Novecento
Tags: cruelty, murder, violence, flashback, insanity, absurd, romantic, revenge, sadist

Plot synopsis:
Born the same day at the turn of the 20th century Italy, January 1, 1900, two best friends, Alfredo Berlinghieri (Robert De Niro as an adult) and Olmo Dalcò (Gérard Depardieu as an adult) come from opposite ends of the social spectrum. Alfredo is from a family of wealthy landowners led by his abusive but populist grandfather Alfredo the Elder (Burt Lancaster), while Olmo is an illegitimate peasant son off the estate whose grandfather Leo Dalcò (Sterling Hayden) is the foreman and peasant strong man who verbally and spiritually carries a duel of wits with both the peasants as well as his employer, but without ever reaching violence with Elder Alfredo's bidding. While growing up, the young Alfredo is somewhat rebellious and despises the falseness of his family, in particular his weak but cynical father Ottavio (Werner Bruhns), he befriends Olmo, who was raised as a socialist.The two become friends throughout their childhood, despite the social differences of their families. Alfredo's grandfather, suffering from gout, senile dementia, and other ailments, commits suicide by hanging himself in the dairy barn. As a result, Ottavio inherits the plantation.In 1917, the teenage Olmo enlists with the Italian army during World War I and goes off to fight on the front lines in northern Italy while Alfredo stays behind to learn how to run his family's large plantation. Olmo returns from the war over a year later and his friendship with Alfredo continues. However during Olmo's time away, Alfredo's father has hired Attila Mellanchini (Donald Sutherland) as his new foreman following the death of Olmo's own grandfather. Attila is sadistic man who becomes taken with fascism, especially after the fascists come to power in the early 1920s, Italy.Attila eventually incorporates his new belief system in his dealings with the Berlinghieri workers; he treats them cruelly and later cages them in the Berlinghieri compound and accuses them of treason against Fascist Italy. Several are killed by Attila himself. Alfredo's father, Ottavio, eventually dies from an illness and Alfredo inherits the vast estate as its sole heir. As the new padrone (master) of the plantation, Alfredo does little to challenge or halt Attila's evil actions.During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the intimacy and lack thereof in their respective relationships with others is highlighted in their love lives as both Alfredo and Olmo cannot seem to hook up with the right woman to be with. Alfredo eventually marries a gorgeous, demure woman, named Ada (Dominique Sanda), while Olmo marries Anita (Stefania Sandrelli), a fellow idealist who, like him, shares in the enthusiasm of the cause of workers' rights in the vein of socialism. Ada, however, sinks into alcoholism when confronted with the reality of the emptiness of her relationship with Alfredo.Anita dies tragically in childbirth, bringing another member into the community; a daughter whom Olmo names after his late wife. As Olmo takes on his fateful role of leader among the poor farmers and their families, he clashes with Attila several times as the years go on. Olmo's daughter, Anita the Younger (Anna Henkel-Grönemeyer), grows into a young and resourceful teenager whom is supportive of her father's socialist beliefs.The power, however, shifts after World War II in 1945, and the ruling class is at the mercy of the jovial and bitter peasants in the agricultural estate. As padrone, Alfredo is captured by a teenage peasant boy carrying a rifle. Attila is also captured when he and his wife, the equally cruel and sadistic Regina (Laura Betti), try to flee the region. Attila is stabbed, non-fatally, several times by women wielding pitchforks and is imprisoned in the Berlinghieri pig sty. He is later executed by the peasants (while they cut off most of Regina's hair), who have discovered that Attila had raped and killed a young boy (ironically, the son of one of the most fervent supporters of fascism as an antidote to socialism) several years prior in a fit of rage and had also murdered a wealthy landowner's widow, Mrs. Pioppi (Alida Valli), whose husband had been economically ruined by Alfredo, in order to steal her land and home.Alfredo is brought before Olmo's workers tribunal to stand trial. Many workers come forth and accuse Alfredo of letting them suffer in squalor while he (and his social class) profited from their labors and on top of that, he did nothing to stop the sadistic Attila. Alfredo is sentenced to death, but his execution is prevented after Olmo explains that the padrone is already dead even though Alfredo lives... that is, the social system has been overthrown with the end of the war. As soon as the verdict overturned, however, representatives of the new government, which includes the Communist Party, arrive and call on the peasants to turn in their arms. Olmo convinces the peasants to do so, overcoming their skepticism. Alfredo declares to Olmo: "The padrone is alive."

Review: Bertolucci's film would have us believe that the rich landowners (represented here by the Berlinghieri  Robert De Niro's character's family) were responsible alone for sponsoring the Fascists.
