Download (12MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

Lucy as a consumable item. He gives away the videotape in the same way as he might
dispose of a porn magazine after flicking through it. As well as the prologue's emotional and
intellectual resonances, by withholding all narrative information except the fact that Lucy is
travelling to Tuscany and that her beauty attracts unsolicited attention, the film stimulates
viewers' curiosity and directs their cognitive hypotheses towards the probability that
sexuality will be an important ingredient in the film.
Cynical voyeurism, repulsion and social awareness
Later in the film, the voyeur is identified as Carlo Lisca, a photographer who specializes in
war reportage and whose involvement in war is characterized by moral detachment and by an
interest in its more lurid excesses, as his cynical statement 'There is a war and I am light as a
souffle' implies; Bertolucci consequently creates a further similarity with the protagonist of
Peeping Tom. In Lisca's second encounter with Lucy, she is lying on the grass after a game
of hide-and-seek and is wrestling playfully with another character, Richard, these exertions
leaving her panting. By using a high camera angle to represent Lisca's gaze, Lucy is shot in a
medium close-up to enhance her neck, her open mouth, her shoulders as they rest on the
grass, and the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest. Through Lisca's gaze, they all become
ambiguous signs of excitement; then by using a low camera angle to render Lucy's gaze,
Lisca is seen showing no reaction, he simply puts on his sunglasses and walks away. In their
subsequent dialogue, focusing on the possibility that he is Lucy's biological father, his
contemptuous detachment confirms that he is very much in control of himself. This is
confirmed in a later sequence in which he is referred to as 'that bastard" who likes looking at
women 'relieving themselves'; he dismisses the allegation with a superficial comment that
does not actually deny the accusation. This depiction is effective in making Lisca's character
repugnant, the viewer's emotional, antipathetic response leading to Lisca being placed at the
negative end of the viewer's hierarchy of character preference as this classification starts to
298