ARTE E CULTURA
Born into a rich background of artistic talent, Bertolucci flourished as a writer from an early age. His father, a well-known art historian and film critic; his brother, a playwright and director; his cousin, a film producer; his mother, a teacher: it is clear that film and creativity ran in the Bertolucci’s blood.
Apart from his most famous work Last Tango In Paris, known for its controversial rape scene which led to Bertolucci spending 4 months in prison, Bertolucci was very much a product of the events of 1968. The title of his first critically acclaimed film Before the Revolution speaks volumes to this end. Having dropped out the University of Rome in 1962, at the age of 22, Bertolucci was swept away by his passion for film. This led to the creation of Before the Revolution just 2 years later.
“There were authorities everywhere. In fact, the movement of '68 was young people against their authorities, children against their parents. And that remained.” - Bertolucci
Before the Revolution is a racy story of self-discovery entwined with the muder-mystery of his best friend Agostino. Its protagonist, Fabrizio, faces the intellectual struggle of reconciling his belief in militant Communism with his very middle class reality. He attempts to revolt from this: he breaks up with his sweet, very middle class girlfriend Clelia and rejects his parents. But after he hears of Agostino’s death, his despair leads him reconsider the path that was drawn out for him yet again in a far more profound way.
Both Fabrizio and Agostino depict a generation that feels trapped between a desire for Communist revolt and the traditional Catholicism of their parents. Bertolucci himself was a fervent communist and thus the film was intensely personal. Bertolucci married the lead actress, Adriana Asti, in Before the Revolution, who plays Fabrizio’s lover Gina. In the film Fabrizio’s affair is short lived and so too was Bertolucci’s first marriage to Asti lasting 5 years (1967-1972).
Based on Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma, Bertolucci then depicts a spiral of the betrayal of one’s family and the passionate sexuality of politics that leads Fabrizio to realise that it is impossible for the children of the bourgeoisie to escape their roots.
Film critic and scholar Collin MacCabe described Before the Revolution as “the perfect portrait of the generation who were to embrace revolt in the late 1960s”. In this sense, Bertolucci was the heart and soul of what was to become 1968. He understood it well enough that at the age of 24 he could lay out clearly the feelings of a trapped and confused generation.
Bernardo Bertolucci