Bernardo Bertolucci — first steps in cinema

16/10/2024

Cinema • Authors

By MARIAROSARIA FABRIS*

Comments on the early career of the Italian filmmaker

Bernardo Bertolucci made his official film debut in 1961, when Pier Paolo Pasolini invited him to be his assistant director in Beggar (social misfit). At the time, he had a little experience as a director of homemade short films, with a one-month internship at the Cinémathèque Française (1960), which he had been awarded for having passed the graduation exam (which corresponds to our current Enem), and with a great deal of cinematographic experience acquired since childhood when his father, the poet Attilio Bertolucci, a long-time cinephile and film critic of Gazzetta di Parma, took him two or three times a week to watch movies.

The two Emilians had met shortly after the Bertolucci family moved to Rome (1954), on an early Sunday afternoon, when Pasolini knocked on the door of the apartment at 45 Via Carini, as Bernardo himself wrote in a text that forms part of the volume Profile cinema. At first, the young man did not let the visitor in, suspecting that he was a thief, a misunderstanding that was quickly cleared up by his father, who, having arrived in the Italian capital in April 1951, was already visiting the poet.

Five years later, when the Pasolini family moved to the same address, the friendship between the two grew closer and Bernardo began to compose poems again to submit to Pier Paolo, who encouraged him to publish them and wrote the preface to the volume. About the mystery (In search of the mystery, 1962), which won the prestigious Viareggio-Rèpaci Prize in the “opera prima” (first work) category. In the same year, 1962, Bertolucci presented at the Venice Film Festival The dry commare (The death), whose argument Pasolini had entrusted to him and whose script he wrote with the collaboration of Sergio Citti.

In the plot, very close to Pasolini's narratives for literature — Life boys (boys of life, 1955), which is the basis of the documentary La sing delle marane (1961), by Cecilia Mangini, and A violent life (a violent life, 1959), from which the homonymous feature film by Paolo Heusch and Brunello Rondi (1962) was derived — and for the cinema — Beggar, but also the scripts of The angry note (The long night of madness, 1959), by Mauro Bolognini, and La nebbiosa (the nebula, 1959), which gave rise to Black Milan (1961), by Gian Rocco and Pino Serpi —, Bernardo Bertolucci reproduced his friend's stories, but, during filming, he preferred to assimilate the teachings of other directors, especially Jean-Luc Godard.

Two years later, the young director established himself once and for all with Prima della rivoluzione (before the revolution, 1964), filmed in his hometown, whose script, based on the novel The Chartreuse of Parma (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839), by Stendhal, he wrote in partnership with Gianni Amico. With the consolidation of his film career, he left behind his studies at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Rome and the poetic activity, which he had begun in 1947, when he learned to write,^[1] but neglected before she turned sixteen, when she shot two short films: The cable car (b/w, c. 10', summer 1956, probably July) and The death of the maiale (always in 1956, three months later).

About the fictional film — in which his younger brother Giuseppe, then about 9 and a half years old, and his cousins Marta and Ninì (Galeazzina) were the actors — Fabien S. Gerard wrote a kind of synopsis: “Three children take advantage of their siesta time to go off alone into the woods beyond the stream and the cemetery, looking for traces of a disused cable car, to transform it into a swing. They search in vain for the highest branches, hoping to catch a glimpse of a rusty cable. As the afternoon progresses, the three get lost in the maze of chestnut trees, without realizing that a number of towers and, above all, the cable, fallen long ago, are now hidden beneath their steps, amidst ferns and nettles.”

Let's leave the floor to Bernardo, a 15-year-old boy, who concludes with these terms the 'argument' that he crashed the camera just before the shooting: 'In the end, tired, they think about going back home through the woods. They are sad about the failure of the operation and, without realizing it, they cross the stream and return, in the late afternoon, still through the woods. Suddenly, they find themselves on the road under construction. The sun is setting. The children are already shrouded in shadow.

From where they are, they have the whole valley before them. The lens will frame it from the beginning, towards the mountains, then the pastures, the village among the chestnut trees, the rocky rift, the woods, the cable car in the distance. Suddenly, G[iuseppe] turns back onto the road. It is long and white, with the mountains in the background. More slowly, N[inì] turns in the opposite direction. The cable car, the woods, Monte Caio, the great valley towards the still illuminated plain.”^[2].

There is, at the end of this story, a touch of impermanence in the sense of precariousness, provisionality, the same that Fabien S. Gerard pointed out in the poem that Attilio dedicated to his son's short film and that, according to the author, “will return in several films of the following decades, especially in The dry commare e Little Buddha [The Little Buddha, 1993]”. Based on a statement by Bernardo Bertolucci himself, reproduced by Treccani, more works could be added to this list: “When I was filming Prima della rivoluzione, I thought it would be my last film. Instead, each time, miraculously, I am asked to make another. And each time, without fail, I think it will be my last. The impermanence of films, the sense of terminality they give, is like life.”

