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LITERATURE REVIEW
While this study will approach Bertolucci's films using a conceptual framework that has been
developed in film studies over the past fifteen years, it will also reference significant
publications dating back to earlier phases of his career, studies which drew on the prevalent
theoretical perspectives of the time. It is therefore opportune to present a chronological
overview of key monographs and essays on Bertolucci. Bernardo Bertolucci by Francesco
Casetti (1978) includes films from Tlie Grim Reaper to 1900, and covers aspects of
Bertolucci's life and work, dedicating considerable space to biographical material on the
director, his shift in film-making orientation towards the mainstream, and his politics. Casetti
expresses reservations about the tendency of critics to interpret recurrent themes in
Bertolucci's films as indicators of his obsessions and personal complexes. Casetti's view -
shared by the writer of this volume - was that 'through retrospective psychoanalysis [...] they
have carried out a somewhat gratuitous juxtaposition between real biography and symbolic
transformation' (Casetti, 1978: 17). In order to go 'beyond this rather facile juxtaposition
between the real biography and the imaginary one', Casetti identified three key themes in the
director's work: that of journeys, ambiguity often connected to a sense of generational
unease, and that of death, connected to father/son relationships (Casetti, 1978: 17). Analysing
Bertolucci's work as a whole, my study considers that the journey theme is significant to
specific films such as The Sheltering Sky and Little Buddha in which journeys generate a
change in characters or situations; as regards ambiguity, I would add that this is arguably also
a manifestation of Bertolucci's reluctance to delineate a political position or philosophy in
clear terms. Casetti's definition of Bertolucci's work using the term 'ambiguity' is valid even
now; he argues that Bertolucci's films are shaped by a dual value system: on the one hand,
the director seeks to ascertain and preserve the functions of classical cinema, offering his
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