THE SPIDER'S STRATAGEM
Italy, 1970, 97 minutes, Colour.
Giu1io Brogi, Alida Valli, Tino Scotti, Pippo Campanini.
Directed by Bernardo Bertollucci.
The Spider's Stratagem is a film made for Italian television by Bernardo Bertollucci in 1968. It is recommended for serious cinema-goers and for people interested in Bertollucci's films as The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900. It is a film of great beauty in its visuals and colour, of great complexity in structure and explorations of political, national psychological and conscience themes. A local anti fascist hero murdered in 1936, has a stultifying hold over the inhabitants of Tara thirty years later. His son arrives to unravel the truth and to liberate himself.
Memory, fantasy, nightmare, symbol are all used to communicate personal torment as representing Italian torment through Fascism, anti fascism and self-justification. Bertollucci made this film when he was still in his twenties. The Conformist then continued to explore the fascist personal problems. Last Tango in Paris then concentrated on personal anguish and loneliness. 1900 attempted a comprehensive observation of Italy this century.
1. What is the meaning and what are the implications of the title? Did the tapestries during the credit sequences give indications? The meaning of the animals represented on the tapestries? Animals of prey, the lion, the use of the lion during the film?
2. How did the title indicate the themes of the film? With reference to Athos Magnani? How was he a spider weaving webs? The significance of the 'strategy? Or, as in other translations, 'stratagem'?
3. Comment on the use of colour and the richness of the colour. The use of location photography: the town itself, its buildings, its fields of maize, the countryside; Draifa's house; the focus of colour on people’s profiles; the memories of 1936 and the use of colour?
4. What did the musical commentary add to the film? The initial use of Italian band music during the credits, the musical accompaniment to dramatic sequences, the snatches of opera, the use of 'Rigolettol? The different times when these musical motifs were used?
5. The significance of the snatches of poetry and song? The old man singing the song about a little girl, the lines about going without a ticket, the poem about the horse?
6. What was the impact of the structure of the film, a stranger entering town, the atmosphere of a visit and search, the inability to leave .. the visit never ended; the structure of memories, the 1936 episodes and their merging into the present; finally, the running identification of Athos, father and son; the device of portraying memories with people still acting their age in the sixties within the memories of the thirties?
7. How realistic was the film? Can the events of 1936 be recounted factually by the audience? Can the events of the sixties be recounted factually? Or did symbolism take over? Memories and suggestive memories?
8. How symbolic was the film? The use of the train and the train lines, Athos' luggage, the sailor leaving the train, later running cheerfully to the train, the monuments to Athos Magnani, the opera and the opera house, the open air theatre, screening 'The Last Sunset", the grave year, the references to Julius Caesar and Macbeth, and the messenger of death. the circus lion and the lion on the tray of food. the eating of water melon. the people and their postures in the town. the old people, the old men challenging Athos on his arrival. the children playing in the streets, the young boy and Draifa's servant, the young girl?
9. What impact would this film make on non-Italians? Why? Was it beyond them?
10. What impact do you think that this film would have on Italians living in Italy? The memories of fascism. the older generation's allegiance to fascism, the antifascist movies, the status of memory, the impact of the war subsequently, the driving out of fascism, modern Italy and its development, the danger of fascism? How well presented and explored were these themes?
11. What did the film have to say about the realm of memory, legend, myth, truth? Of people in authority providing the ordinary people with what they want? The ordinary people craving myth, stories, heroism? What effect do these have on ordinary people - as applied here in the anti-fascist development?
12. The original Athos Magnani? Was his character clearly presented and explored? It lived in the memory of people? Could the audience understand the real Athos Magnani? Athos as a memory, a memorial in Tara, as a legend, as a hero? What did he stand for in the eyes of the people? What kind of heroism? Their belief about his role in the plot? Athos as victim and martyr? The comparison with the reality of his weakness. ordinariness, friendship, love for Draifa, his being suspected as a traitor, yet a hero engineering his own memory? The impact of his son's final speech to the villagers and the questions he asked and the memories that flashed through his mind? Who was the real Athos Magnani? For the 1960s how much did this matter? Was the fact that he could not be reached part of the Italians' disillusion?
13. The film's implications about Italian heroism. as being founded on romance. lies. vengeance? A strategy of lies or heroism? The melodramatics of Julius Caesar Macbeth, motor cyclists of death? In comparison to truth and the phoney hollowness?
14. How was Athos Junior a representative of modern Italy and the modern Italian? His return into the past. unsuspecting? And when he had returned. he was trapped in unreality? The truth did not set him free.
15. How was the young Athos an everyman figure. searching for the truth, bearing the burden of his heritage, trapped in his past, disillusioned? Was his character presented as a person or as a symbol? His involvement in real incidents in the town? The unreality of his experience and contact with the people?
16. The importance of Draifa? The facts about her in the past and the present, her role as Magnani’s mistress, where she was on the night of the murder? Her style and freedom, her function in the film of guiding Athos Junior to the truth? Could she comprehend the truth?
17. The role of Beccaccia? The lingering fascist. his hostility to Athos Magnani, his place in the village of the '60s? What judgement was being made on fascists through him?
18. Athos' three friends - their relationship to Athos in the past, their sharing the plot against Mussolini, their idealism and disillusionment with him, their killing him, their perpetuating the memory through the strategy? The strategy not being perfect and their being discovered? The importance of showing them in their work, the details of the salami tasting, the open air theatre, the teaching? The impact that they had on the young Athos?
19. The function of the children in the film - the boy as the younger generation reciting Italian poetry, receiving this particular heritage in Tara? The girl in her service of Draifa painting her toenails? How did this contrast with the old men in the hotel, the old man who ran the place?
20. Themes of sanity and madness?
21. How political a film was this? Its stances to right or left? The insights into fascism, into politics. the effect on her sons? The exploration of society? Relationships and isolation?