Somehow I always thought this was Bertolucci's first film. It isn't. But it looks like it. Here's a director with a huge potential, a cinematographer who'll soon be one of the greatest, but they still have a long way to go. We were young and Bertolucci was very left-wing so it was de rigueur to find this great, but in fact it was boring. The plot meanders on, the acting is wooden, and in the end you don't know if there was a story there at all. Bertolucci has become an icon, maybe more because of the scandals adhering to his films than of the intrinsic worth of his cinematographic output (in contrast to for instance Ettore Scola). No scandalous scenes in this one though, just plain pretension and showing off.
Review of The Spider's Stratagem
