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for granted, in a 'slightly hazardous way' that it would not turn 'into a scientific
demonstration' (Willett, 1992: 276).
In her study on Brecht, Meg Mumford adopts 'defamiliarization' as her preferred
translation of the term Verfremdung, in relation to Brecht using the effect as a form of
political intervention against 'the familiar', in order to free socially conditioned phenomena
from 'that stamp of familiarity which protects them against our grasp' and to elicit a more
questioning attitude from spectators towards these social, economic and political 'givens'
(Mumford, 2009: 61). Although recognizing the appropriateness of this terminology, my
study will use the term 'distanciation', since - in a cinematic context - it appears more
suitable to express the effect created by the devices that can be adopted to break viewers'
absorption in stories and reawaken their awareness of the cinematic medium. Bertolucci
transposed into some of his films Godard's configuration of the distanciation effect, which
consisted of strategies such as the use of unconventional editing and techniques through
which the cinematic illusion was broken, hi Partner Bertolucci incorporated an overt form of
Brechtian didacticism, whereas with regard to the directors work as a whole, this study
illustrates how other elements in his films also retain a Brechtian influence, such as the lack
of viewer identification with characters, the paratelic forms of narration that rarely centre on
the defining of, and achievement of, a character's goals, the conspicuous presence of the
camera, and the way that empathic phenomena rarely possess a cathartic function. It might be
suggested that by essentially positioning the viewer in the role of observer, Bertolucci fulfils
- in his own way - Brecht's instruction that 'acceptance or rejection of their [the characters']
actions and utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in
the audience's subconscious' (Willett, 1992: 91). Moreover, the paradox that some of
Bertolucci's distancing devices arguably generate emotion in terms of aesthetic fascination,
or by intensifying a film's mood, will also be discussed.
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