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it is Last Tango in Paris, and in the relevant chapter I will also explain my reservations about
some interpretations that condition Kolker's analysis.
As regards the use of Verdi's music in The Spider's Stratagem, Kolker's view that it
contributes to intensify Bertolucci's way of displaying the 'spectacle of fascism and the
spectacle of Athos's production of history' is persuasive, (Kolker, 1985: 124) but less
convincing is the connection that he makes between the characters of Verdi's opera Rigoletto
and those of Stratagem, notably Rigoletto/Athos senior and Gilda/Athos junior. Rigoletto is a
despicable personality, whose ill fate - that of suffering the same abuse that he has helped the
Duke to inflict upon courtiers - appears deserved. The eventual pity elicited towards his
character derives from the high price he pays, that of the killing of his young, innocent
daughter.(l) The case of Athos senior is different, not only because he ultimately offers his
own life for the benefit of a cause, but also because the film's ending does not solve the
riddle of his actions or establish whether his behaviour betrays the expectations of his
offspring, Athos junior; instead it remains shrouded in ambiguity. For the same reason I do
not think that TJre Spider's Stratagem features 'in a reverse of the events of the opera, a son
who mistakes the identity of his father' (Kolker, 1985: 123). Finally, with regard to Kolker's
view that in The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man terrorism is merely 'the initiating element of
the film's discourse' as 'it remains, by and large, outside of that discourse - or buried deep
within it' (Kolker, 1985: 166), I will counterpoint that terrorism is the focus of the whole
film. However, there is a closer convergence between this volume and Kolker s consideration
of La luna more as 'an indication of Bertolucci's momentary loss of formal and narrative
control [...] - possibly in reaction to the debacle of 1900 - than as a Freudian exercise'
(Kolker, 1985:8).
In this context, Kolker's observation that the potential of Bertolucci's work for
Freudian interpretation 'has been of great interest to American critics' (Kolker, 1985: 8)
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