Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.
Bertolucci's masterpiece is visually stunning with Vittorio Storaro's iconic cinematography—geometric compositions, light and shadow play, and color palette that remains among cinema's finest. Trintignant delivers a sublimely repressed performance as Clerici, and the supporting cast is equally strong. The film's non-linear structure and psychosexual exploration of fascism as pathology made it genuinely singular in 1971. The plot, while thematically rich, can feel somewhat meandering and the ending, though historically resonant, is a bit abrupt in its ironic reversal. Novelty is high because Bertolucci fused political allegory, Freudian psychology, and visual bravura into something unmistakably his own.