Strategia del Ragno

A young man revisits the village in the Po valley where his father was murdered by the fascists in 1936, but gradually discovers that the hero he thought his father to be was perhaps really a traitor.

This adaptation of Borges' story, 'Theme of the Traitor and the Hero', skilfully transposes and updates the action from 1824 to present-day Italy. One of Bertolucci's most controlled works, though at the cost of creative exuberance, it makes for an extremely ambiguous film, leaving the question unanswered as to whether the father's martyrdom was real (as a Resistance leader) or false (as a traitor executed and passed off as a martyr).

However, the main theme, involving a rather overelaborate piece of Oedipal plotting, is the son's search for his own identity. Much of it is intriguing and the photography (by Storaro), sometimes evoking the paintings of De Chirico, is memorable.