PARTNER (1968)
Directed by: Bernardo Bertolucci.
Produced by: Giovanni Bertolucci.
Written by: Bernardo Bertolucci & Gianni Amico.
Director of Photography: Ugo Piccone.
Edited by: Roberto Perpignani.
Music by: Ennio Morricone.
Released by: NoShame.
Language: Italian with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Italy. 112 min. Rated: .
With: Pierre Clèmenti, Tina Aumont, Sergio Tofano & Stefania Sandrelli.
DVD Features: “Dreams from the Other Side” - Interview with director Bernardo Bertolucci. “To Edit a Partner” - interview with editor Roberto Perpignani. His Days of Glory (1969) feature film. “Back to Glory” - interview with director Edoardo Bruno. Outtakes, rehearsal footage, screen tests, posters, & still galleries. 10-page booklet.

When the alienated, flighty, and surely schizophrenic Giaccobe (Pierre Clémenti) decides it's time to kill himself, the absurd happens: he meets his doppelganger, Giaccobe. A renegade revolutionary on the lam, his double can do everything that drama teacher Giaccobe has never been able to do. And so Giacobbe invites the other Giacobbe to live in his mirrored closet in order to trade places when needed, leading to bizarre sequences that make Jean-Luc Godard seem as accessible as Cameron Crowe.

That's not a stale comparison, either. Bertolucci combines a hefty amount of inspiration from Godard with his source material, Dostoyevsky's story "The Double," to depict a character and a country split between an identity built on and torn apart by politics. You can smell Godard in the mundane violence, the characters' free-wheeling discussions of Marxism, and the surreal declarations and criticism of art. Beautifully transferred, it's a wonderful film to see on DVD and the last of Bertolucci's '60s experimentations before his turn towards romantic realism.

DVD Extras: NoShame Films has really cut its teeth on this release, going so far as to include a bonus feature (Edoardo Bruno's His Days of Glory) on the second disc. The film (also touched by Godard, as Bruno explains in his thorough 40-minute interview) is another lost artifact of the Italian New Wave, which actually borrows a scene from Partner to open the film. Appropriately, both films feature Pierre Clémenti and share a common political discourse, providing an interesting historical lens to reflect on each other.

It's Bertolucci's interview that's the highlight of the DVD. The featurette finds the director at his most forthcoming. The interview with editor Roberto Perpignani is less so, but still garners interest by explaining the technical underpinnings of Bertolucci's vision. The 10-page collector's booklet includes four essays - the best of which written by Edoardo Bruno - that fall into the same caliber as NoShame's previous companion booklets with sloppy, somewhat repetitive writing. But this is a small mark against an otherwise notable DVD. Zachary Jones
October 31, 2005