Before the Revolution (1964)

Following the death of his friend, an Italian youth grows increasingly closer to his young aunt.

Director:

Bernardo Bertolucci

Writers:

Bernardo Bertolucci (story and screenplay), Gianni Amico (screenplay collaborator)

Stars:

Adriana Asti, Francesco Barilli, Allen Midgette

2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Adriana Asti	...	Gina / Fabrizio's aunt
Francesco Barilli	...	Fabrizio
Allen Midgette	...	Agostino / Fabrizio's friend
Morando Morandini	...	Cesare / Fabrizio's teacher
Cristina Pariset	...	Clelia / Fabrizio's girlfriend-wife
Cecrope Barilli	...	Puck / Gina's ex-lover
Evelina Alpi	...	The little girl
Gianni Amico	...	A friend
Goliardo Padova	...	The painter
Guido Fanti	...	Enore
Enrico Salvatore	...	The priest
Amelia Bordi	...	Fabrizio's mother
Domenico Alpi	...	Fabrizio's father
Iole Lunardi	...	The grandmother
Antonio Maghenzani	...	Fabrizio's brother

Storyline

The study of a youth on the edge of adulthood and his aunt, ten years older. Fabrizio is passionate, idealistic, influenced by Cesare, a teacher and Marxist, engaged to the lovely but bourgeois Clelia, and stung by the drowning of his mercurial friend Agostino, a possible suicide. Gina is herself a bundle of nervous energy, alternately sweet, seductive, poetic, distracted, and unhinged. They begin a love affair after Agostino's funeral, then Gina confuses Fabrizio by sleeping with a stranger. Their visits to Cesare and then to Puck, one of Gina's older friends, a landowner losing his land, dramatize contrasting images of Italy's future. Their own futures are bleak.

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Plot Keywords:

mental illness | incest | wedding | communism | parma italy | 

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Taglines:

Italy...is the place where they've made an art of everything - especially love!

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Details

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Release Date:

10 September 1965 (Sweden)

Also Known As:

Before the Revolution

Filming Locations:

Palazzo della Pilotta, Parma, Italy

Company Credits

Production Co:

Cineriz, Iride Cinematografica

Technical Specs

Runtime:

115 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

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Quotes

A friend: Remember, Fabrizio: one can't live without Rossellini.

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Connections

Featured in Nathalie... (2003)

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Soundtracks

Ricordati
Written and Performed by Gino Paoli,
e incise su dischi RCA.

User Reviews

Just like a French New Wave film

For a while, forget about Bernardo Bertolucci's "ventures into Hollywood" (for example, "Little Buddha," featuring Keannu Reeves) and find time to see his "little-known" work, "Before the Revolution" (his second feature film, which was made in his native country and when he was just 22 years old).

More than a "nostalgic" tribute to the "present," the film is closer in spirit and style to the French New Wave films (see, for example, Jean-Luc Godard's "A Bout de Souffle" and Francois Truffaut's "Jules et Jim";as a matter of fact, Bertolucci's film was contemporaneous with these works).

In the film, you'll find a bedazzling mixture of narrative styles (those relating to camera movements and angles, editing, photographic effects and musical score;my favorites are the "optical room" scene and the old man painting by the lakeside), characters who are always "running away" from something (from social conventions and pressures, from others as well as from themselves) and for whom to live is to discourse (with other people or with themselves), and a "romantic" and "apolitical" stance toward a relevant sociopolitical issue ( in this case, the workers' uprising and the Revolution of 1948).

Initially slow and hard to get by, but the film eventually engages the viewers' attention as "love" starts to develop between the aunt (Gina) and the nephew (Fabrizio), which other people may find "scandalous," but is treated in such a casual and indifferent manner that the result is "unaffecting" (much like the way the menage-a-trois was treated in "Jules et Jim"), and as one gets to know more (or does one?) the quirky and enigmatic characters.