[Film Review] The Spider’s Stratagem (1970) 7.2/10

Watching Bertolucci’s 4k restoration THE SPIDER’S STRATAGEM in the Italian Film Master Retrospective here in Shanghai, a quasi-full house shows the megalopolis’ unquenchable appetite for boutique cinema, but the screening leaves much to be desired (blackout six times including an elision of 5 minutes’ worth footage). But the good tidings are audience is promised to get a full refund.

Released hot on the heels of Bertolucci’s magus opus THE CONFORMIST in the same calendar year, by which THE SPIDER’S STRATAGEM is respectfully eclipsed, the plot derives from Borges’ short story, which is transposed to a fictional Italian town Tara, where Athos Magnani (Brogi) arrives at the behest of Draifa (Valli, ekes out an august aura of pent-up emotions and veiled feminine dignity, always a corker even the script doesn’t demand much from her), the mistress of his namesake father, a resistance hero who is allegedly assassinated by unspecified fascists in 1936 before his birth. Draifa insists that his killers is still at large in the town, and it is up to Athos to find out the truth.

A cuckoo in the nest, Athos, the spitting image of his father, is met with resistance and evasion from the locals, including his father’s three old comrades. Past and present alternate without the necessity of using different actors to justify the 30-odd elapsed years, a conceit brings to home the fatality of the father/son paralleled experiences, to substantiate that history always repeats itself, a son always emulates his father’s orbit, but also, when Athos finally susses the inconvenient truth behind his father’s demise, Borges’ iconoclastic revelation of the falsehood behind heroism finds a viable outlet in Bertolucci’s political discretion, its anti-Fascism undertow is slowly supplanted by a sage ideology to urge the mass always to keep a weather eye on the mythology of hero-making.

Capitalizing on the auditory accompaniment from Verdi’s RIGOLETTO and AIDA, THE SPIDER’S STRATAGEM sustains Bertolucci’s usual orotund flourishes (Ligabue’s paintings in the opening credits, a metaphorical gaze into a male lion) with beguiling long takes and precipitate editing choices. If it is far less trenchant and intricate than THE CONFORMIST, that may partially be ascribed the thin material on offer, also, not helped by Brogi, albeit a fine, good-looking actor inhabiting Athos with piss and vinegar, who makes for a less compelling protagonist for audience to contemplate and engage than Trintignant in his most expressive inscrutability.

referential entries: Bertolucci’s THE CONFORMIST (1970, 8.8/10); LUNA (1979, 7.3/10).