Let us now turn the floor over to Attilio Bertolucci who, in the poem “La teleferica (a B, con una otto millimetri)” (“The cable car (a B, with an 8mm camera)”), described the behind-the-scenes of his eldest son’s first film:

“Summer covers the hedges with dust,
even above a thousand meters,
covers the stubborn blackberries with dust
in a bitter adolescence.
But your adolescence softens, matures
in the artisanal and subtle patience
from this bottom-up shot
and from behind the torn hedge
so as to weave with thorns, leaves and berries
the plot in real time
paced by silent steps
and stealthy children, Giuseppe, Marta,
Galeazzina, 'runaways from home'
when everyone sleeps in Casarola^[3]
because it's July and the meridian fire
bends even to the wild people
from the Apennines, to the women
indomitable in stinginess and filth,
panting on miserable cots
in sad peace.
Only you, kind vacationers,
live this time, steal your
sharp flame so that his eyes
will smile, in the foreground, forever
under the three o'clock sun.
Hurry up, the cable car is far away
and Bernardo, who has long legs
from the age of fourteen, the mania of storyteller,
insists on real time, wants them
lost among chestnut trees and ferns,
looking, with the light that goes
getting weaker — hurry up,
the night in the mountains is scary —
the metal wires that cut your hands
and take away the wood
for the tannin, or they took it, to the factory
falling apart, and the cables tangled
Giuseppe needed to discover them, lost
in the vertigo of the highest branches,
rust and chlorophyll, adventure and terror
of a child playing: these
the background of the plot, now he
take the older cousins
until the desired balance
and you will not find him anymore,
your heart will feel pain,
only equal to that which, after infinite years and years,
the man feels the first orgasm of the heart attack.
The last frame is from above
from a holm oak branch, the camera's eye
restlessly searches your restless eyes,
expired guide
while the girls are already distracted,
the eldest of the sisters intertwines
a hat of leaves over her hair
of the youngest, the poet operator
also enchants, thinking about the effect
that he will get when it is dry
the leaves will end up in dust
pink of the cold twilight
on the way back, forgotten
the early pain, the disappointed pupil,
the human theme of the story.
Let art have
of these improvised but fair revenges
against life, that a boy enjoys
and be aware in those dear years
of vocation and learning”^[4].

Marta Simonazzi's description, which in some aspects seems to take up Attilio's poem, adds a few more details to the plot: “Three boys, who ran away from home after lunch, when everyone is asleep because it is July and it is hot, get lost in a forest of ancient chestnut trees, among ferns and rocks fallen from the Sovrano Group, a forest from which Bernardo will take new shots in the film La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo [The tragedy of a ridiculous man, 1981], with Ugo Tognazzi. While the little girl prays before a religious image, waiting for a sign or a miracle, Giuseppe and I search among thorns and chestnut trees for clues to find our way back. Finally, an old abandoned cable car appears before our eyes, who knows how long ago, hidden among piles of wood, and, following its path, we manage to return home without anyone noticing anything.”

Bernardo himself recalled his first cinematic adventure, when explaining why he had made the initial shots of The dry commare in a forest of large eucalyptus trees:

“I kept the reason for this choice to myself; it was a secret even from the producer. Who knows for what 'ceremonial' I wanted to return once again to the rules and the excitement of a game that had been interrupted a few years earlier, precisely in the summer of 1956. In fact, I discovered cinema as a game, and that too in a forest.^[5] If they weren't eucalyptus trees, they were huge chestnut trees from the Apennines, and I remember that behind my little actors in the foreground there were always branches and leaves, in a sweet, perpetual, impressionistic light. I did everything myself, with the same love that a little 15-year-old mechanic gives to the gears of his motorcycle.”

For Gerard, in addition to the first feature film, there are other possible dialogues between The cable car and later films by Bertolucci: “the idea of the vegetation covering the cable lying on the ground will be recreated at the end of La sragno strategy [The spider's strategy, 1970], while the director will visit his very first set again in a sequence of The tragedy is so ridiculous"(as we have seen, also pointed out by Marta Simonazzi).

So, before picking up a 16mm Paillard-Bolex, lent to him by his cousins’ father, Ugo Galeazzi, who had acquired it in Venezuela, Bernardo wrote the script with the help of Giuseppe and, aware that he did not master the editing process, planned the entire breakdown, including several cards with intertitles in verses written by hand on sheets of paper, since the film was silent. And, with his partners, he spent the summer scouting locations, structuring sequences and rehearsing framing.

