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(1998) articulates its discourse of the Italian state's socio-economic abandonment of Sicily's
most deprived areas by developing a mood of desolation that emanates from the directors'
decision to film in black and white, from their extended duration extreme long shots of
isolated, ragged individuals standing in wasteland, and from an absence of soundtrack music.
Cipri and Maresco's 'emotion markers' are often predicated on the comic grotesque, in
particular on the cruelty inflicted on vulnerable individuals, and this reinforces the film's
mood of wretched hopelessness.
Smith's view that film style is fundamental for creating mood is significant for my
study, since it will identify how elements of Bertolucci's mises-en-scene, particularly his
colour schemes and lighting, are designed to engender moods reflecting either a character's
predominant emotion or the director's implied perspective. This aesthetic approach to
producing a somewhat distanced form of emotion, rather than using mechanisms to elicit
strong attachments from viewers towards characters, is the key to understanding the peculiar
nature of the affective charge to be found in Bertolucci's films. Often, the 'emotion markers'
that sustain and intensify the moods of his films do not engender increased concern from
viewers for the protagonist's welfare. This is because the sense of 'subjectivity' that emerges
in Bertolucci's work is often that of Bertolucci himself as the implied author - a constant
presence towards which the viewer's own subjectivity and self-awareness as an individual
engaging with pieces of cinematic artifice, gravitates.
Notes
1. On p. 106 of his book Godard on Godard, Tom Milne lists the films released - or still being worked on
- in 1959 by the Cahiers group: Godard's A bout de souffle: Truffaut's Les quatre cents coups;
Rohmer s Le sign du lion; Rivette's Paris nous apartient; Chabrol's A double tour; Franju's La tete
contre les murs; Resnais's Hiroshima man amour.
2. Morrey discusses Godard's use of this element in exploring questions such as reality and language in
Le petit soldat (p. 33); words and their meanings in Vivre sa vie (p .44); 'the conditions of possibility of
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