Word: stratagem
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...SPIDER'S STRATAGEM...
...mesmeric film is only now being released in America, in the wake of the wide acclaim for Bertolucci's The Conformist and in anticipation of the brouhaha over Last Tango in Paris (TIME cover, Jan. 22). Perhaps Tango may not SO much sweep up The Spider's Stratagem in its wake as swamp it. The Spider's Stratagem boasts no superstars in the cast, no odor of brimstone and no heavy hype. It should not need them. Less exotic than The Conformist or Tango, certainly more subtle and contained. The Spider's Strata gem is Bertolucci...
Like such otherwise di verse works as Godard's Contempt and Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, The Spider's Stratagem concerns the workings of myth, the complicity of fancy and legend in history. The screenplay is an extrapolation from a short fiction by Jorge Borges, Theme of the Traitor and Hero, in which a historical researcher, investigating the death of his great-grandfather, a political martyr, discovers that the man actually traduced his confederates...
...moral statement." By such a playful standard, Bertolucci would be Pascal. No one since the late Max Ophuls (Lola Monies) has moved the camera quite so exuberantly, and with such easy, fluid symmetry. Such a luxurious style can sometimes weigh heavily on the material; in The Spider's Stratagem it complements the material, indeed reinforces it. Tara, its name recalling Gone With the Wind and conjuring up phantoms of romantic fiction, is turned into a single huge stage set on which the plot to conceal the treachery is daily re-enacted like an eternal pageant. Bertolucci's ornate...
...Spider's Stratagem also contains what has become by now a hallmark of every Bertolucci film, a scene of dancing done with a certain intense but stately vigor. Here, the elder Magnani takes a partner and leads her proudly and gracefully round the dance pavilion, demonstrating his contempt for the astonished Blackshirts standing on the sidelines. It is a lovely, graceful scene, and suggests another title for the film, First Polka in Tara. Not as apt, perhaps, but probably more commercial. - Jay Cocks