Despite being just an amateur film, it was shown. Film critic Adriano Aprà, in a 2019 text, admitted that, at the time, he was slightly envious of that boy, a little younger than him, who was presenting his first works to a famous screenwriter, and was not just looking for advice:

“I met him when I was sixteen, in 1957, at the house of Cesare Zavattini (my father’s friend), where […] he screened two short films in 16mm: The cable car, fiction film, and The death of the maiale, documentary. Although I was only four months older than him, I played the critic: too many frames in counter-plot in the first, good the second. I believe I was one of the very few who saw them (they were lost), but I still have a memory. I, for the record, had only gone to ask how I could publish (Zavattini collaborated with Cinema New, then, the only reference magazine for me)”.

From the semi-documentary The death of the maiale [The Death of the Pig], two drafts of the script remained, reproduced on the website of the “Fondazione Bernardo Bertolucci”. They are six pages long, the first four of which — which correspond to the draft entitled A winter day (A winter day) — are jumbled, since, after the initial one, the third, the fourth and, only at the end, the second appear; the last two correspond to the untitled draft, which is interrupted at the fifteenth item, since the following one is blank. The lack of dating makes it difficult to establish which version was written first; the only clue that could lead to the conclusion that the young Bernardo wrote the untitled draft first is the lesser detail and the looser writing, as if it were a hastily scribbled draft.

In any case, the two texts complement each other, sometimes by adding small details, but above all by increasing the number of sequences in what I considered the second draft. In this one, the role of the country boy, about seven or eight years old, who witnesses the massacre and the preparations that precede it, gains greater prominence, creating greater anticipation. Since the texts were not typed or digitized and the young author's handwriting is sometimes indecipherable, transcribing the originals in Italian was quite difficult. There were some doubts and gaps, but nothing that seriously affected their comprehension or the translation into Portuguese.

The use of Emilia's dialectal terms — “resdora” (written by Bertolucci without quotation marks and which in Italian corresponds to “housewife”, housewife), in both versions, and “blusher” (=“stilettos”, in the standard language, a type of thin-bladed dagger), in the first — it was yet another difficulty to be overcome.

In the argument of The death of the maiale In both versions, the named or implied camera movements are striking, as is the secure sequence of the sequences, which were generally well detailed, with the exception of the slaughter of the pig. This episode, in fact, held a surprise in store, as Bernardo Bertolucci himself reported: the butcher, perhaps disturbed by the presence of the camera, let the pig escape, which, as it ran across the yard, spread its blood across the snow. An unexpected event that anticipated the result of a piece of advice that Jean Renoir would give him in 1974: “Remember, you must always leave a door open on the set. You never know: someone unexpected could come in, it’s reality that’s giving you a gift!” — as the filmmaker recorded in The mystery of cinema.

There were still other moments when the young director did not remain “faithful” to the text, working with an open script: “Our peasants had only one pig and I filmed at dawn, just before daybreak, these two butchers arriving on bicycles to kill the pig […]. But it seemed to me that this arrival on bicycles was not “epic” enough. So I asked the two butchers to wear capes instead of their coats and I had them arrive through the fields, on foot, in the snow, to start the film in a more exciting way. But above all, I did a little bit of mise-en-scène. They didn’t understand and said: “Oh, he’s taking pictures of us…”.

The short film was shot with the same camera as the previous film on the farm in Baccanelli (a district of Parma), where Bernardo lived until he was twelve years old, looking forward to the arrival of the charcuterie every November, together with the children of the farmers who worked for his paternal grandfather. The theme of this 1956 film would recur in the director's later projects, starting with the unmade I pigs (1965) — based on the homonymous work (1946) by Anna Banti, which was part of the volume of short stories The woman is dying (1951) — up to the aforementioned La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo, through Nine hundred (1900, 1976), without forgetting the sequence of the murder of Anna Quadri, wife of an opponent of Fascism, in The conformist (the conformist, 1971), which refers to the escape of the bleeding animal in the film from his youth.

Em Nine hundred, as Bernardo Bertolucci himself declared: “I tried to do the sequence of the pig slaughter, remake of that old 16mm film. There are children watching and covering their ears so as not to hear the screams” (recorded on the website of The Cinema Ritrovato Festival).

Let us move on to the first version of the argument, without a title: “(i) A man leaves the stable, carrying a lantern and crosses the yard towards the pigsty. He walks with an unusual rush, almost unnatural for a peasant (ii) The camera frames the pigsty with the door open, inside we can glimpse the shadows of the pig and its owner. It is early morning. A cart goes around the house to the porch with the boiler and Marietta who lights the fire. (iii) A small boy comes out of the stable with his hands in his pockets and his collar turned up and approaches the man who has now left the pigsty”.

