(Prima della rivoluzione). It’s always just “before the revolution” if you give in to the stasis of bourgeois life. But this is also a paradoxical state for the exuberant youth, Fabrizio, of Bertolucci’s paean to unhinged passion—a state of kept innocence vying with radical impulse. And Bertolucci should know, having been a mere twenty-two years old when he created this brilliant New Wave amalgam that references Stendhal, Godard, Marx, Talleyrand, Rossellini, Chekhov, and others. A young man of haut-bourgeois origin, Fabrizio (Francesco Barilli) nonetheless fancies himself a bearer of progressive thinking. His is a shaky idealism, enflamed by the committed words of his Marxist mentor. Then Fabrizio begins an affair with his seductive and unsettled aunt Gina (played with torrid assurance by Adriana Asti). Neither of the conflicting poles of Bertolucci’s audacious narrative—the complicated emotions of the amorous aunt, or the exhilaration of proletarian resistance—can offer Fabrizio the safety he requires. A “nostalgia for the present” afflicts this timorous youth, while all around him, things change.

—Steve Seid

• Written by Bertolucci, Gianni Amico, loosely based on Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma. Photographed by Aldo Scavarda. With Adriana Asti, Francesco Barilli, Allen Midgette, Morando Morandini. (112 mins, In Italian with English subtitles, B&W/Color, ’Scope, 35mm, From The Museum of Modern Art, New York, permission Ripley’s Film)