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said he was inspired by the Third Canto of Dante's Inferno - which describes punishments
for cowardice - and this made him think of Artaud's idea of 'the theatre of cruelty'. The
casting of New York's Living Theatre, led by Julian Beck who was a follower of Artaud's
concepts, followed from this (Morandini, 1967: 30). This encounter appears to have
influenced the making of Partner, rather than the short itself. Soon after the film's release,
Bertolucci declared that the rapport he established with the actor Pierre Clementi was
inspired by his 'formative experience with the Living Theatre'; he talked of the importance of
the 'sacredness of theatre and of theatrical recitation' that he had learned from them, this
being represented, for example, in dementi's monologue behind a wall of books (Apra-
Ponzi-Spila, 1968:48).
The pedagogical role assigned to theatre by Artaud comes from the connection he
established between the perverse mindset of a plague victim and the experience of theatre.
Both involve a revelatory process; the illness exteriorizes an undercurrent of savagery within
humanity while the theatrical process forces us to "see ourselves as we are, making the mask
fall and divulging our world's lies, aimlessness, meanness, and even two-facedness' (Artaud,
1938: 21-22). hi the film Giacobbe uses this concept to rebuff Catholicism's criticism of
theatre's potential for spreading supposedly poisonous ideas. He affirms, in fact, that the
theoretical 'poison' diffused by theatrical art shares similarities with the plague, and
conceives it as a scourge with purifying, vindictive characteristics. In general Giacobbe's
behaviour, resembling that of a delirious individual as he runs in and out of buildings and
wanders aimlessly around deserted urban streets, embodies a paroxystic and increasingly
disorganized societal situation.
The desire that audiences be provided with 'truthful distillations of dreams' (Artaud,
1938: 70) is fulfilled by Partner's mise-en-scene when situations are presented in a dreamlike
mode, such as the sequence in which Giacobbe's raving monologue about human liberation is
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