grantss Rural Italy, early 1900s. Two boys, Alfredo and Olmo, are born on the same day - one to the owner of a large estate, the other to one of his labourers. There is a massive divide between the classes in Italy, to the point of antagonism. Despite this, and despite some disagreements along the way, Alfredo and Olmo become best friends. We see them grow up, go to WW1 and their adult lives. Eventually their different upbringings and social standings come back to haunt them, as Italy is plunged into class war - the Socialists (workers) vs the Fascists (supported by the middle- and upper-class). Alfredo and Olmo find themselves on opposite sides.Epic drama, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Epic is a bit of an understatement for this movie - the full version is over five hours long! (Mini-series in one part would be a better description!). Therein lies one of the problems with 1900 - while many of the scenes are important, you feel that a lot of it could have been edited out. Some scenes are just padding, and the writing within those scenes reinforces this view. The result is that watching the movie becomes an ordeal. The unbalanced approach to the class differences is also irritating. The land owners, and Fascist supporters, are all shown as unfeeling, monsters, while the peasants are all shown in a very sympathetic light, to the point that random acts of violence and killing by them are condoned. It's difficult to support people engage in such acts and/or who proclaim Stalin as their hero...Casting is also odd. There's, as you would expect, a large Italian cast but many of the main roles are filled by Hollywood stars - Robert De Niro, Burt Lancaster, Donald Sutherland, Sterling Hayden - dubbed into Italian! It would have made more sense to have Italian actors, speaking Italian. The lips and words not being in sync gives a cheap, B-grade feel to the movie.The basic plot was interesting, especially as you have the classic story of friends turned enemies through circumstances beyond their control, but this was ruined by the length of the movie and the pro- communist bias.

gavin6942 Set in Italy, the film follows the lives and interactions of two boys/men, one born of peasant stock (Depardieu), the other born to a land owner (deNiro). The drama spans from 1900 to about 1945, and focuses mainly on the rise of Fascism and the peasants' eventual reaction by supporting Communism, and how these events shape the destinies of the two main characters.This film excels as an epic, and must be commended for catching Robert DeNiro early enough in his career that he was able to sneak away for what could be called an art film, and then have nobody in America even notice that he did it.But also, that wonk scene... DeNiro and Depardieu? Forty years later, how do you live that down? They have both become huge stars, and Stefania Cassini has her own following, thanks in part to her role in "Suspiria".

Turin_Horse Mix a pretentious story intended to be "epic"; a bunch of famous good actors horribly directed and submitted to a senseless script; bad and pointless sex seemingly for no other reason than showing some sordid scenes and pretending to make the film more "realistic"; a lot of gratuitous, exaggerated and mostly out of context violence; good communists (angelic most of them!); bad fascists (did I say bad?, actually monstrous, pure evil, sadistic to the utmost!); and a nice setting with wide and pretty landscapes (yeah, watching the first 10 minutes recommended for wide screen bucolic landscape lovers), and what you get is... NOVECENTO!I have quitted watching few films in my life, and this one would have very much deserved it, especially considering its painful length!, but I stood till the end, regretfully!. Probably I have seen no film in my life where stereotypes and identification of good and evil with particular ideologies/social classes were so clumsily and naively shown, a tale for 6 years old children contains more character introspection and development than this film.I don't want to enter historical flaws (and actually blatant manipulation of history), other commentators have put it clearly and possess more background than me on the topic. Cinematographycally the film is a succession of mostly senseless scenes, added in no logical order, which leads nowhere, and fail completely to construct anything remotely similar to what we can call a "story". The final scene of the judgment of De Niro's personage, Alfredo, is one of the worst pieces of… "whatever" I've have ever watched on screen be it cinema or TV.Interested in Bertolucci? try The Last Emperor, it seems he can do a better work when telling stories from far away his own country.

danspaceman This masterpiece of cinematic brilliance is the reason films get made. Don't let the fact that it is 5 hours long daunt you - you won't feel the time. You will instead be completely absorbed in an epic story that, despite its rather simple premise of following the lives of two men, is really like watching a novel. I can't really describe the film any other way than that - it is a novel.There are some scenes that are hard to watch, especially in this day and age of political correctness and "you can't do that on television" attitude, but set your 21st century mind aside. This film shows life in its rawest form. Brutal at times, hilarious at others, but altogether real.This film defines the talents of so many household names. It has become like an old friend - like that book you read every year or two. By the end, you will find yourself utterly spent and it will stay with you forever.Novecento is one of those films you absolutely, positively must see before you die.