A career best. After the small-scale Spider's Stratagem, Bertolucci
was given a bunch o' green by Paramount to adapt Alberto 'Le Mepris'
Moravia's novel. It weaves all of the director's obsessions into a
stunningly-realised web of Fascist-era intrigue, once again seeking
to explain totalitarian political regimes in psycho-analytical
terms - and, more importantly, in Ophulsian camera movements. It also
marks the director's new sensitivity towards actors: Trintignant is
stunningly good as the film's blank-faced secret agent protagonist,
determined to be 'normal' as a Fascist to cover up his Catholic guilt,
and in the process falling into the Oedipal trap. A Movie Brat
favourite.
