca Brumonti (Silvana Mangano), a pushy, demanding woman of high social stature, who wants to rent the upper level of the palazzo for her daughter Lietta (Claudia Marsani) and her fiance Stefano (Stefano Patrizi).  The professor repeatedly explains that the upstairs is not for rent and that he planned on moving his library up there at some point in the future.  The Marchesa refuses to take no for an answer and before he even realizes what's going on, the Professor has signed a one-year lease for Lietta, Stefano, and a third boarder, the Marchesa's flamboyant, much-younger boy-toy and drug-dealing gigolo Konrad (Helmut Berger).  The three tenants invade the Professor's life in a variety of ways, including knocking down walls and causing a water leak, loud music at all hours, barging in unannounced, and not to mention the Professor walking in on them in a threesome (Berger and Patrizi do frontal nudity in this scene, but Visconti is careful with how he films 1973 Miss Teen Italy winner Marsani, who was only 15 at the time), but their presence gives an unexpected spark to the Professor's lonely life.  He surprises himself by bonding with Konrad, who loathes being the Marchesa's kept man and demonstrates intelligence and refined musical and literary tastes the Professor didn't think possible.  The Professor begins to lament all the lost years spent alone and is soon "adopted" by this bizarre trio as the father in their makeshift dysfunctional "family."

Deciding three's already a crowd, the Professor (Burt
Lancaster) declines an invitation from the
free-spirited Lietta (Claudia Marsani,
who's probably doubled in this shot)

Lancaster's Professor (he's never given a name) is a character cut from the same cloth as the aging prince the actor portrayed 11 years earlier for Visconti in THE LEOPARD.  Both are old men nearing the end, both filled with regret over roads not taken and societal changes they can't control, and both feel like relics in their own worlds.  But Visconti's declining health adds a different level of poignancy to CONVERSATION PIECE.   The Professor essentially is Visconti, and it's no coincidence that Konrad is played by Helmut Berger.  No one else could've played this role.  Berger became Visconti's lover and protege after working together on 1969's THE DAMNED.  So much of their reportedly rocky relationship is incorporated into CONVERSATION PIECE, and though a romantic angle is never consummated, it is mentioned when the Marchesa accuses the Professor of having designs on Konrad.  It's possible that the Professor feels a romantic desire for Konrad.  He walks into the bathroom while Konrad is showering and seems to be in no rush to leave, only excusing himself when someone knocks at the main door.  We know the Professor was married once upon a time (Claudia Cardinale plays his wife in a brief flashback), but all he says is "It didn't work."  For what reasons, we never know.  Visconti was bisexual, so perhaps the Professor is as well.

Burt Lancaster and Helmut Berger

But beyond any possible romantic scenarios, the Professor and Konrad first and foremost demonstrate a father-son relationship more than anything, which probably has parallels to Visconti and Berger's instructor-protege working relationship.  Rappaport's essay cites Berger's memoirs and other information to paint a picture of Visconti as someone who preferred a quiet evening at home and who was often frustrated with the much-younger Berger's hard-partying, stay-out-until-dawn ways, which is what happens with the Professor and Konrad.  What keeps CONVERSATION PIECE from reaching the level of Visconti masterpiece is the bizarre political tangent that gets introduced in the last part of the film, almost as if Visconti was obliged to say something simply because he came from the school of neo-realism and there was a lot of political tumult in Italy at the time.  It doesn't really gel, and in fact, it's a bit of a momentum killer.  But it's something that can be overlooked, and while CONVERSATION PIECE isn't on the level of THE LEOPARD, I think Rappaport's arguments are convincing enough to elevate it to the status of essential Visconti.  It's also a very beautiful film (the DVD is remastered, 2.35:1 anamorphic), taking place almost entirely inside the Professor's stunningly-decorated, colorful palazzo, a DePaolis interior that looks like it could've been (and probably was) used for several gialli of the period.  And while bleak and mournful most of the way, it also has a lot of dark humor, be it an occasional bit of inspired overacting from Berger or the three tenants giving the Professor a parrot that only says "They're killing me!" with Lietta explaining "It'll remind you of us."  With Raro USA's release of CONVERSATION PIECE, the time seems right for a reconsideration of this neglected and very deeply personal late-period Visconti work.

Somewhat misleading artwork for the film's
1980s VHS release in the US.