And essentially the film follows the exploits of the two protagonists as they deal with love, friendship, money, death and the evils of war.The film unfolds like a finely crafted book, taking its time to tell its story.Unfortunately, the version that I watched was horrendously dubbed.
In a way this is an intimate epic, if such a thing could exist.This is an excellent film that is highly recommended for people interested in Italian history, the landscape of Italy and beautifully crafted films.
This film tells us a story of two mans (Alfredo and Olmo) born in the same day back in the beginning of the twentieth century - Alfredo is a landowner, Olmo is a peasant- and their relation with friendship, love, politics.
( I think this is a film about how friendship can be true in a cruel half century that was the fist half os the "novecento").There is a Marxist view about life and about cinema itself in this Bertolucci film: the two main characters, Alfredo and Olmo, symbolize the strike between the two classes of the capitalism - the high bourgeosie that owns the land where live the proletarian.
The cast list alone is fabulous:Burt Lancaster, Sterling Hayden, Robert De Niro, Donald Sutherland, Gerard Depardieu, the best of Italian artists, the incandescent Dominque Sanda, at her prime.
Gifted filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, along with his collaborators, probably bit off more than they could chew with this massive epic of politics, revolution, love and war, but it's nevertheless a fascinating entertainment for those with the constitution to sit through at least 4 hours (the original long version is 5 hours +!) of imperfect dubbing.Robert DeNiro and Gerard Depardieu play, respectively, a rich landowner and a peasant, born on the same day of the new century.
By the way, de Niro's character is in every detail a clone of the Last Emperor from another Bertolucci film: same spoiled childhood, same loneliness, same conformism, same bohemian farniente, same relationship with wife, same end as a prisoner of the people.
I can't really describe the film any other way than that - it is a novel.There are some scenes that are hard to watch, especially in this day and age of political correctness and "you can't do that on television" attitude, but set your 21st century mind aside.
The photography, on the other hand, is brilliant, but as Ebert suggested, it comes across almost like an apology for the narrative mess of the rest of the film.Most interesting is that Bertolucci managed to make such an incompetent film with such stupendously talented actors as Gerard Depardieu, Robert DeNiro, and Donald Sutherland.
Its a typical story, one rich, one poor, with a large portion of the film taking place in Italy under Il Duce, but the handling of the film turns it into something more.The release version of this film is four hours long (and a directors cut is even longer), but don't let that stop you.
Mix a pretentious story intended to be "epic"; a bunch of famous good actors horribly directed and submitted to a senseless script; bad and pointless sex seemingly for no other reason than showing some sordid scenes and pretending to make the film more "realistic"; a lot of gratuitous, exaggerated and mostly out of context violence; good communists (angelic most of them!); bad fascists (did I say bad?, actually monstrous, pure evil, sadistic to the utmost!); and a nice setting with wide and pretty landscapes (yeah, watching the first 10 minutes recommended for wide screen bucolic landscape lovers), and what you get is...
Probably I have seen no film in my life where stereotypes and identification of good and evil with particular ideologies/social classes were so clumsily and naively shown, a tale for 6 years old children contains more character introspection and development than this film.I don't want to enter historical flaws (and actually blatant manipulation of history), other commentators have put it clearly and possess more background than me on the topic.
But two viewings of this somewhat bloated 5 hour plus film left me feeling the same way; The film is over-simplistic in its characters and politics, badly dubbed (with actors from all over speaking their own language, so whatever soundtrack you pick there are important characters who sound like something out of 'What's Up Tiger Lily'), and even the English spoken by DeNiro seems post- recorded, making for an oddly stiff sounding performance.
In short advice, stick mostly with English (it is people like De Niro, Sutherland, Depardieu and Lancaster here after all), but for those little moments like with the children in the first quarter, try some of the Italian portions for realism sake.Because this is, indeed, such an ambitious work, such a passion project, such a work by a director running strong off the steam of his previous successes (The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris), a work including people from all over Europe and the States, and according to the director with the original- and later admitted naive- intention of the picture being a "bridge" between the US and Russia, that it's easy to say it is a big waste.
But then again it will either seem a success artistically or a mess, or maybe both depending on how much a viewer can take of Bertolucci's pirouetting camera movements and the occasional jarring scene transition.It covers, essentially, a tale of friendship, which to me is a strength in conventional wisdom: the two sides of the coin on a farm in the first half of the 20th century, as Alfredo (as an adult De Niro) and Olmo (as an adult Depardieu) become close friends after sharing the same birthday, but lead different paths as the former is the inheritor of the land turned quasi fascist and the latter is a worker-cum-socialist.
