Customer Reviews

The Spider's Stratagem [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This film was originally made for Italian television, hence, there is poetic justice to watching it in video. It is breathtakingly beautiful. The interweaving of present and past, with "son" also playing "father," is really a self-referential game of hide and seek. The common thread between past and present is the radiant Alida Valli, richly conveying layers of meaning with each word and move. Perhaps over 20 years had passed since "The Third Man" when this movie was made, yet she's never looked more beautiful. The use of a long but simple string phrase from an early Verdi opera (he, the master of father-son conflicts in opera) is a stroke of genius which instantly sums up the unbridgeable, melancholy regrets between generations, their irespective life histories, ambivalences and myths, which lie at the core of this film. Love is indeed quite different from understanding. Bertolucci has given us grander, arguably more ambitious masterpieces, such as "The Conformist," but this is probably his finest film. Storaro's cinematography is of such beauty as to make one cry: when have we seen such play of flowers and light? When will this movie be reissued on DVD?

Definitely one of Bernardo Bertolucci's best films! The combination of beautiful music, wonderful photography by Vittorio Storaro, and great acting by Giulio Brogi and Alida Villi, and Bertolucci's top notch directing make this a must for film lovers everywhere! Not just Bertolucci fans will only be able to notice the sheer beauty of this film with it's wonderful colors and photography. The screenplay written by Eduardo de Gregorio, Marilu Parolini, and Bertolucci himself is full of intrigue and mystery. It deals with Athos Magnani jr (Brogi) returning to his hometown where his father was a anti-facist, who was murdered, and is now considered a hero. He meets a woman there (Villi) who he finds out was his father's mistress, Draifa. He soon begins to investigate his father's murder, untill the whole town turns against him. Everyone he meets show's nothing but hostillity towards him, wanting him to leave. Soon he finds himself trapped in a "spider's web" of intrigue that tanges history and fiction, hero and tritor, and past and present. This is a film not only Bertolucci fans should watch but filmbuffs, foreign film fans, a movie goers everywhere. A masterpiece by Bernardo Bertolucci.

I saw this movie a couple of years ago in my college film class, and have been raving about it ever since. The film is by far the most beautifully directed film to be made to date. The cinematography is absolutly spectacular. The colors are so vibrant, and the acting is very good as well. I recommend this movie to anyone apprieciative of good cinema.

You first meet Draifa in one of the best shots I have ever seen in film. The camera is positioned in the center courtyard of Draifa's house and begins to pan 360 degrees and then pauses on Draifa in a doorway (she is facing toward the viewer's right). She begins walking and the camera starts tracking with her. It's like a dance. Very nice.

As far as the movie goes? It's worth a watch.

This film (with the Conformist),is one of the most striking and demolishing into the filmography of Bernardo Bertolucci, in order to understand the motives that led him to make The Last Tango in Paris and Novecento.

A young man decides to the town where his father lived to seek and find the reason of his dark past.

That's the key clue that will convey you to a web of mystery, ethical corruption and moral depravation in that blurried years of the Italian Fascism.

Brutal, enigmatic and terribly powerful. Supported by a clever script and wonderfully photographed.

A must-see.

Bertoluci's film is often abundantly gorgeous to look at but while that may be the case, it doesn't keep us interested enough in the protagonist's development or the plight of the film. 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. It all seems so silly and mundane, like a challenge that never surfaces. 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. Athos is a character who seems pained and thus reducing our sympathy of him to distaste and animosity. I wanted to grab him and slap him a few times, he was such a chump! Is Athos his father or did his father ever exist? What we have in the end is an erection of exorbitant delineations that don't really matter at all to us. 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.