FILM

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents The Nonconformist: A Bernardo Bertolucci Retrospective. Continuing a tradition of Italian film retrospectives from the archives of the legendary Cinecittà Luce in Rome, this year MFAH Films spotlights the prolific, often-controversial Bernardo Bertolucci (b. 1940).

After pursuing a career as a poet—a background that surely contributed to his later proclivity for making literary references during interviews—he turned to filmmaking in the 1960s. Initially influenced by Pasolini and Godard, Bertolucci’s early films evince a preoccupation with politics, followed by historical narratives, sensual explorations, and nuanced character studies.

While many of his films are familiar to American audiences (The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor), this career survey provides an occasion for a timely re-appreciation.

The Grim Reaper
La commare secca
1962, in Italian with English subtitles
Italy
B/W
88 minutes

Introductory remarks by Professor Alessandro Carrera, University of Houston.

Based on a story by Pier Paolo Pasolini—for whom Bertolucci had worked as assistant director—The Grim Reaper announced Bertolucci as a unique visual talent. The murder of a prostitute prompts the police to question a range of petty thieves, lowlifes, and people living on society’s edges, and their “testimonies,” shown in extended flashbacks, create a narrative of multiple viewpoints. This web of coincidences and murder is also an investigation of the nature of truth itself—an elegantly woven net of social misery and stark emotional distress.

Alessandro Carrera was born in Lodi, Italy, and graduated in Philosophy at the Università degli Studi of Milan with a dissertation on poetry and music in Arnold Schönberg. From 1975 to 1982 he was a music critic, a songwriter, and worked in the Milanese musical milieu. From 1982 to 1987 he worked an executive editor of scientific magazines and pursued scholarly and creative interests. In 1987 he came to the United States as a Lettore d’italiano, a teaching position sponsored by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. In that capacity he taught Italian Language and Literature at the University of Houston (1987-1991), McMaster University (1992-1994) and New York University (1995-2001). He also taught graduate courses as a Visiting Professor in Italian Literature (Columbia, CUNY, SUNY), Comparative Literature (Rutgers), and Aesthetics (New School University).

 In 2001, at the expiration of his mandate with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the University of Houston hired him as Director of Italian Studies.

In addition to his scholarly and creative books, Carrera has published several edited volumes in Italy and the U.S., the latest being Massimo Cacciari The Unpolitical: For a Radical Critique of Political Reason (New York: Fordham UP, 2009). He has translated into Italian three novels of Graham Greene (The Third Man, The Quiet American, The Honorary Consul) and the songs and prose of Bob Dylan (Lyrics, Tarantula, Chronicles Vol. 1). Carrera has been the recipient of the Montale Prize for Poetry in 1993, the Loria Prize for short fiction in 1998, and the Bertolucci Prize for Literary Criticism in 2006.

Presented in collaboration with the Consulate General of Italy in Houston (Fabrizio Nava, consul general) and the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles (Alberto Mauro, director; Massimo Sarti, deputy director). Special thanks to Rosaria Folcarelli, Cinecittà Luce; Shannon Kelley, UCLA Film and Television Archive; Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archive, UC Berkeley; and Professor Alessandro Carrera, University of Houston. Film descriptions courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art except where noted.