Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

runamokprods While hailed as many as a masterpiece (or near), I struggled with Bertolucci's 2nd film, made when he was only 23, although I am a fan of his in general. Beautifully shot, great use of music and unconventional editing, the film is excellent on a film-making and craft level (although it perhaps borrows too liberally from leading film-makers of the era, especially Godard, Antonioni and Resnais). The story of a young bourgeois man trying to come to terms with his tear between his attraction to communism and his desire for an easier life leads him into an incestuous affair with his somewhat older aunt. I found it's themes somewhat muddled, alternating between being heavy-handedly spelled out, or so obtuse I wasn't sure what a given scene was saying. The acting in particular seems a bit all over the place; understated to the point of flatness in one scene, and then almost theatrically over the top the next. At the end I felt glad I'd seen the film, but it didn't stick with me the way Bertolucci's first film "La Commare Secca" or his third "Partner" did. ("Partner" deals with some of the same themes, but in a far more playful, often comedic way). There was a film-school sort of pretentiousness and emotional distance in "Before the Revolution that kept me from feeling moved or from being led to think deeply about the ideas. That said, I am willing to revisit it and see if my reaction changes, and certainly I enjoyed Bertolucci's already masterful use of image and sound, even if the ends he was using them to were a bit muddled.

federovsky Is it immoral for a nephew and aunt to have an affair? ...who cares? - the question is barely raised. This is the Italian New Wave, a cineaste's dream; forget the story, for style is everything.Bertolucci's second film, at age 22, still owes a lot to his mentor Pasolini, but now he has taken on board Godard of "A Woman is a Woman" and Truffaut of "Jules and Jim". It's hopelessly overloaded with style but that makes it fascinating to watch. You never know what the camera is going to do next. A long monologue by Adrianna Asti contains so many zooms, pans, cross-cuts, reverse shots, asymmetrical framing, you name it - it's insane. You stop listening to what she is saying and just wonder what on earth Bertolucci is playing at. Playing at making movies I suppose.It's all fairly aimless but is beautifully shot and the script is quite fine. Asti seems natural as the fragile aunt and Bertolucci makes the most of her - there are moments when she's nudging Audrey Hepburn. There's plenty of gay subtext - a notable feature of many Bertolucci films, for anyone apt to enquire into such things - it certainly assists interpretation.Hardly juvenilia; if you're in the mood, this is a near masterpiece.

Daryl Chin (lqualls-dchin) One of the typical ploys of modernist artists has been to take a known work, and to use that as a basis for experimentation. In this case, Bernardo Bertolucci (at the age of 22!) took Stendhal's novel THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA and used the basic plot and characters, only Bertolucci abstracted these elements, taking them for granted and simply creating a wide-ranging collage of impressions and emotions. But the central love affair between Fabrizio and his aunt, Gina (the names of the characters in the Stendhal), is the motivating heart of the film; the suggestions of incest, the need for secrecy, the impacted emotion because of the covertness: these provide PRIMA DELLA RIVOLUZIONE with a core of great integrity, so that the more "random" elements (the scene with the lament on the lake, the scene at the opera, the scene where the friend rides the bicycle in circles, etc.) are able to reflect on Bertolucci's feelings regarding politics, class, revolution, art, the search for belief.PRIMA DELLA RIVOLUZIONE is one of the most youthful films ever made, as well it should be, since it was made by someone who was impossibly young at the time. I hate to say this, but it's the work of a prodigy, a gifted post-adolescent who is trying to find a form to contain his sometimes overwrought feelings about life, love, and politics. There had been many works catering to the teen crowd, movies like WHERE THE BOYS ARE or BEACH PARTY, but, aside from some of the works of Nicholas Ray (THEY LIVE BY NIGHT and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE), no film artist had yet tried to use the medium as a vehicle for a vision of youthful passions from the inside: Godard would follow with MASCULINE FEMININE and LA CHINOISE, Bertolucci with FISTS IN THE POCKET, Skolimowski with LE DEPART and DEEP END, but Bertolucci was pioneering when he made this movie, and the fact that it's "flawed" should not be held against it, as it represents the expression of a very young artist, trying to express his emotions as directly as possible.

MisterWhiplash On occasion while watching Bernardo Bertoulcci's Before the Revolution, which I have done about four times within the past year, I really felt like I was watching someone with a full love of cinema. Not just of how it can distort our perceptions of reality by how close or far or following the subjects are, but that there's a certain purity to it. When a filmmaker has this much bursting out of him at 22, 23 years old, you're bound to find it coming out much like someone that age- still on the brink of life, full of ideas, and still treated in a couple of minor, even unintentional ways, as a kid. Bertolucci tapped into the vein of the changing of the guard in European cinema with vitality. Like in poetry, the moods and music in the language (or, here, the grammar of film itself) tends to move along with the expressions used to make it so personal you know no one else could have done it this way. Even when it might stumble the film almost seems to pick itself back up, plunging us right into the gut of its subject matter. At times only Last Tango in Paris, Bertolucci's masterpiece, came close with its honesty of what's going on in the world for these people.And, in truth, the film's structure would not work without some level of honesty to the viewer, or at the least saying with the random, seemingly sometimes mundane set of events 'it's got to be this way, at least for this character.' How much of it is based from Bertolucci's life I'm not certain. But his lead character, Fabrizio (Francesco Barilli, in a splendidly conflicted performance), is not necessarily a great young future leader of men or something. He's a bourgeois -the word is used quite a number of times in the film- and filled with ideals about a Marxist-style revolution, perhaps. For the most part though he wanders, thinks in quotes, and is close to his Aunt Gina (Adriana Asti, perfect for the part). It is dealing with this relationship that the filmmaker has to find his stride most, and he does. It goes from quiet, to cute, to talkative, to confused, then to something more risqué- passionate. When the character's cross the line, one may want to suddenly find some of what proceeds as taboo. It's not the case.What turns Before the Revolution into something not as troubling as the subject matter might appear, Bertolucci utilizes a style that corresponds with the scatter-shot frame of mind in the character's story. The plot is 'linear', but there are times where the sort of Italian frame of romanticism comes into play as well. Because the poetry of the emotions helps make this not as potentially pretentious as some of these scenes could come across, it is not without notice that upon once or twice times the subject matter goes into confusing points. The scenes late in the film involving Puck, for example, become so into the realm of the literary that it goes beyond interesting and into the dangerous realm of the self-indulgent (which is understandable given the filmmaker's talents). Though Italian to the bone, here and there I almost wondered if at times Truffaut and Godard, switching off like hitters in a batting cage, were in the back of Bertolucci's mind as he wrote the script or filmed a scene.It doesn't hurt at all, of course, that two great musicians contribute to the film. One is Ennio Morricone, who co-wrote the music and performed for the film, and though not mentioned on IMDb, the great Gato Barbieri is also credited in the music. It's not just them but also the whole backbone of the music in the film. It adds that kick that is in many an Italian romance/drama, and also touches of ironic humor, of the joyfulness of youth (i.e. riding the bike early on), and songs used for effectiveness ahead of its time.By also entrusting much of his own vision into the hands and eyes of Aldo Scavarda, Bertolucci gets cinematography that makes it apparent how with many of his films his style is apparent in every one. That it starts off so rough, yet with delicacy, and combining it with a lot to contemplate in terms of what love is, what politics mean for the well off and the not-so well off, and an uneasy feeling of hopelessness. It's one of the more breathtaking visions to come from a director younger than 25 in the post-Italian new-wave.It's not too much of a wonder then Scorsese lists this as his primary influence to make Who's That Knocking at my Door. 9.5/10