Bernardo Bertolucci and Sergio Citti (screenplay, based on a story by
Pier Paolo Pasolini), Bernardo Bertolucci (director) La commare secca (The
Grim Reaper) / 1962
Bertolucci’s first feature film, La commare
secca, is outwardly a Rashomon-like tale as police question various men and
teenagers about the brutal murder of a Roman prostitute. We see the “truth”
while nearly all the interviewees tell the police another tale, each “story”
framed by a short thunderstorm during which the prostitute prepares to leave
the house.
But, in fact, the prostitute and her
murderer—a small time Friulian thug who wears clogs—hardly matter. The real
thread winding through these stories concerns love and sexual abuse. Few of
these characters have a private place to even meet for love-making or sex. A
former criminal lives with his girlfriend, who herself seems to be a pimp for
several women; but during the day in question he has decided to leave his
girlfriend who has provided him with living expenses and a new car, intending
to give her up for another woman. A gang of young men prey on lovers in a park,
stealing whatever they can, purses and radios. Two young teenage boys court two
girls, finally gathering in an older friend’s home to dance. Later, picked up
by a homosexual for illicit sex, they steal his coat, mistakenly believing it
might contain his billfold. A handsome
soldier on leave—a true “hick” as we would describe him in English—clumsily
attempts to pick up women, and, after touring the Coliseum, falls asleep on a
park bench. The homosexual actually witnesses the prostitute’s murder, at the
end of the film identifying the murderer to the police.
Bertolucci’s Rome seems to offer no place to go. The gigolo is hated by
his lover’s mother, and the mother and daughter seem to spend most of their
time in brutal fights. The soldier not only has no place to take a woman, were
he able to find someone interested in his lurid advances, but has little
ability to even communicate in a civil society. The poor thieves who prowl the
woods are rewarded nothing but two pears; and one of their members almost is
arrested for his acts. The teenagers cannot even find a place to talk, except
by taking advantage of a friend’s kindness when her own mother is out of the
house. The gay man is forced to seek pickups in the park, engaging in illicit
sex near the river’s edge, the same location where the prostitute takes her
would-be customer for sex. Life for all of these unfortunates is literally
lived on the street.
The only internal scenes, the apartments of the prostitute and the
gigolo’s lover, the home of the teenager’s friend, and the final dance club
where the murderer is caught, are small, cramped, and in disarray.
For all of these characters, finally, sexuality is something to grab and
grope quickly, associated with robbery and rape. The film shows a world in
which nothing is lasting and permanent. Life is lived on the run, and everyone
promiscuously takes what he or she can get, tossing
away the remains.
Even the teenagers, who seem well intentioned in their young love, turn
to thievery, one of them possibly drowning in the river as he attempts to swim
away from the police who have come to question him. As in many of Pasolini’s
films, this early Bertolucci work portrays a society where nothing seems to
truly matter, as everyone strives to get what little they can. But, as the
repeated rainstorm motif makes clear, without a societal umbrella to protect
them, all of them are destined to get wet.
Los Angeles, July 2, 2016
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July
2016).
No comments:
Post a Comment