NOVECENTO A century of Italian history from the Resistance to Liberation

the images in this post are from the film "Novecento" by Bernardo Bertolucci

NOVECENTO di Bernardo Bertolucci (1976)

This film is close to my heart, not only because it is one of the most beautiful masterpieces on Italian history of the 1900s , but also because on those banks of the Po, in a peasants' house just below the master bank, I was born;
The lower Polesine, my land, has an important history: we could say that socialism and the anti-fascist Resistance, were born between the lower Veneto and 'Emilia Romagna , which is why the director decides to set the film on those banks, in those fields, ....tra the yellow of the sheaves of ripe hay and the red of spilled blood.....

Bernardo Bertolucci great master of Italian cinema, with this moving masterpiece manages to create a fresco of that era that is true and real;

Watching it we find ourselves thrown back into the 1900s; the peasants, the fields, the stables.....almost seems to smell those stables..... those wheat fields.......of poverty........
The 'setting, the costumes, the dialogue, everything reminds me of that era.
The most significant events of a century of history - the Resistance, the Great War and the birth of Fascism - are shown to us through the lives of two children born in 1901 on the same farm and on the same day: Olmo ( Gerard Depardieu) and Alfredo ( Robert De Niro).
Alfredo is the grandson of Alfredo Berlinghieri ( Burt Lancaster) the owner of a large farm in the Lower Po Valley where Olmo, who is the son of the farmhand, is also born.
As the two children grow up bound by a strong friendship despite their class differences, the Italian story unfolds as their lives pass.
The historical events that unfold in the film are many; 1900 was an important century for Italy that determined what we are today, but the director succeeds very well in bringing us into them.
The two young men will learn about the uprisings of exploited Emilian peasants driven by a desire for change and equality;
They will witness the birth of the socialist and popular leagues ;
They will enter the war and fascism will also come.
They will become aware of the social differences between masters and peasants, the great changes, and their different cultural identities.

De Niro and Depardieu here are very young but very intense, already foreshadowing that they would become great actors, and the rest of the actors are also from an internationally renowned cast including Burt Lancaster, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, Donald Sutherland.....
The music, needless to say, is by Ennio Morricone as it could have been otherwise....this music gives emphasis to the film and only a great like Morricone could realize it.
And I will conclude by saying that in my opinion
when a director has a strong emotional drive inside his heart then he succeeds in making a colossal, a work destined to remain in time, a testimony that has been included in the 100 Italian films to be saved even though
undoubtedly the director's point of view is in favor of the disadvantaged classes;
But that is precisely Bertolucci's purpose with this great film: to give voice to the weakest, the humble, the dead killed by the revolution.

For me, Novecento is one of those films that schools should propose to our students through the Italian history curriculum;
So that through the past they may become aware of their roots and of the human sacrifices that have been made from then until the present day to arrive at becoming a democratic republic.

Thank you for taking the time to read

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