Download (12MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

together' (Ungari, 1982: 51). This recollection may be considered interesting and perhaps
amusing, but it is not particularly relevant to the crux of the question. Fortunately, in other
contexts Bertolucci is more open, and the book represents a source of declarations about his
life, his films, and about his relationships with collaborators and producers. On this issue, a
substantial section articulates Bertolucci's views on the distribution battle for his film 1900 -
(Ungari, 1982: 128-132) and on different shifts of orientation in his film-making, such as in
his attitude towards editing (Ungari, 1982: 71-73). Several of these declarations will be
referred to in this study, sometimes in parallel with statements on the same topics given by
Bertolucci to other interviewers, in an attempt to clarify his artistic discourse.
The second section of significance for my study of Bertolucci's films is entitled
'Hollywood versus Eisenstein versus Renoir versus Godard', because it reflects the
ambiguities and contradictions of Bertolucci's entire output. The director asserts that his idea
of cinema is that of a lengthy film whose sequences bear the hallmarks of many directors in a
complex game of cross-references, quotations, influences and so on. But this imaginary film
also includes turning points that break the continuity, as exemplified by Godard's A bout de
souffle. Bertolucci also clarifies that for the notion of a 'cinema of seduction' he intends the
cinema of Max Ophuls, Orson Welles and Joseph von Sternberg and their use of the camera;
the work of Yosujiro Ozu and John Ford, and their portrayal of lived experience; and the
films of Jean Renoir, whose work combines both of the above qualities (Ungari, 1982: 177).
On the one hand, this statement reflects the sophisticated influences on Bertolucci's film-
making, and also, therefore, his ambition to address audiences able to appreciate them; on the
other, it is revealing in terms of the light it sheds on the 'accumulation factor' of influences
that are traceable in his films, which, when incorporated into a coherent filmic vision or
structure, result in effective cinematic art, but which, when applied to Bertolucci's later work
such as Hie Dreamers, create a detrimental, overloaded effect. Ranvaud's interview with
15