(iv) While the man is arranging some sticks against the wall, the boy looks at him, idly. The peasant turns around energetically and, with a slap on the head, tells him to go home and ask for the time. (v) Now the boy, as he runs home, bumps into the charcuterie vendor who is arriving on a bicycle, well wrapped up. (vi) The peasant, when he looks up, sees the boy who is running and shouting that the charcuterie vendor has arrived. (vii) Inside the kitchen. Starting from an empty coffee cup, in which there are two unlit cigarette butts, the charcuterie vendor, who is constantly fiddling with the table, is framed and proposes to begin.

(viii) As he goes out into the hallway, the butcher, knocking on the half-closed door, finds himself in front of a girl who is washing the wooden boards with a stiff brush. And […]. (ix) Three men on bicycles, well wrapped up, come along the path. We see them for a second, then we move on to the butcher and the farmer who are doing something near the boiler. (x) The three men, one after the other, turn the corner of the pigsty and go to park their bicycles on the porch. (xi) Now they are standing still and watching the two working around the boiler. They look over their cloaks. Then the first of them breaks the ice, gets rid of his cloak and runs to warm his hands by the fire of the boiler. The others follow him.

(xii) Kitchen framing. The housewife walks to the window and opens it to throw something away. And she sees the butcher unsheathing his knife and hook. The camera follows the housewife who immediately turns around and almost runs out of the room. (xiii) Still the window. The camera leaves it, heading towards the men who are now ready and looking at each other. (xiv) Pigsty door. The owner of the pig stops for a second in front of it, then opens it. And here we have the sequence of the pig slaughter. (xv) Close-up of the housewife inside the house just after the pig has been slaughtered. The housewife sighs, as if to say: it’s over. Then she looks at the girl who was previously cleaning the boards and smiles, almost surprised by her own emotion. And she suggests some small tasks. (xvi) [blank]”^[6].

Now the second version, A winter day:

“(1) Early in the morning, before it was fully light, a man came out of the stable, carrying a lantern, and crossed the yard towards the pigsty. He walked with an unusual haste, almost unnatural for a peasant. (2) Having dropped the lantern, the peasant disappeared, on the other side of the porch. Then, the camera discovered, in a corner, a cauldron heating up, amidst the smoke. (3) The peasant returned, holding some sticks, and began to assemble a strange contraption, after having looked around to make sure, one might almost think, that no one was watching him.

(4) The door to the stable porch opens slowly. A boy comes out, still sleepy, with his hands in his pockets, shivering from the cold. He walks and stops a few meters from the man who is working and does not see him. (5) The farmer, picking up a stick, realizes that the boy is there. And he immediately turns around, almost rudely, and tells him to go home, to check the time. The boy runs away. (6) As the boy runs, near the door of the house, he bumps into a well-wrapped man who is arriving on a bicycle. (7) The man carries packages under his arm, one of them falls and, unwrapped, falls to the ground. Framing, a large blade.

(8) The boy suddenly turns and runs to his father, shouting the newcomer's name. The father follows the boy into the house. (9) The camera frames the smoking chimney of the house. A long pan across the countryside. It ends on a kind of gallows set up by the peasant. (10) A chicken runs along a wall. The camera pans to a door through which three well-dressed men are emerging, getting on their bicycles and riding away.

(11) The boy opens a door. Inside a kitchen. The peasant and the man with the packages are sitting, talking. The housewife approaches with a coffee pot. (12) Coffee being poured into a cup. (13) The wheel of a bicycle. Then two, then three, then four. The three bicycles go along the steep road. (14) The coffee cup, empty and with a cigarette butt inside. Now another one falls out. (15) The man with the packages, with a friendly bang on the table, stands up, as if to say: Shall we begin?

(16) Through the entrance door to the hall, as the two men leave, we catch a glimpse of a young woman washing a board with a stiff brush. (17) From a shot of the three men on bicycles, advancing along the dirt road, to the peasant and the other man, who are unsheathing their gleaming blades. (18) The three men reach the yard and park their bicycles. They stand for a while in the warmth of their heavy cloaks, then take them off and catch up with the two. One of them runs to warm his hands by the fire of the cauldron.

