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te nel deserto/The Sheltering Sky: Time and Memory
Bertolucci declared that after The Last Emperor he was looking for a subject that would
allow him to 'put the soul under a microscope' and that in reading Paul Bowles's novel he
was 'fascinated by the idea of these "figures in a landscape" so like the paintings of Caspar
David Friederich' (Leys, 1990: 53). This declaration is pertinent to the following analysis,
which outlines how Bertolucci uses the impact of the desert landscape on the protagonists'
lives to represent the problems affecting human relationships in contemporary Western
society. It will be argued that the film's approach is to highlight the diminishing importance
of the memory of original human needs and desires in Western society, due to a radical
change in the perception of time. In fact, the film is centred on its protagonists' gradual
awareness of having lived their lives oblivious to the crucial meaning of existence, an
awareness that leads to death or to a sense of perdition both in the individual's inner and
outer worlds, hi studying the ways in which Bertolucci conveys the complex, cognitive
experiences and also the intense, affective experiences of the subject, my analysis divides the
film into three main conceptual elements: the representation of time, the representation of the
sublime, and the representation of lyrical forms. The analysis also highlights how the film's
montage and the retro quality of the mise-en-scene sustain and intertwine these theoretical
facets throughout the film.
Plot summary
During the film's opening credits, clues emerge about the narrative's themes; time and
memory. The credits roll against a background of black and white images, depicting a ship
preparing for a transoceanic journey, which are given a sepia tone. It has been noted that the
sepia tones invoke 'the nostalgic look of old 1950s postcards' (Loshitzky, 1995: 2). However,
any interpretation of this aesthetic as an indication of nostalgia is somewhat simplistic, as the
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