Strategia del ragno

Plot synopsis:
Athos Magnani arrives by train, at the request of his father's mistress, Draifa, in the (fictional) town of Tara, where his father—also named Athos Magnani—was killed before his birth. The father, remembered as a resistance hero and looking exactly like his son, was killed by unknown fascists in 1936—or so says Draifa, the statue in the square, and everyone in the town.
His enquiries meet with evasion or hostility. Eventually three old acquaintances of his father tell him his father planned to blow up Benito Mussolini in the town theatre, during a performance of Rigoletto. The plot failed; the assassin died after being betrayed to the police. Young Athos does not believe this tale either.
Unsure whether to stay in this claustrophobic town where the truth is never told, he hears the sound of Rigoletto coming from the theatre. Entering, he is told that his father failed to go through with the bombing out of fear, and himself tipped off the police. For this his associates killed him, with his agreement, and ascribed the death to unknown fascists. A few days earlier a fortune teller had predicted his death, as in Macbeth, and on his corpse was an unread letter warning him not to go ahead, as in Julius Caesar.
At a ceremony in front of his father's statue, Athos starts to tell this story but stops. Though it was through cowardice and betrayal that his father had made himself into a hero, the town needs its myth. Resolving to leave, at the railway station he hears announcements that trains are increasingly late and, looking at the tracks, he sees they are rusted and overgrown. He too is caught in the web.

Tags: murder, flashback

Review:
Quite a film, combining lush photography with brilliantly realized scenes, one after another in fact, from the beginning arrival of the train to the ending, set on the waiting platform of the train station, with a story that weaves in and out of the present (1970) and past (1936) about fascism and the difficult and ambiguous forms the opposition took to combat it.
Set in Italy's Po River valley in the town of Tara, it beautifully mixes the cinematic elements of plot, music, character, photography, etc...
with a story about the well kept secret of how a man's father became a local hero in the struggle against fascism.
Like any society caught in repression, the heroes we know today, who led the fight, maybe were forced by the circumstances of the times to take actions that could only be understood in the context in which they took place.
Bertolucci does a great in dramatizing that inherent ambiguity that lies under the statue of the popular hero that is in the center of the town.
There are some scenes that simply stand out, especially the outdoor dance (1936) where the hero and the fascists eye each other, and then he grabs the prettiest girl there and has all the dance floor while the camera goes from face to face.
But in a film that is so well composed, this is but one of the highlights, none of which would mean much if the whole operation didn't have such an astute level of direction guiding it.
For a film that relies so much on image, it says a lot, and doesn't squander any of its characters..
I found interesting to watch this movie since I noticed in it some characteristics that were to be strongly noticed in later films, such as the pleasure for the beauty of the composition (every image caught by the camera is very carefully thought before, considering all the elements in it, from a mirror to a chair, to a flower pot; and also studying its position, wheter the person speaking should be in the center or not, distances, etc.).
Bertolucci has also put, I think so at least, a lot of time in this details (which marks a difference from other filming methodes such as those of, let's say, Godard, even though both are worth watching), which grant the film a great artistic quality, since it is very beautiful.
I also see in this film the tendency for mixing stories in different times (remember the last emperor?).A part from this observations, this film has a story to be followed, not as intriguing or as fascinating as others...
Even though this is a political film, that's not even subtle or hidden, the main theme of this one is, in my point of view, the creation of myths, the creation of heros, idols...
Athos Magnani, the father, is an absolute nothing, despite his pseudo idealism, he made nothing in concrete except...
becoming the hero of those people, except becoming one more reason for the fight.
This is a myth, and myths, at least like this, only exist if people believe them.Beautiful landscapes, not spectacular acting (the actor who plays both athos Magnani is not exceptionaly convincing as the son but gives an interesting performance as the father).
I too enjoyed that the director resisted to the temptation of showing exactly the murdering; he did it in a better way.
After having searched high & low for this ridiculously hard to find film by Bernardo Bertolucci, I finally got a watchable VHS print recently (thanx, Scott).
Leonard Maltin may not know much, but he was right on the money when he said that this film contains some of the most staggeringly beautiful cinematography ever put on screen.
The story is, on the surface, a sort of 'search for the truth' mystery/quest that quickly turns into a complex examination of 'the nature of truth'.
The pace is slow, and there isn't much in the way of action, mostly just dialog scenes and gorgeous location shots.
Speaking of pace, this struck me as being quite Tarkovsky-esquire a film (barring a few odd cutaway shots), especially with that last scene that puts the whole film into a different spin.
This may be Bernardo Bertolucci's best film.
A young man returns to his "martyred" Father's village to discover the exact reasons for his father's death at the hands of Facists.
He also discovers more than he may want to know about his father's personal life - including intimate details from his father's mistress.
The supposedly heroic life and death of his father is greatly complicated by the actual evidence and suggestive clues he discovers.
The editing, cinematography, mise en scene, and acting in this film are breathtaking.
Yet the film's triumph lie in the philosophical and political suggestions provoked by the narrative.
This is a film worthy of myriad viewings..
