Download (12MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

CONCLUSION
This project's aim has been to investigate the ways in which Bertolucci has constructed the
cognitive and emotional structures of each of his feature films in the context of a reception
situation characterized by conscious viewer engagement with on-screen events, a reception
process based on an interrelation between cognition and emotion. The study also illustrates
that the passage from one phase to another of Bertolucci's film-making is not typified by
clear-cut changes. The analysis of his early 1960s films has shown how his enthusiasm for
the innovative work of the Nouvelle Vague does not result in exclusively cerebral films, but
instead the use of the new cinematic language has a twofold effect, that of eliciting reflection
on the nature of cinema and also drawing a significant affective response ranging from
lyricism (The Grim Reaper and Before the Revolution} to unease (Partner). Regarding
Bertolucci's way of adopting elements of the Nouvelle Vague model, Roberto Perpignani (the
film editor for Before the Revolution and Partner} asserts in a DVD interview that although
Bertolucci was swept along by the disruptive force of the Nouvelle Vague films, and although
they were important reference points for him, they were incorporated into a process of free,
autonomous creativity on the director's part: 'Bertolucci was working on his own idea'
(Perpignani, 2005). Perpignani indicates the sequence in Before the Revolution of Agostino
repeatedly falling from his bicycle as exemplifying Bertolucci's personal experimentation.
Perpignani also maintains that at that time, there were few opportunities to examine
scientifically the techniques used in other films, and so the effects that materialized in
Bertolucci's early films were the result of dialogue between the director and himself about
the Nouvelle Vague films that they had both seen and which had remained in their memories:
'this was our authorization to use them' (Perpignani, 2005). Even the director's use of
different distancing effects - which resurfaced throughout his career - is characterized by a
329