A Generous Look at ‘Films of Bertolucci’

The American Cinematheque’s “At the Center of the Labyrinth: The Films of Bernardo Bertolucci,” which will be held Friday through Sunday at the Directors Guild, 7920 Sunset Blvd., affords a chance to see films that have made Bertolucci one of the most famous of international directors and those that surface only occasionally.

A generous selection of his pictures will be presented chronologically, starting with his 1962 debut feature “The Grim Reaper” (“La Commare Seca”), which screens Friday at 7 p.m.

This is the one film that most Bertolucci admirers have never been able to see. He had just worked as an assistant to Pier Paolo Pasolini on Pasolini’s first film “Accatone” (1961), and the older director came up with a five-page outline for “Reaper.” An experiment in style rather than a straightforward investigation of the last day in the life of a murdered prostitute, “The Grim Reaper” reveals that from his very first shot Bertolucci had that commanding, sweeping camera movement that remains his signature.

The film is a graceful, even poetic, account of the everyday lives of a series of mainly young people, but it is also discursive to the extent that it constantly invites the viewer’s attention to wander.

Bertolucci’s next picture, the 1964 “Before the Revolution” (Friday at 9:30), is an entirely different matter, as bold and emphatic an announcement that a major director has arrived as has ever been made. Bertolucci brings a profound poignancy to a young man’s painful discovery of self by showing that his growing awareness of his own limitations is equaled by his recognition of the vast possibilities of life itself.

Bertolucci gets away with dazzling techniques by making them form the structure of his story and by using them to probe the psyches of his characters, principally the 18-year-old scion (Francesco Marilli) of an upper middle class Parmesan family, and his beautiful, comforting aunt (Adriana Asti).

One of Bertolucci’s less familiar--and most challenging--films, the 1968 “Partner” (Saturday at 6:30 p.m.), in which it becomes all but impossible to tell where reality leaves off and fantasy begins, is a loose adaptation of Dostoevsky’s “The Double” that asks us to consider the paradoxical nature of the imagination with its power both to transform and to deceive. Not to be missed is Saturday night’s double feature, starting at 8:45 with “The Spider’s Stratagem” (1970), which in its abstractness is a quite demanding yet fully satisfying tale about a man (Giulio Brogi) summoned by his father’s mistress (Alida Valli) to a deserted ancient town where his father has been immortalized as an anti-fascist martyr.

Following it is the bravura “The Conformist” (1970), in which Bertolucci gets away with outrageous theatricality and bald coincidence in telling of a repressed philosophy professor (Jean-Louis Trintignant) recruited for a dangerous mission by a fascist espionage organization.

For a schedule: (213) 466-FILM.

*

Enchanted Showcase: Lovely and talented May McAvoy had the good fortune to be leading lady of two often-revived landmark films, “Ben-Hur” (1926) and “The Jazz Singer” (1927), but the rarely seen film that reveals the true range of her artistry is John Robertson’s exquisite 1924 version of Arthur Wing Pinero’s play, “The Enchanted Cottage” (at the Silent Movie Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.).

Except for her radiant eyes you would not recognize McAvoy, who’s been given a small bump on her nose and slightly buck teeth to play a rural English spinster who’s merely plain but who regards herself as ugly. That’s fine with the film’s hero, played by Richard Barthelmess, a wounded British World War I flier with a badly crippled leg who sees her as an ideal mate in a marriage de raison , which flowers into such genuine love that he comes to see her as beautiful and she to see him as physically perfect.

Robertson brings off this timeless tale, and while Barthelmess is splendid as a man mired in self-pity, it is McAvoy who is sublime as a woman whose vulnerability is exceeded by her capacity for devotion. Information: (213) 653-2389.