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it towards the images being splashed on the screen, and turns back to the darkness, panning
along the young spectators who - enveloped in a 'cigarette-hazed' silence - are absorbed in
disquieting films about social injustice in France and the USA.
The viewers' impression of watching a reconstruction of history is reinforced by the
staged re-enactment of the political confrontation being intercut with documentary footage
from 1968. In some cases fictive images and footage are edited in a way that gestures
initiated by fictional characters are completed by real people in the footage. By this use of
archive clips Bertolucci implies that his portrayal of events is interchangeable with archive
material in terms of socio-historical veracity, and therefore the archive clips confirm the
positioning of viewers in the role of observers, as they function as markers of the real world.
The narrative remains fragmentated, as if Bertolucci assumed that viewers shared an
understanding of how the revolutionary component within the cultural ferment was rapidly
identified and opposed by the state. That the film's mise-en-scene was based on authentic
audiovisual references to 1968 primarily to evoke the period's socio-political ferment, is
corroborated by one of Bertolucci's statements, namely that 'the film's meaning resided in
the attempt to re-capture and recount, above all to the present young generations, [...] the
spirit of that period'.(4) Indeed, in affective terms, this segment of the film appears designed
to elicit curiosity or nostalgia, according to the age of individual viewers.
With the twins' parents leaving for a holiday and Matthew staying at the apartment, a
shift in the film's narrative occurs that disorients viewers' cognitive expectations, as it
abandons the unfolding of events connected to the students' rebellion and redirects the
viewers' focus of attention towards the secluded set of the apartment. The shift in the
narrative is accompanied by a shift in theme which, from the political, changes into the
cinematic, with an emphasis on the fascination and the pedagogical role of cinema. This is
carried out by means of character dialogues - that at times assume the form of debates -
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