Made the same year as Bertolucci's better known 'The Conformist', this look at the legacy of fascism in a small Italian town certainly has many strong points.
A son returns to a town where his father – an anti-fascist fighter in the years of Mussolini – was murdered by person(s) unknown, and has been made into a martyr and a hero by the locals.
The son meets those who knew his father, and as he tries to discover the truth about what happened in the past, the reality gets more and more complex.
A touch of the conventional thriller runs through this in a good way, keeping the story focused, even when the film-making techniques are a little more obscure or baroque.
Only the slightly flat acting, which feels a bit phony and distancing, keep this from seeming more like a full-on masterpiece.
It's as if Bertolucci wanted to engage only our heads, when nothing would have been lost by pulling in our hearts as well - something I think he succeeded with in "The Conformist" That said, given that many see this as Bertolucci's best film, I'll watch it again..
Somehow I always thought this was Bertolucci's first film.
We were young and Bertolucci was very left-wing so it was de rigueur to find this great, but in fact it was boring.
The plot meanders on, the acting is wooden, and in the end you don't know if there was a story there at all.
Bertolucci has become an icon, maybe more because of the scandals adhering to his films than of the intrinsic worth of his cinematographic output (in contrast to for instance Ettore Scola).
La Strategia del ragno is a beautifully shot, superbly acted movie with a lot of twists.
At fist glance the story depicts a man, Athos Jr, who has to solve the murder on his father, Athos Sr. This is asked of him by his father's mistress.
Later it becomes clear that that story is the strategy of the mistress to get him to replace his father (the two are identical).
The third story that runs through the movie is why Athos Sr was in fact killed.
It seems he's a traitor, but it's my guess that he staged his own death from the beginning (including his treason), without his friends knowing.
The only one who finds out the whole truth is Athos Jr. The way these stories are told and how they interact is magnificent.
Don't try to understand my very short summary, just watch the movie.
The Last Emperor is not Bertolucci's best, although I like that one, too.
His early films were often too 'artistic' to be taken seriously and his pretentiousness is quite evident here; he borrowed soundly from Godard and it shows with the  excess wearisomeness.
The plot concerns a young man named Athos Magnani who visits a small village in Italy where his father was reputedly an "anti-fascist freedom fighter" in 1936, but from the flash backs, he was a pompous jerk who really didn't do much anti-fascist work.
In one scene of a dance in the village, Athos' father is smoking his cigarette in defiance of the fascist thugs who are giving him vicious looks.
His father was 'supposedly' murdered by the fascists and in the present is considered a hero, with the whole bit of martyrdom being evident in the erected statue that bears a striking resemblance to Athos.
So steps his son, in search of what his father was.
The town does not want to return to the past, they have heroes today for a reason and they hesitate to unravel anything about that long ago era.
Bertolucci manages to bore us while piecing useless confabulations from the people who knew his father including the mistress and three close chums, who are played by the old actors in the flashbacks, and thus Bertolucci plays with the contextual memory of the plot.
Is Athos his father or did his father ever exist?
Bertolucci could have made a wonderful film that rivals some of the great directors of the time but somewhere along the line everything didn't get aggregated like it should have, what we have instead is an egotistical exercise in excess that is only ideal to a half drowsy art student..
A young man named Athos Magnani (Giulio Brogi) arrives at the small Italian town of Tara.
Magnani's aim is to discover who killed his father, a local hero and anti-fascist, decades earlier.
The script makes many references to Mussolini, the Italian fascist leader of the 1930s.An essentially political film, "The Spider's Stratagem" contains deep themes related to personal identity, the definition of heroes, as well as perceptions of, and the truth about, others.
The thematic depth is enhanced by competent cinematography, with some clever compositional camera shots.And yet, I found this film hard to like.
There is an overall sense of gloom, with a drab landscape and bleak characters that seem more symbolic of ideas vis-à-vis real people with personal lives.
And some plot elements seem either unnecessary or deliberately opaque.Acting also seems stagy and contrived, which may have been the director's intent.
It has adequate thematic depth, for viewers wanting a thought-provoking film.
I found it not entertaining.Maybe a second viewing, when I have more time to digest the film's political themes, will render an impression that is not so alien and forbidding..
It's definitely true this movie is not just for everyone and you also really need to be in the mood for it to watch it.
Sometimes you have to fill in the blanks and interpret certain sequences for yourself in order to keep following it and understand things.However when you really take the time to sit down for this movie, it's definitely more than worth it.
It's a pretty fascinating watch, with a good concept and story in it.It's great to watch how the movie its 'mystery' slowly gets unraveled and the puzzle gets put together by the main character Athos Magnani, who returns to the town where his father got killed.
Not only does he try to find out who killed his father but perhaps more importantly, also the reason why.It's great to watch the dynamics between him and the townsfolk.
It gives the movie a great atmosphere of tension and mystery as well.
You never know who is telling the truth and what the motivations and reasons behind it all are.There are also some good twists in the movie, especially toward the end.
The movie its ending does not disappoint!Deinetely worth checking out if this looks and sounds like your kind of thing!8/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
One of the greatest films ever.
