La Commare Secca

Bertolucci directed this at twenty-one, having never made a feature. A year earlier, at twenty, he had been an assistant on Pasolini's Accattone, an experience he later described as being present at the birth of cinema. The story is Pasolini's. He did not film it himself; he recommended Sergio Citti and Bertolucci to write the screenplay, and it was Bertolucci's first. The body of a prostitute is found on the bank of the Tiber. The police round up possible suspects and question them one by one. Each statement is shown as a flashback, so the same rainy day is lived through repeatedly from different eyes, every account lying and adding a fragment of truth at once. Who it is for: viewers curious about the edges of Rome and multi-perspective narrative, and interested in early Italian cinema. Who it is not for: anyone expecting Bertolucci at the scale of Last Tango or The Conformist. This is a first film: short, scattered, and carrying Pasolini's voice more than his own.