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constructed artifice, while, however, also strengthening the viewer's emotional understanding
of Shandurai's character. This is typical of the way in which, from his earliest work such as
Before the Revolution, Bertolucci's film-making tends to engender viewing experiences in
which intellectual awareness and affective engagement are interlinked.
Two more scenes are worth mentioning for their idiosyncratic camera movement and
changes of speed. The first one introduces Shandurai's disquieting perception of Kinsky's
evolving attitude to life as an insidious siege to her inner feelings. Here, Bertolucci chooses
the representational form of the dream, thereby evoking the notion that the subconscious
tends to reveal emotional turmoil, while reason refuses to accept its existence. The sequence
starts with the camera focusing in on Shandurai as she falls asleep at the kitchen table, then
the close-up of the woman's face undergoes a 180 degree rotation, which might symbolize
her mental transposition to Africa where the dream takes place. She is shown tearing down
posters on which the picture of the dictator has been replaced by Kinsky's portrait. The
dream's end is marked by a reverse rotation to the original shot of Shandurai's face. The
second scene is designed to confirm Kinsky's new, positive attitude towards life. At the end
of the concert he has given to showcase the music he has composed, Kinsky follows his
guests/students out on to the patio and starts juggling with oranges and apples, which
accidentally hit a tray of drinks that Shandurai is holding. The clownesque quality of this
mise-en-scene is enhanced by an unexpected form of closure strongly reminiscent of silent
comedies from the 1920s. The images of Kinsky guiltily running away towards the back of
the frame are shot using a speeded up effect that immediately evokes the warm, comic
humour of the earlier genre, hi these two scenes the peculiarity of the camera movement and
the change of speed suddenly bring up a third point of view unattached to any authority
within the diegesis and the effects instantiate how Bertolucci engages viewers on both
affective and cognitive levels at the same time.
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