Contains "spoilers", but no endings/killers are revealed...Bertolucci's masterpiece is based on Borges' "Theme of the Traitor and Hero", as well as other Borgesian theme which were ingeniously woven into the script.
This addition is another Borges theme -which does not appear directly in "Theme of the Traitor and Hero"- the Spider's Stratagem, the idea of a spider luring its prey from the center of its labyrinth/web.
Also, Borges "recurring and predetermined history" theme is here enhanced by adding the father-son mixup (Giulio Brogi's double role).The blending of ideas from the great Borges with Italian history, Storaro's stupendous (and always narrative-effective) images, and great acting, produces, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest films ever.I strongly recommend going through (at least) the above mentioned stories ("Theme" is from Ficciones, "Ibn Hakkan" from The Aleph and Other Stories (Dutton), or in the original Spanish), and then watching this film on a good transfer (not pan-and-scanned color ruined video!).-too bad it is not released on DVD..
Excruciating "art" film with an interesting theme at its core.
For the most part, "The Spider's Stratagem" plays almost like a parody of the biases that some people have against "art films", by confirming most of their fears: it's infuriatingly slow, rambling (someone please tell that "culinary tester" to shut up!), diffuse, confusing (OK, everyone comments on how identical the protagonist looks to his father so it makes sense for one actor to play both roles, but many other actors play the same characters both in the present and over 30 years ago, with no attempt from the make-up department to de-age them), and weird for the sake of being weird (that lion head probably symbolizes something....but I don't know what it is).
And yet, if you stick with this film, which is not the easiest thing to do, an interesting and thought-provoking theme emerges near the end: the chasm that separates reality from legend.
The way the story turns out gets you wondering how many times things like that have happened in real life; we will probably never know, that's the whole point.
Athos Magnani visits Tara, the city in which his father, also named Athos, died murdered by the Fascists in 1936.
Called by his father's lover, Draifa, Athos begins a search to find the man who killed the local hero.
No one knows, but Draifa is sure he's a local person.So far the story seems pedestrian, but the script, loosely based on Jorge Luis Borge's short-story "Tema del traidor y del héroe", soon turns into an examination of truth, ethics and hero-worship.
The pacing is slow and hardly thrilling, like many of the thrillers of this age, but intellectually riveting.Giulio Brogi plays father and son, even though it doesn't look like at first.
As Athos junior, he's a confused man caught in a web of past events and lies, trying to make sense of his father's legacy.This is a great companion piece to Bernardo Bertolucci's other 1970 thriller, The Conformist.
Although apparently opposites - one is about a Fascist, the other about a anti-Fascist - they both follow weak men who can't uphold their lofty political and moral ideals.Aiding Bertolucci is the great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.
And then if he weren't good enough, he draws inspiration from Giorgio de Chirico for the shots of the sombre Tara with its decrepit buildings and desolate squares.An interesting blend of plot and atmosphere, this is one of Bernardo Bertolucci's best movies, an obscure masterpiece of cinema..
Almost like Rashomon, the protagonist must seek the truth about his father, the hero of the town.
But everything is not what it appears and as he struggles to learn the truth he leans ambiguity, shades of gray and what history and later interpretations make of people.This is a brilliant film as it is executed superbly.
The personal aspects of that intelligence became more fully realized in his even better film The Conformist, surely one of the best adaptations ever done.The compositions and photography are of course famous but where this film stands out in terms of movies today is the editing and narration.
Cutting between times is not always simple and this film does makes demands on the audience.
This feature is marked in the scenes between the hero and his father's mistress, and as the same actor is playing both son and father at different times, instant confusion as to who is whom and why, is not quickly dispelled..
The book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die is a fantastic way of finding films that I would otherwise never had known about that could be great viewing, this Italian film is another one I hoped would deserve its placement, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci (The Conformist, 1900, Last Tango in Paris, The Last Emperor).
Basically young researcher Athos Magnani (Giulio Brogi) returns to his ancestral home in Tara, at the request of his father's mistress Draifa (Alida Valli).
His father, also named Athos Magnani (also Brogi), was killed before his birth, he is remembered as a resistance hero.
Draifa, the statue in the square, and everyone in the town say he was killed by unknown fascists in 1936, Athos is met with evasion or hostility when he makes enquiries.
Then three old acquaintances of his father tell Athos that his father attempted a failed plot to blow up Benito Mussolini in the town theatre, the assassin died after being betrayed to the police, but young Athos does not believe this tale either.
Unsure whether to stay in this claustrophobic town where the truth is never told, Athos goes to the theatre, he is told that his father failed to go through with the bombing out of fear and tipped off the police himself.
At a ceremony in front of his father's statue, Athos starts to tell this story, but despite knowing that his father became a hero through cowardice and betrayal, he decides that the town needs its myth.
Athos goes to the railway station, where are announcements of increasingly trains, he looks ahead to see rusted and overgrown tracks, he finds himself tangled in the same web.
It is a simple, a young man who wants to gain more knowledge of his father's assassination, only for his legend to be shattered by the truth, it is a fascinating psychological journey, with great camerawork, locations and cultural references, a worthwhile drama.