(19) The kitchen. The housewife is looking for something and by chance the boy's briefcase falls into her hands. She puts it on the sideboard. (20) The men near the gate, watching. They are ready. (21) The housewife goes to the window and opens it to throw something out and sees the men who, led by her husband, are heading towards the pigsty. One of them is holding a hook and a thin dagger in his hand. (22) The boy is heading towards the men, but his mother calls him energetically from the window. (23) The boy would also like to go to the pigsty and when he is about to ask, his mother throws the briefcase at him through the window.

(24) The window is closed. The housewife takes one last look at the men, then turns and runs into another room. (25) The door to the pigsty. The owner of the pig stands in front of her for just a second, then opens it. (26) One of the men turns and sees on a lawn in the distance the boy who is following with his briefcase under his arm. (27) The butcher puts his hands behind his back and goes in. (28) The boy hides the briefcase under a bridge and, from afar, behind the bushes, watches the men in front of the pigsty. (29) The pig is slaughtered (interrupted by the boy running). (30) Just as the pig is being slaughtered, close-up of the housewife who sighs. Then she looks at the girl who was previously cleaning the boards and smiles. (31) The boy, walking through the bushes, gets closer and closer and sees the pig being carried in a kind of fishing net.”^[7]

Assumptions can be checked and doubts redeemed with the vision of The death of the maiale, since, in the last edition of The Retro Cinema, its location was announced and a screening at the Modernissimo cinema (on the 28th) in Bologna, as reported by the festival itself on June 26, 2024. In the statement, however, there is no reference to the edition of the short film, which, on the festival's website Bernardo Bertolucci Foundation, continues to be listed as “film never edited and presumably lost”.

Bernardo Bertolucci, however, made his debut in the field of cinema well before the achievements highlighted so far. His baptism dates back to his early childhood, when Antonio Marchi^[8] filmed him, along with his father, in Attilio and Bernardo Bertolucci in Casarola during the war (1943), a Home movie (in its current name) presented at the 2019 edition of the aforementioned Bolognese festival. The amateur film, available online, “shows shadows, lights, country houses, water mirrors, windows and, therefore, the desolation of the countryside, fascinating and melancholic. At a certain point […], a smiling boy arrives, happy to be in Casarola”, in the description of Carolina Caterina Minguzzi — a boy whose wanderings we will follow for about 75 seconds, a boy who appears on the screen with his hands in his pockets, like the sleepless child leaving the stable in The death of the maiale.

Sequence of frames from Antonio Marchi's film

Antonio Marchi's shots immortalized the first cinematic steps of little Bernardo who, as he grew up, confessed that

“It was inevitable that I would shoot my first film in Casarola: The cable car, it was called. […] It was a test of pure expression. I mean, I remember it as perhaps my only moment as a director in which I was truly beyond any reflection, beyond any need to be conscious, beyond thinking about cinema. I was just looking for pure expression, without knowing it. I just wanted to print it on film, that’s what I wanted to do. To discover that capturing that landscape, its complexity, its meaning was something miraculous that happened through my hands and then before my eyes. Casarola was removed from its reality and transfigured on that film.”

Confession recorded in the book The mystery of cinema, which reproduces the doctoral lectures that Bertolucci delivered on December 16, 2014, when the University of Parma conferred on him the title of doctor Honorary in History and Criticism of the Arts and Entertainment. And, continuing the memory of his deep connection with this and other landscapes of his childhood and adolescence, never forgotten: “I could only start from here, from Casarola, from the Apennine origins, from a village and a house that for us have always been outside of time, a place where we could live protected from the world. […] Casarola is a village that marked us, that conditioned us, me and my brother Giuseppe. We were very attached to that place, to that house. We were born with the myth of Casarola, the place where the Bertolucci family came from […]. One of my first poems, between the ages of 6 and 7, said: The echo of a rooster crowing wakes him up / a white butterfly rubs his eyes / Casarola, which everyone believes was invented”.

In the original: “Ti sveglia l'eco di un gallo che canta / ti frega gli occhi una farfalla bianca / Casarola, che tutti credon fòla". "Blood”, a term that can have two meanings, that of “Favola, tale” (= “fable) and that of “frottola, thing not true” (= “nonsense”), but both linked to the concept of invention. Casarola was born: a real and fictional place, a mythical place, a place of origin, which continued to stimulate Bernardo Bertolucci's creative imagination in the field of cinema. A place from which he projected himself into the world and in whose telluric womb, alongside his brother, he wanted to retreat forever.

*Mariarosaria Fabris is a retired professor at the Department of Modern Letters at FFLCH-USP. Author, among other texts, of “Contemporary Italian Cinema”, that integrates the volume Contemporary world cinema (Papyrus).

References

“Bernardo Bertolucci unpublished: revitalize the film The death of the maiale girato como aveva solo 15 anni” (June 26, 2024). Available at:https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/ bernardo-bertolucci-unpublished/>.

