The Absent Presence

In an unusual sequence early in Bertolucci's Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution), Fabrizio (Francesco Barilli) meets his friend Agostino (Allen Migette), on the road in front of Cesare's house. As Fabrizio approaches the camera, we hear insistent circuslike music and the sound of a bike. For a few moments, Fabrizio passes out of range of the camera which has not yet located Agostino on his bike. Once Agostino appears, he begins a dance, a sort of sarabande a bicyclette, moving around Fabrizio in a circle, and passing in and out of view. After he passes out of sight, we hear a crash and Agostino's words, Don't come near That is for my father.1 The sound of a second crash, off, elicits, And that's for my mother! Bertolucci's camera reveals an extraordinarily frustrating inability to catch the exact sequence of Agostino's falls from his bike. In each of the five crashes. Agostino is variously lost from the camera's range, edited out or hidden by Fabrizio's body. The viewer never once sees a complete sequence. The final crash, hidden once more by Fabrizio's body, evokes, And that's for me! Fabrizio's only response is, Hey, let's go to the movies together. Let's go see Red River. Up to this point in the film, Bertolucci's camera has demonstrated an exceptionally high degree of mobility. The film opens with a handheld shot of Fabrizio running and mixes close-ups, long shots, aerial travelling views of Parma, and an automotive travelling shot through Garibaldi Square in Parma. This initial activity of the camera is an almost vertiginous conceit, and yet in the Fabrizio-Agostino sequence, the camera demonstrates a curious inability or unwillingness to follow an action once initiated to its immediate conclusion. Five times the

Art · Humanities · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Italian Literature and Culture · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies