SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

christopher-underwood Roberto Rossellini and the neorealists may have influenced the French nouvelle vague but that movement was in the early 60s to supplant it at the forefront of international cinema. Before the Revolution is a key film in this change, certainly in Italy. There is mention and acknowledgement to the earlier master but the imagery and the mix of long almost static shots and frantic hand held close-ups tell of dramatic ongoing changes. The beautiful Adriana Asti plays Gina, the aunt of Fabrizio played by Francesco Barilli. She is supposed to be some 10 years older, does not look it, but actually is, in reality. She is 33, he 21 and the young director only 22 would marry her, in reality. The director and male lead are also both from Parma, the wonderful looking city in which the film is set. A portentous film in many ways, apart from the personal ripples there is the political dimension with ties being loosened with the communist party and the nebulous seeming search for a new tomorrow, even if our hero proclaims a 'nostalgia for the present', that would lead to the looming cultural revolution of the late 60s.

Jackson Booth-Millard From director Bernardo Bertolucci (The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor), I found this Italian film in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I hoped I would agree with the four stars out of five that critics gave it, so I watched it and hoped for the best. Basically the film tells the story of teenager Fabrizio (Francesco Barilli), he is a young man nearing adulthood, he is a passionate and idealistic youth who lives with his aunt. Cesare (Morando Morandini), a teacher and Marxist who is engaged to lovely but bourgeois Clelia (Cristina Pariset), Cesare influences many of Fabrizio's decisions, and Fabrizio is still grieving for the death, possibly suicide, of his volatile friend Agostino (Allen Midgette). Following Agostino's funeral Fabrizio begins a love affair with alternately sweet, seductive, poetic, distracted and unhinged Gina (Adriana Asti), but then she swings the other way and sleeps with a stranger. They visit Cesare often, and Gina's older landowner friend Puck (Cecrope Barilli), their futures seem to be bleak with the relationship problems, losing land and much more, and this contrasts with what is going on with Italy and the country's future. Also starring Domenico Alpi as Fabrizio's father and Amelia Bordi as Fabrizio's mother. I have to be honest that I only vaguely paid attention to the story within the more serious stuff going on, and I found it hard to concentrate on the majority of the film's material, and not just because of having to read subtitles, I don't think I would watch it again to try and understand it better, I know it is not a bad political drama. Worth watching, in my opinion!

tomgillespie2002 After his début, The Grim Reaper (1962), the then 22-year old Bernardo Bertolucci made this, Before the Revolution, an often astonishing homage to the ongoing French New Wave movement and a work of almost unbelievable maturity given his age. Set very much after the revolution, presumably referring to the Italian unification, this is undoubtedly a bleak film, looking back on Italy's history with blind, fond nostalgia, and staring into the abyss of their future. Despite the occasional Marxist monologue, the film is in no ways political, and instead focuses on very human drama, with characters seemingly locked into their social roles and resigned to their fate.The handsome and idealistic Fabrizio (Francesco Barilli) is destined to marry his childhood sweetheart Clelia (Cristina Pariset), a beautiful woman teetering on aristocracy. After his friend Agostino (Allen Midgette) drowns in a possible suicide, he falls headlong into a potentially dangerous love affair with his aunt Gina (Adriana Asti). Gina is unpredictable, highly emotional and possibly borderline mentally ill, but she is also attractive, seductive and wilful, challenging for the sullen Fabrizio. The death of Agostino clearly damages the passionate Fabrizio, whose studies of Marxism with his teacher and friend Cesare (Morando Morandini) had made him outspoken, but now finds himself blindly wandering into the bourgeoisie.The film doesn't really have a plot as such, but is instead a collection of scenes and interplays that channel Bertolucci's somewhat pessimistic views of Italy in the 1960's. The characters seem locked in the past, a past that they weren't alive for, and as Fabrizio states, full of nostalgia for the present, as if every passing moment is somehow being snatched away from them. It's best summarised in what is undoubtedly the stand-out scene in the movie, as they visit Puck (Cecrope Barilli), a man crippled with so much debt that he is soon to lose his beloved land. While the camera stays calm and graceful throughout the film, Puck laments as the camera sweeps into their air over rivers and forests, Ennio Morricone's astounding score blaring over the visuals. It's a beautiful moment, full of sad longing that reminded me of Sam the Lion's moving monologue in The Last Picture Show (1971) - one of favourite moments in cinema.Although this is clearly a wink to Godard and the French New Wave, Bertolucci takes a much more controlled approach to the direction. The camera often glides slowly from side to side, switching character focus as they talk, filmed in crisp black-and-white. It was this approach that caused Godard to voice his displeasure at Bertolucci after viewing his masterpiece The Conformist (1970), claiming it to be too contrived. But cinema can be anything and everything you want it to be, and this makes for beautiful cinema, anchored by a powerful performance by Asti, who makes any possible taboo regarding her incestuous relationship with her nephew become redundant. This is much more than a simple love story, this is a film about a country, it's past and present.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

zetes Before the Revolution, Bernardo Bertolucci's second film, is kind of a mess. He was only 22 when he made it, and he must have made it immediately after he finished his first film, Grim Reaper. It's obvious that he's a genius from this film. Like I said, it's kind of a mess, but no more beautiful mess has ever been created in the cinema.The story is difficult to follow at times, but it is basically about a young bourgeois man who falls in love with his young aunt. Their relationship is socially unacceptable, so it immediately begins to break apart. As it does, politics rush into the film, confused politics, probably representing Bertolucci's own conflicting feelings at this point. The whole film feels very personal.I don't know. I really didn't catch too much of, well, what's going on. Which sounds bad, but there's a good reason for my missing everything: Bertolucci's direction is breathtaking. It is a nice cross between French New Wave and the Modernist movement that the Italian filmmakers were going through at the time. Bertolucci throws every single cinematic trick into the film that he can fathom. Everything works, though. It's showy, to be sure, but it's never less than one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced. It never seems less than amazing. The emotions of the film - and they really hit home, even if the story is difficult to follow - are fractured and manic.I need to watch Before the Revolution again. I feel, though, that even if I find it completely flawed the second time around, it could be nothing less than the greatest flawed masterpiece ever produced. 10 years after Before the Revolution, Bernardo Bertolucci directed what I consider my third favorite film, Last Tango in Paris. By then, he had perfected his style. I'll be adding another Bertolucci film to my list of favorites tonight.