BERTOLUCCI, Bernardo. “Il cavaliere della valle solitaria”. In: PASOLINI, Pier Paolo. Profile cinema. Milan: Mondadori, 2001.

BERTOLUCCI, Bernardo. The mystery of cinema. Milan: La Nave di Teseo, 2021. Available at: .

“Cinema primo amore. History of the filmmaker Antonio Marchi”. Available at: .

Bernardo Bertolucci Foundation. Available at: .

GIROLDINI, Cousin. “Cittadella Film: la Cinecittà del Nord”. Available at: .

“Impermanenza” (2021). Available at:
impermanenza_(Neologismi)/>. The excerpt cited by the encyclopedia was taken from VECCHI, Bruno. “Aspettando il Sessantotto”. Unity/Unity2, Rome, 5 June 1994.

MINGUZZI, Carolina Caterina. “Parlando di Bernardo” (June 29, 2019). Available at: .

Notes

[1] Bernardo learned to read by reading his father's poems, so when he learned to read and write, it was natural for him to write poetry.

[2] Data and quotes from/about the director were mostly taken from the “Fondazione Bernardo Bertolucci” website. As for other sources, they are indicated throughout the text.

[3] In Casarola, a small hilly district of Monchio delle Corti, in the province of Parma (Emilia-Romagna), was located the former residence of Attilio's father, a family refuge during the Second World War and a summer home since the transfer to Rome. In February 2023, the site became part of the project “Case e studi delle persone illustri dell'Emilia-Romagna” (Houses and studios of illustrious people of Emilia-Romagna), deservedly recognized for having housed one of the greatest Italian poets of the XNUMXth century and his two sons, renowned filmmakers.

[4] The poem was published in the magazine palate, Parma, n. 9, Jan.-Mar. 1959 and later in volume Winter trip (Milan: Garzanti, 1971). Original text: “L'estate impolvera le siepi, / anche oltre i mille metri, / impolvera le more ostinate / in un'adolescenza agra. // But your adolescence grows older, matures / in the artigiana and sottile peace / this is a ripresa dal basso / and the diet of the stracciata siepe / così da tramare di spini foglie e bacche / il racconto nel suo tempo reale / scandito dai passi silent / and furtivi dei bambini Giuseppe Marta / Galeazzina 'fuggiti di casa' / when I sleep in Casarola / perché è luglio e il fuoco meridiano / corny like the wild people / dell'Appennino, anche le donne / indomabili nell'avarizia e nella sporcizia, / boccheggianti su pagliericci miseri in sad pace. // Soltanto voi, gentili villeggianti, / vivete quest'ora, ne rubate / l'acuta fiamma sì che i vostri occhi / rideranno, nel primo piano, per semper / al sole delle tre. // Affrettatevi, the teleferica is long / and Bernardo, che ha le gambe lunghe / I gave quattordici anni, the smania of it storyteller, / insist sul tempo reale, vuole / che vi perdiate fra castagni e felci / a Cercare, with the light that si fa / più e píù debole — affrettatevi, / la sera è paurosa sui monti — / i fili metallici che tagliano le mani / e therefore via the legname / per il tannino, o lo portavano, la fabbrica / va in pezzi, e le funi intrecciate / ci voleva Giuseppe a scoprirle perse / nella vertigine dei rami più alti, / chlorophylla, avventura e terrore / di un bambino che gioca: questo / l'antefatto del racconto, ora egli conduce le cugine più grandi / all'altalena sospirata / e non la troverà più, / il Your cue will not feel pain, / which is released, passed anni and anni infiniti, / I prove it in the first orgasm of heart attack. // The last frame is high up / on a branch of the hill, on the top of the hill / it's restless and restless, / guides sconfitta / between the bambin and distraggono, / the big più delle sorelle intreccia / un cappello di foglie sui capelli / della più piccola, l'operatore poet / se ne innamora anche lui, pensa all'effetto / che ne ricaverà when avvizzite / le foglie finiranno nella polvere / rosata del crepuscolo freddo / sulla via del ritorno, scordati / il precocious pain, the delusional pupil, / the uman theme of the novelletta. / Lasciate che l'arte si prenda / queste rivincite improvvise ma giuste / sulla vita, che un ragazzo ne profitti / e abbia coscienza in quei cari anni / della vocazione e dell'apprendistato”. There are two small inaccuracies in the poem: Bernardo, at the time, was 15 years old and not 14, having been born in Parma, on March 16, 1941, and the camera he used was a 16mm.

[5] In the memories of his cousin Marta, however: “For us boys, it seemed like a fantastical, fun and unusual game, but for Bernardo, it was something more. It was the beginning of his poetic-cinematic spark”.

