Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man

One of Bertolucci's least known films, and its subject is Italy in the 1970s directly: the years of lead. Primo Spaggiari owns a cheese factory near Parma. The factory is close to bankruptcy. One day he happens to witness, from a distance, his son being kidnapped by left-wing terrorists. A ransom is demanded, and another idea occurs to Primo: use the money raised for the ransom to save the factory instead of the son. All the tension comes out of that calculation. The father does not know whether his son is alive, and it suits him not to know; Bertolucci neither condemns nor absolves him, and simply watches him do the arithmetic. Ugo Tognazzi won Best Actor at Cannes in 1981 for the role. Anouk Aimée plays his wife and Laura Morante his son's girlfriend. Who it is for: viewers who like hard, cold Italian drama that keeps political violence in the background and looks at moral collapse. Who it is not for: anyone expecting Bertolucci at the scale of Last Tango or 1900. This is smaller and more closed, and the ending offers no relief.