Last night a sold out audience at the National Film Theatre in London had the privilege of listening to Bernardo Bertolucci, director of The Conformist, Last Tango In Paris, Novecento, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers talk about his life and work.
Now 70 Bertolucci talked energetically about his career and said that he intends to return to directing soon, after almost 10 years of back surgery which has resulted in him having to use a wheelchair.
He expressed great enthusiasm for James Cameron’s Avatar as well as Wim Wender’s 3D dance film Pina and said in his return to directing he will “use a new technology”, that technology being 3D. Like his art house peers Bertolucci intends not to use 3D for sheer spectacle, but instead to tell a story of adolescent love in an adaptation of the Italian novel Me and You by Niccolo Ammaniti.
He also pondered what it would be like to witness a Jean-Luc Godard film in 3D and reflected on what it was like to make his first films in his early twenties. Though 50 years on, it was easily apparent that Bertolucci is as young in spirit as he was when he directed his first features back in the early 1960’s.
Photo by Chiara Capponi
Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” is a film about the pernicious influence of repression of infantile sexual drive on people’s psychological development. It depicts an incestuous sister/brother twins in their early twenties (Isabelle and Theo) who were not able to transgress and need a sexual ersatz-object to have some kind of sexual life. Their American friend Matthew seems fit to help the two beautiful Parisians (he has his own psychological complex which can match their sexual fixation on each other – he is psychologically split between sex and love). This quite widespread condition makes it possible for him to be sexually involved with Isabelle without being loved by her (besides, he himself is attracted to her just sexually, without any amorous complications).
According to the logic of Bertolucci’s images this whole situation is quite common for youth in Western civilization. On the one side we have those who are (like Isabelle and Theo) traumatized by their sexual desires and on the other – those who are (like Matthew) ready for sexual relations without “romantic” involvement. These are two halves of Western youth whose erotic life is a symptom of their psychological underdevelopment.
The drama of our dreamers takes place amidst the student rebellion in Paris of May ’68, and all three of them are maniacally hooked on cinema (they instinctively use cinema instead of living because they cannot be in the world spontaneously and meaningfully – they are not able to perceive the world existentially).
Please, visit: http://www.actingoutpolitics.com to read the essay about “The Dreamers” and other Bertolucci’s films (with analysis of the shots).
By Victor Enyutin