[6] Original text: “1) Un uomo esce dalla stalla con una lucerna in mano e attraversa l'aia andando verso il porcile. Walk with an unusual, almost unnatural sveltezza in a container. / 2) The machine frames the porcile with the door tightening, inside itself the ombre of the maiale and its padrone. It's a quick morning. Carrellata towards the house bell at the portichetto with the caldaia and the Marietta that makes fuoco. / 3) Dalla stalla viene un bambino piccolo [?] con le mani in tasca e il bavero alzato e si avvicina all'uomo che ora è uscito dal porcile. / 4) Even though I put it in order, I put it against the wall [,] I'm raging at the guard, ozioso. Il contadino si come back energetically and with a scappellotto send him to chiedere l'ora at home. / 5) Now the bambino running back to the house if he meets the norcino arriving on a bicycle intact. / 6) Il contadino alzando la forehead vede il bambino que viene running e gridando che c'è il norcino. / 7) Interior of the kitchen. If it starts from a cup of coffee inside which sleep is spent due to the mozziconi of Sigaretta and if it includes the norcino with a lavorio fruga sul tavolo [e] propose d'incominciare. / 8) Using the norcino corridor, with a manata at the semi-smooth door, it comes across the front to a ragazza that has a hard spazzola lava on the table. And […]. / 9) Dalla carraia vengono tre uomini in bike intabarrati. I read it for an un'attimo [sic], so we pass to the north and there we reach the same neighborhood in Caldaia. / 10) I tre uomini, uno dopo l'altro[,] svoltano l'angolo del porcile e vanno ad appoggiare le biciclette al portico. / 11) Now I sleep fermi e osservano i due lavorare into alla caldaia. Keep it from the top I gave it to the tabarri. For the cousin of the loro scioglie il ghiaccio liberandosi dal tabarro and running a scaldarsi le mani al fuoco della caldaia. Gli altri lo seguono. / 12) Kitchen frame. The resdora si avvia alla finestra e la apre per buttare di sotto qualcosa. And see the norcino sfodera il 'coradòr' and l'uncino. The obiettivo follows the response that comes back immediately and almost runs away from the stanza. / 13) Anchor the finestra. La macchina ne esce verso gli uomini que som ormai pronti e se storno. / 14) The porcelain door. Il padrone del maiale sosta un attimo davanti a lei, poi apre. And that's the scene of the maiale's accident. / 15) Il primo piano della resdora in casa proprio suddenly dopo che il maiale è stramazzato. The resdora makes a sigh come per dire: it is finite. So save the ragazza that first hits the table and smiles almost stupidly at your own commozione. And propose qualche lavorino (?). / 16)”.

