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moods punctuated by emotional phenomena ranging from brief empathy to estrangement.
Often, the moods of individual films are closely related to their particular narrative structures,
and my study will outline how Bertolucci creates intricate narratives which induce cognitive
forms of hypothesis-making, a mode of engagement frequently strengthened by the viewer's
awareness of the director's stylized, self-conscious use of the cinematic medium. This
volume stems from a desire to re-examine Bertolucci's feature films away from the
parameters of established critical canons, to delineate the fascinating fusion of the emotional
and the intellectual that has positioned him at a point between the cinematic mainstream and
art cinema. This is a position from which he continues to be regarded worldwide as one of
Italy's most talented filmmakers, a reputation that has survived mixed reactions to his work.
The modes of viewer engagement envisaged by this study are largely predicated on
the director's two distinct career phases outlined on the first page of this introduction - the
period of experimentalism up to the release of Partner during which a sophisticated,
cinephile viewer was envisaged, while subsequently, with Bertolucci moving more towards
the cinematic mainstream, his films appear to cater for two distinct audiences, those with
cinematic expertise as well as those viewers primarily seeking to be captivated by the
cinematic spectacle. Regarding the kind of audience he was pursuing, Bertolucci asserted: 'In
the 60s, film-making focused on expressivity and on language; however at a certain point I
discovered that I needed to communicate, to privilege communication. In fact with Stratagem
and Conformist I started making films which had a wider circulation' (Ungari, 1982: 230). A
closer examination of this issue will occur in the subsequent analysis of individual films, as
the interplay between the cognitive and affective structures of each work often displays a
refined cinematic and intellectual sensibility as well as a profound appeal to the senses.
A further aim of this study of Bertolucci's films is that re-establishing a sense of
proportion with regard to the psychoanalytical interpretations of his work on which much