For all of the pieces of the story that bulk up the picture to its current length, for the most part all of the sections are important in building up who our two 'sides' are, and how certain personal events (i.e. Lancaster and Haydens' respective deaths, the theft of a gun, the pressures with violence and their unspoken destinies) shape them as much if not more than the state of politics.It's so rich and alive and engrossing a story, with moments that intrigue and question and actually shock (a certain scene with a cat and Sutherland had me cringe, and another with a boy had my mouth drop), that it's a shame to report it's not the pinnacle of Bertolucci's career.
It is probably too long, by how much I can't definitively say; it isn't acted all around greatly (Sanda, for example, has no place being among the likes of De Niro and Sutherland and Depardieu who all deliver real top shelf work here, particularly De Niro as his mid-point between Corleone and Bickle); and as mentioned some scenes transition a little suddenly, like with a key turning point scene at a wedding that goes on to a pig killing some undetermined time later.And yet all of these flaws are somewhat minuscule in the grandiosity of the film as a whole.
This film features an incredible cast as well, with stunning acting performances by Gerard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland (great and disquieting), Sterling Hayden and the superb Burt Lancaster.
The depiction of the strong rebellious son of a peasant farmer born at the turn of the 20th century, which coincides with the birth of a wealthy landowners son who is passive in nature but bred into a fascist society, become childhood friends but in adulthood, adversaries on principals and politics.Not one element in this film is shot as filler, each scene gives a different emotion and captures your attention on multiple levels.
In spite of long running time, this film is not boring at all.This film shows political and social history in the early twenty century in Italy through two famous actors, Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu.
So many missing blocks here...!Acting: I can only say that this movie features one of the best casts in the history of cinema, including greats such as Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Burt Lancaster, and Donald Sutherland.
While the performances are given by such amazing actors, the characters receive little help from direction, montage, and the script!Music: I consider myself an enormous Ennio Morricone fan; and indeed his music in this movie is quite beautiful as in his other films, however, except in some minor scenes--mostly in the scenes where there's nothing going on--the music is irrelevant to what we see on the scree, mainly because of the soft music (very similar to the Legend of Greensleeves music) we are already falling asleep, even at the peak of the climax scenes and where enormous elements of suspense or shock are present.Cinematography/Montage/Mese En Scene/Light: To sum up the collective faults of the above elements give the viewer a pure indifference, that is quite inevitable; half way through the movie, (i.e after 2 hours) most viewers merely leave, and the rest furiously continue watching it, just so they never ever have to do it again!
As I mentioned before the choice of Mese En Scene is quite inappropriate: e.g. irrelevant music, inappropriate images, unnecessary nudity (including 2-3 scenes of CHILD nudity!) which finally brings us to the last element, cinematography: it is done in the worst possible way, very similar to 'Once Upon A Time In America' use of dead colours, in a blurry, rigid, shaky format!In the end, I'd like to point out that many scenes and elements of film-making in the movie is set so they convey allegorical meanings and symbolism, which makes the movie incredibly rich, but meanwhile confusing and ambiguous.
So if you're a die hard Bertolucci fan give the movie a shot by all means, but make sure you also give a look to Italian History following World War I and the lives of people in the southern Italy.
Although this film shows the brutal events of the 20th Century it's still a beautiful movie with great pictures and sights of Italy's villages and natures.
The failings, as I perceive them, include Novecento's tendency to drag on for more than six hours so that scenes are included that are simply unnecessary (like the strangely comic scene at the end where the Olmo (Gerard Depardieu) and Alfredo (Robert De Niro) are trying to beat each other to death) and the other problem is the blatant dubbing.
Despite the rather in-genuine acting of De Niro in this movie( also noted by others) this film stands out as a masterpiece of Italian cinema, rising above its own storyline to show the viewer something greater then the sum of its parts.Depardieu is fantastic as Olmo.
Bertolucci's characters are involved in a human drama but they are also players in a history, and as such they have dual roles: as real people and as representations of larger themes.This is established from the beginning, as the history (la storia) opens with the birth of Alfredo the aristocrat and Olmo the peasant -- on the same day and in the same house and on the eve of the 20th century.
many crimes were committed by some fascists, but not fewer than thos committed by the Italian communists that were concerting to take power with the help of Moscow.to come back to the movie, well, great actors, especially the ingenuous Depardieu, who was giving himself in those years to all of the movies that were lacking of ideological originality, as some ferreri's movie (ciao maschio, l'ultima donna), but that still has a great physique and that is perfect to incarnate the sane and robust farmer to counter with a De Niro who is representing a society who is weak and decaying.some bucolic set and frames are beautiful as painted pictures.This movie has anyway to be seen, if not for its political accuracy, for what can offer: a surface analysis of a country that is undergoing great changes after which, as always, somebody will win and somebody will lose..
