There’s a Bertolucci season on at Cinemateca, so this is the second instalment in a mini-Bertolluci binge. Cinemateca projected Novecento over two nights on film, which. during the first part, summoned up a nostalgic memory of the old Cinemateca. One of the projectors had a problem with the sound, which meant the reels had to be changed on the remaining projector that worked, giving a five minute break every twenty minutes or so. Given the slightly jagged nature of Novecento’s edit, this didn’t cause too much grief, although it has to be said that the second part, which flowed effortlessly, was a slightly less taxing viewer experience.
As for the film itself… Several thoughts occurred. Firstly, the seventies really were a golden age of epic filmmaking. The epic hasn’t entirely died (Bela Tarr springs to mind), but the great, sweeping arc of history movie certainly seems to be in abeyance. I would guess that Bertolucci, Angelopoulos, Coppola, Cimino all grew up watching Abel Gance, Renoir and Griffiths and thought, ‘anything they can do, we can do bigger.’ There may not be a lot of political nuance in Novecento, but if you want an example of how cinema can interrogate and represent history, then look no further. The scale of the film and the way in which it reveals the forces that lead to the onset of Mussolini’s fascism, is astonishing.
On the other hand, there is a kind of crude subtlety (if that’s not a tautology) in the premise of childhood friends from different sides of the tracks, each struggling to get by in their own world, whilst seeking to maintain a friendship that grounds them in a common humanity. De Niro and Depardieu offer up compelling performances and their bromance is convincing. They put flesh and blood on the bones of the somewhat contrived premise. This is undoubtably one of De Niro’s great forgotten performances. (He was on a roll with Taxi Driver, Godfather 2, The Deer Hunter and Raging Bull all coming out within a four year period, which must be one of the most fertile acting periods in any career ever). He and Depardieu carry a film which retains its emotional power in spite of obvious issues, presumably to do with finance, in the edit. This is a film that seems to be fuelled by the sheer energy of its participants, (actors, cinematography, music), driving the narrative forwards in spite of its chronological leapfrogs. Novecento is both a testament to the political struggles in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century and the power of cinema to relate those struggles.
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