Touches You

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It's very difficult for me to understand the love for this film. It may, in fact, be one of the worst films I have ever seen. No character is really developed, despite the over 5 hour run time, and one of them, the Padrone DeNiro's wife, may be the single most annoying character ever set in a movie.Speaking of DeNiro, roughly 80% of his dialogue sounds like he doesn't really even care what he's saying. Poor Donald Sutherland was given the diabolical "Attila" role. It's pretty much a one note performance of evil and stupidity from beginning to end. Scenes are in the film which serve no purpose other than to bore the audience to tears, or in my case, make me cry from laughing. After a young boy is killed, the guests at a wedding run around in the scene immediately following as if they were in a Keystone cops movie. One of the lead characters is named Olmo, which was the basis for another film years later called St. Olmo's Fire. Oh wait, I meant he was the basis for a stupid Muppet on Sesame Street. There's a scene where a character gets his face stuffed with horse manure. That experience is very similar to watching this film. 1900 is simply another 1970's catastrophe along the lines of Heaven's Gate.

What a shame; I had such high hopes for this film. With a cast and budget of fantastic proportions it seems the director was overwhelmed. I love epic tales of conflict and victory that I can lose myself in and become part of the story. Unfortunately this movie never develops any character to care about, there is a confusing collage of scenes some of which are breathtakingly beautiful, just no cohesion. There have been films that I didn't want to end The Godfather, The Deer Hunter, Band of Brothers. This became a bloated rambling mess that I struggled to finish. It seemed the director struggled as well never developing a storyline that could engage me and ending without ever making a statement. What a shame

This masterpiece of cinematic brilliance is the reason films get made. Don't let the fact that it is 5 hours long daunt you - you won't feel the time. You will instead be completely absorbed in an epic story that, despite its rather simple premise of following the lives of two men, is really like watching a novel. I can't really describe the film any other way than that - it is a novel.There are some scenes that are hard to watch, especially in this day and age of political correctness and "you can't do that on television" attitude, but set your 21st century mind aside. This film shows life in its rawest form. Brutal at times, hilarious at others, but altogether real.This film defines the talents of so many household names. It has become like an old friend - like that book you read every year or two. By the end, you will find yourself utterly spent and it will stay with you forever.Novecento is one of those films you absolutely, positively must see before you die.

Bernardo Bertolucci's Novecento has five hours and fifteen minutes and before we know it this historical epic ends and we're left craving for more. That's the ultimate grace of Bertolucci's masterpiece: one never feels the movie's length; it flows and involves us so hypnotically in its story that we lose sense of time. The story is so finely constructed, the actors so good, the cinematography so breath-taking, the music so exciting, that one curses the unavoidable moment when the credits roll down the screen.Released in 1976, Novecento is, as the title says it, a story of Italy in the 20th century, from its beginning to the year of its release. Known in the USA as 1900, I chose the Italian title because this one misleading. The action starts the year Italian composer Verdi dies, so it's actually 1901 (Bertolucci knows the Gregorian calendar unlike the majority who believe in pop culture). Two children are born, Alfredo and Olmo, the first the heir of the Berlinghieri estate and fortune, the second the bastard offspring of Alfredo's father and a peasant woman from the Dalco clan. They grow together and their lives, although going in different ways many times, continue to intertwine throughout the decades, from the aftermath of WWI to the rise of Fascism in Italy, to the liberation of Italy in 1945; they're always together until their old age.Novecento is effectively about the organisation of the labour rights movement in Italy and its clashes with Fascism. Olmo (Gérard Depardieu), returned from the WWI, sees communism as a way of uniting the peasants in the struggle for better wages and more rights and end the hunger and humiliations perpetuated by the padrones, the bosses.Parallel to the labour rights movement's organisation is the rise of fascism, embodied by Attila Mellanchini (Donald Sutherland), the Berlinghieri forearm who organizes the local Black Shirts. In the middle of this struggle is Alfredo (Robert DeNiro), a bon vivant who only seeks pleasure and finds love in Ada (Dominique Sanda), an avant-garde woman who fascinates him with her sense of modernity. Unwilling kept away from the war thanks to his father's money, Alfredo sees Olmo's return as good news until politics and his inevitable fate of becoming the new padrone get in the way, not to mention his inability to stand up to Attila.The film is shot in four sections, each one employing a different color palette, to represent each station of the year. So the first part, Olmo and Alfredo's birth and childhood, is bathed in bright summer colors; the WWI's aftermath is filmed with autumnal browns. The Fascist reign is grey and drenched in winter rains, and only Italy's liberation gives the movie its bright early colors with the coming of springtime. This is one of the greatest achievements of Vittorio Storaro, a director of cinematography who never ceases to amaze me. He's lent his talent to many good movies over his legendary career (Apocalypse Now, The Conformist, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Reds), but I've never loved the look of one of his movies so much except perhaps in an earlier, much neglected Bertolucci movie called The Spider's Stratagem. Each shot could be a painting.The actors are also excellent here, especially the veterans Burt Lancaster (who plays Alfredo's grandfather, also named Alfredo) and Sterling Hayden, who plays Leo, the patriarch of the Dalco family. They're in the movie for about an hour, but their performances are amazing enough to leave an impression, especially Hayden's.As much as this movie is about fascism and communism, it's also about class differences and class clashes, and this is shown in the three Berlinghieri generations. Grandfather Alfredo and Leo have a relationship based on respect and co-dependence. His son Giovanni brings technology and consequently unemployment to his lands as well as the violent Attila to keep the workers in order, and also ends many of the ancestral rights the workers had. His despotic rule marks the beginning of the peasants' consciousness that change is necessary. Giovanni's brother, Ottavio, is his opposite, preferring to travel and enjoy life, much like his nephew. Finally Alfredo simply doesn't care, pursuing self-gratification and allowing Attila to gain power and impose a reign of terror in his lands, with the help of Alfredo's cousin, Regina (Laura Betti).Donald Sutherland has always had a gift for playing villains but he set a bar too high even for himself to surpass when he played Attila, the sadistic Black Shirt who crushes kittens to make philosophical points about communism, molests children and kills helpless old people. Fans of Sutherland who wish to see him at his darkest and most intimidating mustn't miss this film.DeNiro, Sanda, Betti and Depardieu are also very good, with Depardieu outshining DeNiro only because he has a more demanding and visible role. Sanda is also good, even if her role is to be basically annoying most of the time. Betti makes a great demonic pair with Sutherland. DeNiro, today the most famous of the actors who worked in this film, delivers one of his typically good performances, but he doesn't reinvent himself like in Taxi Driver or Raging Bull. This is Depardieu's film.Also worthy of note is Ennio Morricone's score, containing many of his most uplifting compositions. Bertolucci made this film to inflame hearts and rouse consciousnesses, to make viewers leave the cinemas anxious to change society and make the world a better, fairer place, so Morricone's music works perfectly with the images. And even if Bertolucci's goal ultimately failed, the movie is so well crafted its grandiose finale should leave viewers pretty upbeat and hopeful.No review of Novecento can do the movie justice. It's a work of art, it must be watched.