FILM-FORWARD.COM

Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video

LOVE AND ANGER (1968)
Produced by: Carlo Lizzani.
Music by: Giovanni Fusco.
Language: Italian with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Italy. 112 min. Not Rated.

"L'Indifferenza"
Directed by: Carlo Lizzani.
Written by: Puccio Pucci & Piero Badalassi.
Director of Photography: Sandro Mancori.
Edited by: Franco Fraticelli.
With: Tom Baker.

"L'Agonia"
Directed by: Bernardo Bertolucci.
Written by: Puccio Pucci & Piero Badalassi.
Director of Photography: Ugo Piccone.
Edited by: Roberto Perpignani.
With: Julian Beck, Judith Malina & Adriano Aprà.

"La Sequenza del Fiore di Carta"
Directed by: Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Written by: Puccio Pucci & Piero Badalassi.
Director of Photography: Giuseppe Ruzzolini.
Edited by: Nino Baragli.
With: Ninetto Davoli.

"L'Amore"
Directed & Written by: Jean-Luc Godard.
Director of Photography: Alain Levent.
Edited by: Agnès Guillemot.
With: Nino Castelnuovo, Christine Gueho, Catherine Jourdan.

"Discutiamo, Discutiamo"
Directed & Written by: Marco Bellocchio.
Director of Photography: Aiace Parolin.
With: Marco Bellocchio.

This Italian anthology of five loosely connected segments is unmistakably from 1968. According to director Carlo Lizzani's DVD interview, each episode was to be a variation of a gospel, though this is only apparent in the Good Samaritan figure of "L'Indifferenza," directed by Lizzani. An urban nightmare played out in broad daylight, its gritty on-location scenes of New York City rival that of Midnight Cowboy. In Pasolini's brief "La Sequenza del Fiore di Carta," a happy-go-lucky youth breezes down Rome's Via Nazionale, holding a giant flower - it is 1968 - while archival footage of Hitler, falling bombs, Pope Pius II, and LBJ fade in and fade out; the past is not so distant.

A dying man does not get his wish to be alone in Bertolucci's "L'Agonia." Instead, he's surrounded by accusatory mourners, performed by the noted and peripatetic troop The Living Theatre. Reflecting his interest in this company, Bertolucci patiently follows the actors improvising as they writhe, moan, scream, and drool. What was far out then remains far out now.

Didactic politics tromp "Amour," a precursor to director Jean-Luc Godard's more radical films a decade later. A man discusses with a woman the goings-on of another couple in Italian while she responds in French, as if they're watching a film, the biblically entitled "The Departure and Return of the Prodigal Children." Both couples appear to be on the same rooftop garden. The voyeurs scrutinize art, from noting "Cinema is the art of lying" to praising fellow director Bertolucci as a bolt of lightning representing the truth. Politically, the French woman predicts, "America will be the theatre of great wars fought by all humanity," while on the screen a title provocatively reads "Hecho en Cuba." Enthused by Youth Power, students act out a riotous classroom demonstration in "Discutiamo, Disuctiamo." One dons a beard, acting as a professor who will be later denounced as a tool of a class-conscious university. With little camera movement, the Brecht- and Mao-quoting polemic comes across as a filmed play, one that could easy be imagined taking place in Berkeley. As a witness to the times, the anthology is a fascinating time capsule. For those not familiar with the later works of Bertolucci or the early films of Godard, the shorts will be an illuminating change of pace.

DVD Extras: Filmed in long takes, often from unflattering angles, the dry talking-head documentary does have intermittent moments of appeal for those interested in the Italian Nouvelle Vague and in post-war film in general. Lizzani, now in his late eighties, started out a generation earlier than the other directors as a neorealist director. He discusses working with Pasolini, as well as his political break from his left-wing circle. After living in China in 1957, Lizzani foresaw that Mao would become another Stalin. And as with Lizzani, Pasolini is also the man of the hour in assistant director Maurizio Ponzi's reminisces. His take on the director's personality offers a fresher and more personal insight than that featured in the recent DVD extra of Pasolini's Teorema (Koch Lorber). Kent Turner
October 31, 2005

Home

About Film-Forward.com

Archive of Previous Reviews

Film-Forward.com, 180 Thompson Street, New York, NY 10012 - Contact us