It says in the trivia that Donald Sutherland was so upset with his performance as Attila that he couldn't watch the movie for several years, and one can only feel sorry for him because that role was truly just about the worst in my viewing history.
The drama spans from 1900 to about 1945, and focuses mainly on the rise of Fascism and the peasants' eventual reaction by supporting Communism, and how these events shape the destinies of the two main characters.This film excels as an epic, and must be commended for catching Robert DeNiro early enough in his career that he was able to sneak away for what could be called an art film, and then have nobody in America even notice that he did it.But also, that wonk scene...
1st watched 2/21/2000 - (Dir-Bernardo Bertolucci): Long & involving film about the relationship between landowners and peasants in the early 1900's in Italy seen thru the lives of two families.
This is one of my favorite movie is very long about 6 hours but its so good that you don't care i saw this movie the first time in in a revival movie house in New York City i love the movie from beginning to end is a masterpiece ,plus is the wonderful Dominique Sanda one of the most beautiful and talented actress in the world , plus Laura Betti a great actress she play the fascist wife of Donald Sutherland both are evil and perfect in their part plus Burt Lancaster never been better than here evil rich old man , Robert de Niro and Gerad Depardieu i am not a fan of either one are good here, Stephanie Sandrelli a great Italian movie star is good too , don't miss the movie i know is very long but you will not mine just go with the emotion and the time in history plus remember is Dominique Sanda in this movie.
Bernardo Bertolucci's massive epic, a history of Italy from 1900 to 1945 as reflected through the friendship of two men across class lines, is one of the most fascinating, if little seen, of his films.
Though this epic drama by Bernardo Bertolucci was originally released thirty years ago, revisiting the film, now available in its entirety of 315 minutes, is like reading a favorite old classical history novel.
The actors include not only such durable stars as Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Burt Lancaster, Donald Sutherland, and Sterling Hayden, but also some of Italy's finest actors and an entire town of 'naturals', adding a sense of verismo to the film.
Though rather simplistic assessment of both fascism and communism in early 20th century Italy, the film does capture the emotions and sentiments of many contemporaries who lived through this difficult period in Italian and European history.The efforts on the youthful Sutherland, De Niro, and Depardieu, along with the beautiful Dominique Sanda, are met by the mature acting of Alida Valli, Sterling Hayden, and Burt Lancaster.
Bernardo Bertolucci's massive film is a masterpiece of movie-making.
What could be better than a film written and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, scored by Ennio Morricone, photographed by Vittorio Storaro; using the acting talents of Robert DeNiro, Gerard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Burt Lancaster, and Donald Sutherland, for a whole 315 minutes?
Most of the chunks of Velveeta are the bits of politics thrown haphazardly into the film.There are also some of the characters: the villains are so hammy (and fascist), Robert DeNiro puts on a frankly bad performance, and the peasants seem kind of cheesy at times (although they're perfectly fine throughout most of the movie).In the end, I would still give this a positive rating.
There were plenty of sequences in 1900 that felt like they were in a great movie, and throughout almost the entire film I could feel just how high Bertolucci's ambitions were, which made it all the more disappointing when the film, over the course of its more-than-four-hour running time, failed to deliver on all it had promised.
When a movie's over four hours long, it's more than a little disappointing when it turns into the longest Grumpy Old Men film in history.
Because the story is so thin and the points so familiar that this is the only way we'll endure this long, tiresome film.This is however a beautifully photographed movie, and the performances of both Depardieu and Sutherland are very watchable (Sutherland does go a bit overboard at times but he is still a commanding actor).
1900 or Novecento is an Italian epic film by Bernardo Bertolucci that tells the story of two men during the political turmoils that have taken place in Italy during the first half of the 20th century.It features Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu together with Dominique Sanda, Donald Sutherland, Alida Valli, and Burt Lancaster.
The two meet each other when Alfredo goes back to Parma to handle Olmo's trial.The movie has a classic feel due to the lavish cinematography by Vittorio Storaro and the magnificent score by Ennio Morricone.The performance was also great especially by De Niro and Gérard Depardieu.Also,Bertolucci provides a great socio-political commentary and makes the viewer feel the richness of the Italian landscape.It was just unfortunate that it fell short of being a classic due to its cumbersome length and probably its being too ambitious in setting up so many goals for the films that not all of them are realized..
Both De Niro and Depardieu give credible leading performances, Sutherland is extraordinary as the evil character, and Lancaster gets his time too, there are certainly some eye catching moments and memorable scenes, despite it being five hours and seventeen minutes long, it is I suppose worth it, a most watchable epic period drama.