Allen Midgette Movies

Bernardo Bertolucci's 255-minute 1900 was a gargantuan undertaking, requiring the resources of three European countries and a trio of American movie studios. Set in the Italian town of Parma, the film's continuity backtracks from Liberation Day in 1945 to the occasion of composer/patriot Giuseppe Verdi's death in 1901. We follow the lives of two men born on that day in 1901, who grow up to be Alfredo Berlinghieti (Robert De Niro) and Olmo Dalco (Gérard Depardieu). Wealthy Alfredo sinks into dissipation, while poverty-stricken Olmo becomes a firebrand labor leader and communist. After WWI, Alfredo is allowed to peacefully retain his land holdings by playing nice with the burgeoning fascists; Olmo, on the other hand, engages in a long-standing battle against the minions of Mussolini. The two protagonists are reunited when Alfredo returns to Parma to preside over Olmo's trial for "political crimes." Co-star Burt Lancaster is cast as Alfredo's wealthy grandfather, who hates to see the old values buried beneath the social travails of the 20th century. Many American prints of 1900 were shortened to 243 minutes, rendering the story hard to follow at times. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Originally produced for Italian television, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Spider's Stratagem (La Strategia del Ragno) can be regarded as a cinematic tone poem. Adapted from a Jorge Luis Borges short story, the film stars Giulio Brogi as a young Italian who returns to his ancestral home -- the place where his anti-fascist father was assassinated, a long-ago incident that still disturbs the populace. Cold-shouldered by everyone in town, the young man tries to find out why everyone is so hostile towards him; after all, was not his father a hero of the people? In some (but not all) ways, The Spider's Stratagem is a precursor to Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, delineating the correlation between sex and political ideology. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Viva make her film debut in this typical Andy Warhol exploitation film. She plays a waitress in a restaurant where, you guessed it, everyone is at least partially nude. Although she does not ignore the advances of men, they never get to have sex with her because of her incessant talking. All the men she meets seem to want nothing more than the pleasures of the flesh and make no effort to gain insight on her inane character. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

A very young Bernardo Bertolucci already shows his talent in this bleak, 94-minute murder mystery, told in an interesting series of flashbacks. A Roman prostitute has been brutally murdered in a park near the Tiber River and in order to forward their investigation, the police corner a handful of people who were in the park at the time. As they separately tell their versions of why they were there and what they did, their narrations do not necessarily match the images on the screen that do reflect the truth. By the time all the flashbacks have been completed, a real picture of the crime emerges, revealing that one of those in custody is the killer. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi