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camera. I have a very exclusive and demanding relationship with it' (Ungari, 1982:117).(1)
Nevertheless the key contribution that Storaro made to the ambience and aesthetics of several
films - from The Spider's Stratagem onwards - will be discussed in the relevant chapters,
together with the strategic input that Franco Arcalli, Mark Peploe and Ferdinando Scarfiotti
also gave to Bertolucci's film-making. This study focuses on all Bertolucci's feature films,
from The Grim Reaper to The Dreamers. The documentaries that the director made will be
mentioned only in the filmography, due to notable differences in their construction and the
different mode of reception intended, compared with feature-length fiction films. Agonia
(1967-69) - a short film which the director contributed to the collective work Vangelo 70,
and later distributed with the title Amore e rabbia seems to have a marginal relation with
Bertolucci's production, although it will be discussed on account of the influence that the
encounter between Bertolucci and The Living Theatre had on the making of Partner.
Bertolucci's later short film, Histoire d'eaux, for the collective film Ten Minutes Older
(2002), will be discussed in the Conclusion. It is appropriate at this point to include a brief
overview of cognitive/affective approaches to film viewing in order to outline, at this point of
the introduction, how this volume differs from existing scholarship on Bertolucci; a more
detailed discussion of the applications of cognitive and affective theory will form the basis of
the theoretical framework later in this study.
Cognitive/affective approaches to film posit that viewers watch films in a conscious
state, actively evaluating characters and situations with the help of emotional reactions to
what they see, and then elaborating hypotheses about the actions that characters will take and
expectations regarding plot development. In this context, psychoanalytical notions such as
unconscious drives recede in importance; cognitive/affective theory privileges the viewer's
conscious engagement with presentations of character and situation, and with elements of the
mise-en-scene. The theories of Torben Grodal underpin this study, concepts which