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mark out the sequence as significant within the
film's overall scheme, but they imply the
exceptional experience of planning - let alone
consuming - an elaborate meal for people
from the youngsters' social class in the early
1960s.
The implied author as the film's narrator
The film's format appears characterized by what William Rothman has termed the
'relationship between the camera and the author, the "I" of the camera', (Rothman, 1988: x) a
close rapport that would emerge again in Stealing Beauty. Indeed, the lack of a protagonist in
The Grim Reaper to propel the story forward, together with the disconnected nature of the
characters' lives, gives a greater emphasis to the fact that it is the camera, and the director's
presence behind it, that controls the narrative temporally and spatially. This is confirmed by
the extent of the use of the camera as an external narrator, through positioning that is
predominantly unattached to any of the characters' visual fields. This makes it evident that
the perspective guiding the film's scenes is that of an omniscient observer, the implied
author. This strategy distances viewers from the limitations of character subjectivity to
encourage reflection on the film's portrayal of Italian society, adds intellectual fascination
through the deployment of sophisticated cinematic techniques, and occasionally reinforces
the film's emotional charge when necessary,
for example by using brief viewer-character
alignment to elicit compassion as characters
are humiliated or abused, the nadir of this
being the murder of the terrified prostitute (see
image). Hence, Bertolucci's pervasive presence, combined with the film's fragmentary
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