Product Details

• Actors: Pierre Clémenti, Tina Aumont, Sergio Tofano, Giulio Cesare Castello, Romano Costa
• Directors: Bernardo Bertolucci
• Writers: Bernardo Bertolucci, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gianni Amico
• Producers: Giovanni Bertolucci
• Format: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Language: French, Italian
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Xenon
• VHS Release Date: February 5, 2002
• Run Time: 105 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302762103
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #250,449 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

DVD Talk.com

DVD TALK COLLECTORS SERIES SELECTIONspectacular double DVD presentation this is how you treat a classic film by a classic director!!!

10,000 Bullets.com

NoShame has assembled one of their most ambitious releases to date

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Early Bertolucci, June 20, 2008

By 

Lynn Ellingwood "The ESOL Teacher" (Webster, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Partner (DVD)

This film is a freewheeling 60s film based on The Double from Dochevsky. Of course it probably doesn't look much like it at all. The film was improvised and shot with sound at a time when Italian cinema used mainly dubbing (still often do). The Revolutions of 1968 were going on in Europe and France at the time and the story of a young man who fails at everything is met by his double who is always a success. Antics and political statements galore. The film is most notable for being one of Bertolucci's first films. It is beautifully restored and looks great. I liked the interview with Bertolucci that comes with the film.

7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bernie goes Godard, July 15, 2006

By 

Trevor Willsmer (London, England) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Partner (DVD)

A terrible example of what happens when a talented director imitates an attention-seeking charlatan, Bertolucci's Partner is forgotten with good reason - his Godardian take on Dostoyevsky's The Double is pretty awful. Like Godard, it's full of slogans and soundbites which don't gain in profundity by being repeated six times or more at varying volumes instead of substance, constantly throwing them at the screen in the hope that something will stick, but he amps up the surrealism with Pierre Clementi's absurd (in the dictionary definition) performance. Whether he's shouting at the screen or fighting with invisible enemies or himself, there's never any danger of him being remotely believable or entertaining so that when he finally does meet his double (who he keeps in a closet) we've already dismissed him as a tiresome attention seeing moron on day release from the local asylum. It's the kind of performance that'll have you yearning for the subtle underplaying of Crispin Glover. He does improve as the film goes along and the characters exchange identities, but he's successfully alienated you from the film by then.

Technically it's impressive, with the shot in-camera effects scenes of the two Clementi's extremely well-timed, Bertolucci even acknowledging the artificiality of the device by having them disappear mid-frame in one memorable moment. There's a little bit more involvement with his theme than you get with Godard - for all the surface `provocation' (read tiresome and infantile attention seeking) it does acknowledge that the intellectuals it wants to address (and does directly in the end) are incapable of real revolution because they tie themselves up in imaginary intellectual knots rather than act. Just as Easy Rider now plays as a film that puts you off drugs because the characters just act like uncool morons when they're high, this now seems more a parody of self-important radicals proposing ineffectual actions than a document of a real revolution. And there's a nice sendup of Fellini and other Italian directors' use of numbers instead of dialog when shooting without sound (Bertolucci shot with live sound at a time when most Italian films were shot mute and dubbed later).

The 2.35:1 transfer is good, and the film has a nice artray of extras, including a substantional interview with Bertolucci and mute audition footage as well as a booklet.

Pierre Clementi's screen test for Partner and an outtake from the film overdubbed with new dialog urging the audience to resist or accept the film but to at least react to it rather than simply use cinema as an escape form's the opening of Edoardo Bruno's His Day of Glory/ La Sua Giornata di Gloria, included on the NoShame DVD of Partner as an extra. It's a typical forgotten piece of agitprop from '68, more interested in the sound of its own voice than effecting any change, although it does have the virtue of sincerity. Clumsily shot in b&w, it's mostly a series of political discussions that lack the depth to do more than scrape the surface, although it does make clear that these revolutionaries are too concerned with defining the revolution in contradictory terms than ever acting. Still, if you want to see three people talking very vaguely about Bertolt Brecht before acting out a bit of Mother Courage they can't remember the words to, this is the film for you. Mostly painless.

A decent transfer considering the source material, with another good selection of extras, including director interview and mute screen tests and outtakes.

10 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this is by far the most superior movie i've ever seen, November 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Partner [VHS] (VHS Tape)

this movie has it all. drama, an edge of your seat - psychcological - story-line, handsome lead. partner is an adaptation of the classic book "the double" by dostoyevsky. this is the only movie made from a book i've read and loved that has so captured the feel and integrity of the written work. if you are looking to see a great movie and have the patience to sit through one with subtitles then this is your movie.