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Yet, ultimately disillusioned by Paul's self-centred nature and feeling threatened by his
aggressive attitude, she eventually kills him.
The rejection of social identity
Paul's depiction as an individual tormented by social constraints evokes the antiheroes
created by Luigi Pirandello, particularly Vitangelo Moscarda in Uno, nessuno e centomila
(1909) - and Mattia Pascal - the protagonist of II fu Mattia Pascal (1904). Paul suffers from
Moscarda's anguish at not being able to recognize his interior nature in the perception that
others have of him, and consequently rejects any personal attributes - especially names -
which are likened to cages that imprison the true self. Paul also shares Pascal's painful
awareness of an inescapable personal destiny which is mapped out by a person's miserable
origins. In particular, Paul abolishes the use of names to achieve maximum indeterminacy
between him and Jeanne, and when she later comments: 'I must invent a name for you', he
dryly replies: 'I've been called a million names all my life... I don't want any'. In another
scene, after narrating his miserable background, Paul leaves Jeanne (and the viewers) in
doubt about the authenticity of his story. Bertolucci's emphasis on the way names can be
instrumentalized as reductive labels, together with the ambiguous account that emerges of
Paul's past life, implies the difficulties in elaborating any reliable notion of an individual's
interior identity, a concept characterizing Pirandello's work. Two analogies further connect
Paul to the character of Moscarda; both are shot by the only person (a woman) with whom
they have been able to share fragments of their authentic selves, and with whom they wanted
to start everything again. The second parallel is that both women use guns that belonged to
their dead fathers. Therefore the film elicits an intellectual engagement that - despite
Bertolucci's movement towards the mainstream in terms of production and casting - has a
strong resonance for viewers familiar with European and particularly Italian literary history.
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