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distanciation effect or conspicuous instance of intertextuality activates the viewer's
subjectivity and personal networks of associations. Consequently, the world of a film like
Pierrot lefou 'is not primarily represented as a source of perceptions and a goal for acts, but
as "a state of consciousness" and should therefore be approached in a lyrical-associative way.
It further activates the viewer's proximal or proprioceptive "feeling of himself during
viewing' (Grodal 1997: 219).
This different application of Brecht's established notion of Verfremdung may appear
problematic by adding emotion into the equation, but my study will suggest that Bertolucci's
use of the camera and editing sometimes produces the interruption of the illusion prefigured
by Brecht, while also triggering emotion within viewers. In this volume it will sometimes be
observed how, in Bertolucci's films - even in Partner, his most 'Brechtian' film, where the
viewer's emotional engagement with the film is limited - specific sequences that increase the
viewer's awareness of the cinematic medium coincide
with the activation of affective responses. In Before the
Revolution one example of this is the jagged editing
that characterizes the sequence of Agostino's bizarre
performance on a bicycle in front of Fabrizio;
Fabrizio's POV is slowly replaced by a neutral camera
perspective which highlights how Agostino's antics
escalate from showing off into a disturbing episode of
self-harm, caused by the youth repeatedly falling off
the bicycle (see images). The technique gradually
raises viewers" awareness of the camera's presence and
of the editing pattern that has been adopted, reducing the film's reality status while cueing an
increasing sense of discomfort - within the viewer's own consciousness - at what is seen.
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