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manages to expand the flimsy substance of the apologue' (Socci, 1996: 67). Socci understates
the film's whole framework by stating that it synthesized key themes in Dashiell Hammett's
novel Red Han>est, an adaptation of which had supposedly been Bertolucci's original and
more ambitious project (Socci, 1996: 67). The first assertion does no justice to the film's
stratified structure in terms of the technique and content traced in this chapter, whereas the
reference to Hammett's novel is not substantiated by any link between its fundamental
themes and those implied by Tragedy. The novel in question is a story of political corruption
which generates a series of murders; it is set in the USA in the pre-Second World War period,
and rigorously adheres to noir conventions.
Conclusion
The fact that The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man uses intimate perspectives to portray the
dramatic events of the late 1970s in Italy does not diminish the political validity the film had
and still has for present day audiences, especially regarding the symbolic representation of
the political inadequacy of both the PCI and the Red Brigade. In this context it is interesting
that in his survey of Italian films on terrorism, Maurizio Fantoni Minnella praises Colpire al
cuore (1983) by Gianni Amelio amid many other films that he criticizes for their lack of
complexity. Fantoni Minnella asserts that although Amelio is 'not interested in an analysis of
the phenomenon but in the consequences within an intellectual, bourgeois context' he
strengthens the film by operating 'a dialectical reverse of the generational contrast. It is the
apolitical son of the 1980s who judges the politically committed father of the 70s as nothing
more than a murderer" (Fantoni Minnella 2004: 119). Amelio's film echoes Bertolucci's
Tragedy, not only for its use of a father/son dichotomy to articulate political difference, but
also for the way it also implicitly addresses the inadequacy of terrorism and also of the
parliamentary Left as a whole; in the case of Amelio's film, this is represented by the Italian
Left failing to provide a guiding role for the younger generations to contrast the gradual
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