Its’ really quite wonderful. It premiered in the U.S. at the 1966 New York Film Festival.
In some ways it’s a collaboration between bertolucci and his mentor pasolini as all the film’s episodes are based on Pasolini stores. But the feel is pure Bertolucci. The best bit is with Allen Midgette — a very important supporting player fro Bertolucci and later a star for Andy Warhol.
David, I KNEW, when his name flashed on the credits, I had seen the name Allen Midgette before!! But I couldn’t place where.
Now i remember— Midgette was the guy Warhol paid to impersonate him in various college campus appearances…. with the audience none-the-wiser.
@David Ehrenstein
The only segment of the film I’m wondering about… because it was so subtly done, is that bit about the two teenage boys, Franchioli and Pipito, when they accompany the two teenage girls to the house of that older glamorous woman who lives in that tower penthouse?
Just who was the older woman anyway? She wasn’t the mother of the two girls. Is there some louche, sexual underplot that Pasolini was trying to imply with this scene?
I think that brunette, kohl-eyed actress who plays the moll of the pimp in the earlier sequences just about stole the film.
I liked it but I don’t really feel it to be Bertolucci’s best, though after all it was his first outing.
Yes, indeed, maybe not Bertolucci’s best ( I still need to see quite a lot from his entire oeuvre, including his sophomore effort ‘’Before the Revolution’‘) but still a stunning debut from a 21-year old whose only practical experience with film had been as an assistant to another debutant filmmaker.
By the way, in the extra features of the Criterion release there is an interview with Bertolucci and he claims that at the time he was making his film he had been aware of ’’Rashomon’’ but had not seen it yet…
“La Commare Secca” is derived from stories in Pasolinis’ book “Ragazzi di Vita.” recast as a murder mystery.
Haven’t seen it in awhile so I’m a little unclear about " that older glamorous woman who lives in that tower penthouse"
Allen Midgette starred in ****(Four Stars) Andy’s 25-hour long more-than-magnum opus.His most memorable Bertolucci performance is as Agostino, the boy who drowns (accident or suicde?) in “Before the Revolution.” he pops up in bit parts in “The Spider’s Strategem” and “1900” and appears in Godard’and Gorin’s Maoist western “Wind From the East.”
He lives in upstate New York now, as does Billy Linich (aka. Billy Name.)I have the disc and it does get played from time to time. Well worth watching.
It would make a good double bill with Rashomon.
david lincoln brooks
I just saw the Criterion film, LA COMMARE SECCA (Bertolucci, 1962).
I can’t believe I had to wait ‘til I was 47 to see this film. It’s really excellent, and what a superb debut it must’ve been for Bertolucci.
I think the film works on so many levels: It has the muckraking flavor of a Neorealist piece; its beautiful filmic style makes it part of the European Nouvelle Vague, and, in its luridness, it even seems to be something of an early Giallo. It also gives a nod, of course, to RASHOMON and to American Film Noir. I appreciate that the film is simultaneously mainstream-entertaining… and a real art film as well. One thinks of Fellini and Lynch.
I love how the film is full of sexuality, but it’s all implied-implied-implied. Modern filmmakers could take a lesson from this film. (I stand by my conviction that, in a non-porn film, implied sexuality is best and most tasteful.) The gay theme present (Pasolini wrote the story, after all), risque’ for 1962, is really surprising and deftly handled. Interesting that the gay man “redeems” himself in the end and is not seen—-ultimately—- as an ogre or as someone pathetic who should kill himself.
Any fans of this great, lesser-known gem?