Word: niro
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From the first, their lives are complicated by the other characters. Their families make demands on them as children, and when they grow up there are the peasants who look to Depardieu, a fierce socialist, for leadership, and the landlords and fascists who look to De Niro to support their efforts to subdue the peasants. There are women, a dedicated socialist and a half made dilettante. And of course, there are the historical forces, requiring De Niro to choose between his socialism and his position as a landlord. 1900 unfolds on many levels; it is hard to keep up with...
...hours from the original six-hour film. The version now showing here leaves a great many gaps, and it's impossible to tell whether Bertolucci meant to leave details vague or whether they were cut for the U.S. market. It is never clear, for instance, why De Niro's insane cousin loves him, or why she and her fascist lover become so perversely destructive; nor is it completely clear why De Niro stands by as the fascists take control of his town...
...however, clarity may not matter, for the film leaves the real world behind and enters the realm of allegory. When the fascists are driven out of Rome, the peasants turn on the fascists of their own town, and then it is the padrone's turn. Passive as ever, De Niro stands before a people's tribunal--under a huge red flag that is miraculously unharmed by the bayonets that hold it up. But if De Niro retained his love for his peasant friend throughout the fascist period, Depardieu cannot overcome his ties to De Niro and he does not permit...
This, Bertolucci seems to suggest, is the reason the class struggle remains unresolved: personal ties obscure class warfare, ideology notwithstanding; it is hard to kill people one has always known. As young men, De Niro and Depardieu fought each other to prove their courage; as old men, they will fight, but the struggle has become oddly depersonalized, the inevitable outcome of the existence of a class system...
...message is valid, it does not lend itself easily to a heavyhanded treatment. The main conflict in 1900 is the love these two men bear for each other, across ideological and social grounds; and the main question we are left with is why they bear it. De Niro and Depardieu are both fine actors, and play their roles well, so the fault lies elsewhere--probably with their director. In his effort to give 1900 an epic vastness, it seems, Bertolucci lost sight of the smaller things, the individuals around whom the epic apparently revolves...