The Most Overrated Films of All Time
Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900
To call Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1990 overrated is maybe not quite the proper terminology. The film has taken its fair share of critical and commercial battery before finally arriving now in the present at a time when it could be even thought about in terms of greatness.
A Cannes Scandal
It opened in 1976 at the Cannes Film Festival to the shocked ambivalence of those who long held Bertolucci as the best Italian export since Fellini (although his personal style and subject matter have always admittedly been closer in comparison to Antoinioni).
Thus, Bertoluci had dropped a bomb, turning in a five hour mess of a film that was, to say the least, basically unmarketable. The film was then edited down to around four hours, dumped in theaters to no business and has only recently, in the last decade or so, been restored to its original length. Most filmmakers would never have recovered. That Bertolucci ever made another film after it was a miracle.
1900: Not a Great Film
Upon viewing the film, one must be at constant battle to resist the temptation of being sucked into its scope and ambition. 1900 is the kind of film that some deem a masterpiece based solely on the merit of its own virtue: certainly a film audacious enough to wrangle with the political turmoil of a country that spans a running time of over five hours and was directed by a man hugely considered to be a modern day virtuoso must be great by default, right? Auteurism sometimes fails even the best of us.
But, certainly only a film as awful as this could have been born under the hand of a great talent, and that Bertolucci is. And yes, there is some strange admirable quality in seeing a filmmaker going for complete broke, even at the expense of his own film.1900 is, of all things, not boring.
But the film bites off far more than it can chew thematically, never really getting the chance to settle down and catch up with itself. After the huge critical and commercial success of Last Tango in Paris, Bertolucci had basically the freedom to make any film that he wanted and that was, as is maybe the case with most great artists, his biggest downfall. Bertolucci shoots for the moon and misses his target by miles, landing somewhere well beyond the stars.
The Problem of Allegory
The main problem with the film is not its length (2003’s Palm D’Or winner Best of Youth is a six hour Italian masterpiece), but in the device of its telling. The film covers the lives of two men in Italy over the span of forty years or so.
One (played by Robert De Niro) is born into the aristocracy and one (played by Gerard Depardieu) is the son of a peasant, born on De Niro’s family estate. Both boys grow up together, share the same ideas and experiences of politics, romance, sex, etc., while in the midst of the rising power of fascism and therefore, are never quite as together as they think.
It sounds like a simple and compelling story, but the problem is that, despite what a plot description might imply, is not a character study. In spite of its length, the film has no time to rest in order to explore the intricacies of its characters and their relationship. Instead 1900 operates as a political allegory, a form that the gigantic running time cannot possibly begin to sustain. 1900 is an epic by virtue of its length alone.
The problem with telling the story as an allegory about the rise and effects of fascism in Italy leading up to World War Two is that it places symbolism at the forefront, sacrificing things like character and plot for poetic meaning.
Each scene is therefore contained within itself and doesn’t contribute to the building of a coherent plot. The film therefore has no ark to propel its story forward in a logical and meaningful manner. Instead it is a constant war of juxtapositions, poetic ironies, bold political statements and social rants: a five hour montage of images and symbols that never quite narrows its subject done far enough to let the audience know exactly what it wants to be about or how they should feel about it.
By the time the film ends it has been an exercise in endurance with no intrinsic reward other than the satisfaction of knowing one had the patience to sit through the entire thing.
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