1900 (1973)

Let’s go back to a time when movies were still being made by pioneering directors. Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Bogdonavich. A time when Bernardo Bertolucci was still a viable source of important and at least semi-entertaining films like The Conformist and Last Tango In Paris. A time when Robert DeNiro was putting in amazing performance after amazing performance. A time when Gerard Depardieu wasn’t a fat cartoon character. And a time when Donald Sutherland could still act. (Did anyone see Shadow Conspiracy? “Your thafty ith my conthern, thir.”)

The year was 1976 and all of these factors were well in place. That was the year of this humongous epic.

1900 is the story of two Italian men from birth to age 44. Both were born on the day that composer Verdi died in 1901. It was also a year of great upheaval in the Italian government. The Fascists and the Communists were constantly fighting to gain control of the country and the people were divided. Alfredo Berlinghieri (DeNiro) was born to a rich landowner and Olmo Dalco (Depardieu) was the bastard son of one of the women who worked the farm. The boys’ grandfathers (Burt Lancaster and Sterling Hayden (General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove) respectively) were old friends but have had a rift between their friendship ever since one became rich and the other poor. Alfredo and Olmo, although they are completely different, become very close friends. At a very young age they find out that their families have different political views. The Berlinghieris, since they are rich, seem to want the Fascists out of power, but they don’t want to rock the boat in order to stop them. The Dalcos are more rebellious. They’ll strike, fight or die for their cause. The boys are no different from their families.

After Olmo comes back from the war, things have changed even more. Atilla (Donald Sutherland) has taken over as foreman of the farm and is pretty much Alfredo’s father’s hand man. He’s cruel, ruthless and pretty much pure evil. Everyone sees it, but no one has the guts to say anything about it but Olmo and he is kept quiet by everyone else. The father really isn’t much better. He has no compassion for his workers and forces them to rebel.

Olmo and Alfredo go to the city, meet women, fall in love and continue to see the differences in themselves. Olmo becomes more interested in socialist/communistic causes and Alfredo becomes more and more tyrannical and weak. He doesn’t like what Fascist Atilla is doing to his people and claims to be a Socialist, but he doesn’t think that he can do anything. He drives his wife, Ada (Dominique Sanda) to drinking, but she was annoying before that. Even his loving uncle has left him behind.

The story reminded me of a cross between the Godfather Trilogy, Casino and Raging Bull. A young man becomes his father, which is exactly what he didn’t want to do. His wife hates what he’s become and is driven to alcoholism. The young man accuses his best friend of having an affair with his wife. (DeNiro doesn’t have the famous line in this one, though. Woulda been funnier if he had, though.)

Bertolucci is amazing as always at capturing time and place with his camera. It’s a beautiful film even if the scenery is very dirty. He’s also a master at catching the feelings of his characters. We felt the pain of every one of them.

One thing that surprised me was the fact that he was able to keep a good pace throughout this five hour eleven minute magnum opus. (Yes, I sat through a five hour movie–with intermission. I am a loser.) Most of Bertolucci’s films are long, ponderous and don’t make a whole lot of sense. This one and The Last Emperor are different, though. They don’t drag at all and the stories are amazingly interesting. 1900 went on at a great clip until about the last 20 or 30 minutes. That was when the five hour time frame felt like 1900 in real time. (The film wraps around on itself starting and ending with DeNiro looking a bit like You Bet Your Life-era Groucho and Donald getting pitchforks in all extremities.) Bertolucci seemed to want to show everything at the end so that we knew exactly what happened to each character no matter how minor. There’s even an anti-Schindler’s List part to the proceedings. This is when things get really self-indulgent. It’s almost as if he couldn’t decide on one ending, so he put all of them on. And then there’s a bit with Olmo and Alfredo as old men fighting. It’s laughable until the very last image.

Like almost all Bertolucci films this one is very sexually explicit. This version (the 1991 restored director’s cut) has all of the naughty bits added back in and I think they go even further than Last Tango even dreamed of. As the guy who introduced the film says, we got to know DeNiro like only his ex-wives and doctors know him. Definitely some images I never thought I would see, like DeNiro and Depardieu being masturbated at the same time by a prostitute and two young boys checking out their penises. (Looks like Olmo shrank as he got older. Hmm.) That’s something I probably could have done without, but it made sense in the story, so I guess it wasn’t totally exploitive. Funny what they can get away with in Italy.

It’s a lot more violent than most of Bernardo’s films. I can’t remember any violence (unless it’s sexual violence in Last Tango) in any of the ones I’ve seen. This one, however, has some of the most disturbing violence ever put on film, most of it from Sutherland’s character. Between killing a little boy (the one scene that makes this movie deserve its NC-17 re-rating) and head-butting a cat he runs the gamut of despicable acts. He’s one of the screen’s most evil men since Henry Fonda’s character in Once Upon A Time In The West (which Mr. Bertolucci did some camera work on).

The performances from everyone else are pretty amazing, too. Gerard has finally shown me that, at least at one time, he could act. What happened? Why do movies like My Father The Hero and Green Card when you could still be doing good movies. And what was up with his guest shot in Kenneth Brannagh’s otherwise brilliant version of Hamlet? I couldn’t understand a word he said. This shows why he’s one of the most important actors to come out of France. Through most of the movie he seemed to be fighting alone for his cause and you could see the pain and anger even when he was happy. Always a brooding bit of hatred underneath.

And DeNiro shows us what he used to be able to do. Now that he’s acting with cartoons it’s hard to imagine that this guy was once considered one of the greatest actors alive. He and Brando had the market cornered on crazy anti-heroes. Here, though he’s playing the polar opposite: a weak man who believes one thing in his heart, but doesn’t think he’s allowed to act it out. Then he ends up nearly believing what he never wanted to. A very layered job from a national treasure that has kind of forgotten what he’s supposed to be doing. (Really. Think of one truly great performance he’s put in since Goodfellas. Flawless is about the only one I can think of that comes anywhere near what he could do.) Unfortunately this is kind of a lost DeNiro movie much like Once Upon A Time In America, another epic that needs to have a big re-release.

The supporting cast is equally good even if it’s a little hard to see Burt Lancaster, one of the most American actors ever in my opinion, as an Italian pervert. (Nice enough guy, but in the end he’s basically a perv.) The only problem I had with the cast was Dominique Sanda as Alfredo’s wife Ada. She was beautiful at first, but then she spoke. She has a voice slightly more manly than mine…and it’s not sexy on her. Kathleen Turner can get away with it, but she can’t. Then she started acting like a complete idiot. (Just one more comparison to Casino. I hated Sharon Stone’s character in that movie.) There’s a scene where they all go to a party thrown by Olmo’s people. She starts to act like she’s blind and runs into people screaming about how blind she is. Then, when the jig is up, she runs around apologizing to everyone, running into them again. Even when they’re all running towards a fire trying to put it out she still can’t stand to not be the center of attention. “Why are you going?! I was only joking! I am not blind! Come back!” I wanted DeNiro to bring out Joe Pesci and whack her right in front of everyone.

This is, unfortunately, a movie that has gone unnoticed for a long time. Not a lot of people have heard of it and those who have don’t want to sit through the whole thing. (Even the “short” version is four hours long.) It’s worth it, though. Everyone is in their peak form and, except for the very end, it’s totally engaging and goes by faster than most three hour epics made these days. If you can, find the director’s cut. I’ve never seen the original American release, but I hear that it doesn’t make very much sense because of all of the cuts. As long as you can stomach some of the more shocking scenes this is a great movie. It’s a story that doesn’t get a lot of recognition, too. Not in film, anyway. It’s worth the five hours just for that.