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manipulation, Bordwell analyses the peculiar temporal construction of Bertolucci's The
Spider's Stratagem, illustrating how this is achieved by the aesthetic construction of its
flashbacks, whereas the narrative structure of Stratagem is an example of a suppressive
narrative with its foregrounding of a permanent causal gap within the events of the story.
Having discussed different modes of cinematic narration and established a distinction
between the classical narration typical of Hollywood films and that of art cinema, Bordwell
assesses how art cinema deviates from canonical narrative conventions such as linear chains
of cause and effect, noting that its narratives tend to be less plot-driven and goal-oriented than
Hollywood releases, the art film protagonist being 'presented as sliding passively from one
situation to another' and following 'an itinerary which surveys the film's social world'
(Bordwell, 1995: 207). Art films 'sharpen character delineation by impelling us to compare
agents, attitudes and situations' and consequently the art film s attempt 'to pronounce
judgments upon modern life and la condition humaine, depends upon its formal organization'
(Bordwell, 1995: 207). Contemporary Italian cinema provides numerous examples of this
form of narrative organization; the existential perspective of Ernesto, the artist protagonist of
Marco Bellocchio's L 'ora di religione/T)ie Religion Hour (2002) is repeatedly juxtaposed
and contrasted with his relations' cynical attempts to obtain the beatification of Ernesto's late
mother; his resistance to the sanctification process remains inevitably passive given that the
institutional weight of the Catholic Church is pitted against him, manipulating his life path
and, indeed, the entire telos of the film, with only Ernesto's subjectivity occasionally shaping
the film's aesthetics and structure such as in the slowed down sequences in which he
witnesses examples of the Church's anachronistic influence in 21 st century Rome.
This study will explore the position occupied by Bertolucci's work towards the
boundary between Hollywood-influenced styles of film-making and art cinema, examining
the structures and aesthetics of art cinema which shape the viewer's emotional and cognitive
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