[7] Original text — A winter day: “1) In the early morning, it's not an anchor chiaro del tutto, a thing comes from the stall with a lamp in hand and across the street on the porch. It walks with an unusual, almost unnatural sveltezza in a container. / 2) Posata la lucerna il contadino scompare, al di la del portico. Because the machine scopes in an Angola a great caldaia that is scorching with smoke. / 3) Il contadino está con dei pali in mano e si mette a costruire uno strano trabiccolo, dopo essersi storage intorno, potremmo credere almost per assicurarsi che nessuno lo vede[.] / 4) The door of the porticato della stalla si apre slowly. Ne esce ancora insomnolito un bambino con le mani in tasca e che rabbrividisce per il freddo. Cammina e si ferma a qualche metro dall'uomo che lavora e non lo vede[.] / 5) Il contadino, raccogliendo un palo, si accorge del bambino. And suddenly he comes back, almost sgarbatamente[,] and sends him home to watch him sleep. The bambino runs. / 6) L'uomo ha dei pagotti sotto il braccio, e gliene cade uno[,] srotolandosi rimane per terra. Picture, a big mud. / 7) I[l] bambino suddenly turns and runs to the gridare to the priest of the new arrival. The priest follows the bambino back home. / 8) The machine blocks the smoking path to the house. Panoramic lunge across the campagna. If it ends, it is a species of strength constructed from within. / 9) A chicken runs against a wall. The machine turns bell at a door of the house while using three intabarrati that mountain southle biciclette and birth. / 10) The bambino opens a door. Interno d'una cucina[.] Il contadino e l'uomo dei phagotti parlano seduti. The resdora si avvicina with a coffee bricco. / 11) Il caffè is available in a cup. / 12) The road has a bicycle. Poi due, poi tre, poi quattro. Le tre biciclette vanno lungo la stradetta dirotta. / 13) La tazza di caffè, come with a mozzicone di Sigaretta inside. Now [...] ne cade un'altro [sic]. / 15) L'uomo dei pagotti, con un bonario pugno sul tavolo[,] si alza come per dire: Incominciamo? / 16) Through a door of the floor, between two doors I hide[,] we intravediamo a ragazza that washes a table in[?] a hard spazzola. / 17) Da un'inquadratura dei tre uomini in bicicletta che avanzano lungo la carraia, al contadino e altro uomo che sfoderano le lame luccicanti. / 18) I tre uomini arrivano nell'aia e appoggiano le biciclette. I reached an attimo fermi in the broth I gave loro tabarri, as it was liberated and raggiungono i due. One of the loro runs to scaldare mani in the fuoco della caldaia. / 19) The kitchen. The resdora surrounds qualcosa and the capita tra le mani, for example, the cartella del bambino. Gliela mette sul comò. / 20) Gli uomini vicino al cortile, e guardianno. Ready to sleep. / 21) La resdora si avvicina alla finestra e la apre per buttar via qualcosa e vede gli uomini che, guidati da suo marito, si dirigono verso il porcile. Uno di loro ha in mano uncino e un pugnale sottile. / 22) The bambino is directing itself to the other side. Ma la madre lo chiama, energeticamente, dalla finestra[.] / 23) Il bambino vorrebbe andare anche lui al porcile e[,] mentre glielo sta chiedendo, su madre gli butta la cartella dalla finestra. Lui rimane fermo con la cartel in mano[.] / 24) La finestra si chiude. La resdora da [sic] one last guard agli uomini, because if he turns and runs in a^['^]other stanza. / 25) The porcelain door. Il padrone del maiale solo un attimo di fronte a lei, poi apre. / 26) Uno degli uomini si come back and see it on a plate, lontano[,] the bambino comes with the card sotto braccio. / 27) Il norcino met le mani dietro la schiena ed enter. / 28) Il bambino che nasconde la cartella sotto un bridge e vede da lontano[,] inside the gaggie, gli uomini contro il porcile. / 29) L'uccisione del maiale (Interrotta dalla corsa del bambino)[.] / 30) Proprio nell'attimo in cui il maiale è stramazzato, primo piano della resdora that makes a great sospiro. So save the bag when you press the table and smile. / 31) Il bambino walks with his gaggie if he always stops and sees how he comes caricature to his one species of carella.”

[8] Better known regionally than nationally, Antonio Marchi from Parma worked in the cinematographic field between 1946 and 1957. He was the author of amateur films, such as The liberation of Montechiarugolo (1944-1945), in which he recorded the liberation of a small town in Emilia by the allied troops, with the presence of our soldiers. He also directed several short films, including The Duchess of Parma (1948) Parmesan cheese (1948) Romanesque is born (1949) and Songs of War (1950), for whose supporting texts he had the collaboration of Attilio Bertolucci. In 1954, together with Luigi Malerba, he made his only feature film, Women and soldiers. The script was written by the two directors, plus Luciana Momigliano, Attilio Bertolucci and Marco Ferreri (one of the main actors). He was the director of the magazine Film criticism (12 issues between the beginning of 1946 and the end of 1948), which had the collaboration of Guido Aristarco, Attilio Bertolucci, Ugo Casiraghi, Francesco Pasinetti, Renzo Renzi, Dino Risi, Ottone Rosai, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Mario Verdone, among others, having also organized the first edition of a film festival, together with other editors. In June 1946, during the tree of documentary cinema in the post-war period, he was among the collaborators of “La Cittadella Film”, which intended to be a small Cinecittà from Northern Italy, whose production began in September of that same year. The production company's archives contain arguments and scripts by renowned exponents of Italian cinema, such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Giorgio Bassani and Pier Paolo Pasolini. In 1953, he was part of the organizing committee of a congress on Neorealism, together with Zavattini, Bertolucci, Malerba, Pietro Bianchi and the industrialist Pietro Barilla. As the website for “La Cittadella Film” reports: “Following Cesare Zavattini's suggestions and theories to relaunch the neorealist movement, on the days of December 3, 4 and 5, the entire Italian cinema general staff converges on Parma: Michelangelo Antonioni, the young directors [Carlo] Lizzani, [Francesco] Maselli and [Gillo] Pontecorvo, Vittorio De Sica, the critics Renzi and Aristarco, the screenwriter Suso Cecchi D'Amico and Zavattini himself present important papers, addressing the most significant themes for the relaunch of the movement”. The adventure of this aficionado of the seventh art was narrated by Mirko Grasso in Cinema cousin love. History of the recorder Antonio Marchi (Lecce: Kurumuny Edizioni, 2010).