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Catholic Christian Democrats establish their grip on political power while promoting the
advance of neo-capitalism. In this ideological context, the film narrative indicates how -
through the characters of Fabrizio, Agostino and Cesare - the director aims to portray the
atmosphere of pessimism and unease within the contemporary Italian Left. Agostino, with his
sense of maladjustment, embodies the extreme consequences of social disorientation upon the
individual. Cesare personifies both Pasolini's idea of changing the Communist Parry's
theoretical agenda from the inside, remaining faithful to Marxist ideology, and Pasolini's
sense of the intellectual's pedagogical role. Fabrizio reflects the pessimism and frustration of
the younger generations within Italy's established class system, symbolically represented by
two annual events that had become rituals through which two social strata, the workers and
the bourgeoisie, reconfirmed the durability and distinctiveness of their own demarcated
sections of society.
In fact, Fabrizio airs his criticisms during the festival of the Communist Party (La
festa dell'Unita), an event characterized by an empty rituality as the participants' main topic
of conversation seems to be the death of Marilyn Monroe rather than the planned debate on
Fidel Castro. Subsequently. Fabrizio's return to his bourgeois milieu is marked by attending -
with his fiancee - the bourgeoisie's ritual of the opening night at the Opera; the importance of
this symbolism was confirmed by Bertolucci himself, when in an interview he declared The
long scene in the Parma Opera House [...] is really there to display this grandiose and
ridiculous bourgeois temple' (Fieschi, 1968: 36). Historically, the emblematic importance of
opera was subsequently confirmed years later when it became a target of the 1968 students'
revolt.(3) Therefore, the existences of Fabrizio and Agostino are pervaded by a sense of
alienation and gloom which permeates the filrrfs intellectual and emotional resonances,
affecting the viewing experience. This also extends to the cognitive engagement that the film
elicits; regardless of the political orientation and age of viewers and of the period when the
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