Watch 1900 For Free

Sorry, this movie sucks

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While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

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.

It is gratifying to see that this film is finally receiving the recognition it deserves. The United States market never understood this film. First put off on the length distributors cut and slashed the film to a length they thought movie-goers would tolerate and produced an inferior product that made no sense. The movie-goers themselves were not of a mind-set to appreciate the themes and content of the film. It was released during the height of the disco period when the movie-going public wanted to see Saturday Night Fever and not a politically charged film. There would have been a different result if the film had been released ten years earlier, but even that possibility is doubtful. The film is unabashedly leftist and proudly exposes the virtues of Marxism, so much so it has been called the Marxist Gone With the Wind. Finally, the historical issues portrayed in the film, while familiar to European watchers, are totally unknown to American movie-goers, who never had much interest in history anyway. Still, with all of these drawbacks, its was on its release and remains widely popular in just about every other country in the world and a film of incredible beauty. I watched the 2-DVD release years after first viewing this movie in Europe when it was first released. Little did I know I was watching the European uncut, five hour plus, version, which was not available in the United States. The 2-dvd version loses little of the effect and Bertolucci does not hide his political sympathies. Some may believe that the political message detracts from the film. Far from it. Its message is more relevant today than when it was first released. Burt Lancaster and Robert de Niro took reduced fees for acting in the movie, they believed in the vision so much. De Niro made this movie immediately following Godfather II and could have demanded a higher fee, but didn't.Other reviews have taken exception to the candid depictions to the coming of age scenes, and the scenes depicting the killing of animals. While this may offend PETA sensibilities, and as difficult it is to see the slaughtering of the pig --- or any animal --- there was a point to this part of the movie. One of the purposes of this movie, Bertolucci says in the bonus features, is to remind modern day Italians where they came from. He states that the Italian viewer watching this film in the 70's was only one or two generations away from the lifestyle reflected in the movie. It is faithfully recording everyday life of Italian peasantry, a practice which lives on today in villages in Southern Europe. Nothing was wasted because they could not afford to waste anything.Folks, this is not post-modern urban life in America. American viewers in the early stages of the 21st Century may be farther removed from the practice of slaughtering livestock and scrounging for a meager existence, but as the day laborers in 1990 lived, but I can assure you that there was a day when that was precisely how Americans lived. It is how people lived their lives, until very recently, for hundreds and hundreds of years.American viewers should be more disturbed on seeing how fascism took hold in pre-WWII Italy. It is a reminder how it can happen, here or anywhere, but, ... "It Can't Happen Here" ....As difficult as these scenes are to watch, Bertolucci's 1900 is actually a rather accurate reflection of political trends in Southern Europe in general, and Pre- and Mid-WWII Italy and Greece in particular, and an accurate depiction of post WWI Italy.A particularly accurate account is the scene late in the movie, when, after the war and after the trial of Berlingheri, partisans come moving in, notifying the mob that a new government was installed, and requested everyone turn in their firearms, which they did. Roughly the same post-WWII events occurred in Greece.Whatever one may be the political predispositions of anyone viewing 1900, Bertolucci has created a film of great and exquisite beauty, with a powerful message as relevant today as when it was released. Every frame is suitable for framing, and matches the magnificent the oil painting which opens the film.

What a fine mess this movie is. I'm referring of course to the DVD version, the director's cut, which last about 320 min. I remember this one as being a far better movie when I saw it in its short version, in a theatre, in a length about half that. What is with directors, who feel compelled to release the uncut versions of their flicks, even when it has been proved that at such lengths they are real dogs, even more when they were released in that format and they bombed, as the case is with 1900? At least Coppola got the excuse that the public had never seen his uncut AN. One thing that's probably hard to understand, unless you have seen it yourself, is that a 160 min. long 1900 is a completely different film from a 1900 twice that length. There are truly two different movies there. Think of those MAD fold-ups, I think, which show a given picture when the page is spread and then a different one when it's folded up. Viewer's sensibilities are affected in a very different way in both cases. There's immediacy to short movies that's completely lost in long ones. For ex. one critic makes the good point of the ending being goofed, with two old coots making fools of themselves. That's right, but when I saw it in its theatrical version it didn't seem that way, it was instead a very touching ending, because after only 2 hr. of viewing I still had lingering in my mind the beginning, with the rough but deep brotherhood love developed between the two men, I hadn't still forgotten the two kids playing in the field, screwing the Earth; friendship which constitutes the basis on which the whole movie is structured. For that reason also, Alfredo's trial had a greater emotional impact. In the short version, which is far more compact, well rounded, focused, what keeps the movie going for 2, 3 hours is their undying relationship through hell and high water, through too many vicissitudes; their parallel lives is the master column on which the whole plot is weaved. That's completely lost in the DVD version. There, after 320 min. of film Alfredo and Olmo are strangers, their brotherly relationship having been practically forgotten, diluted, overwhelmed by a multitude of different events. That's why there are two different movies here and the one I saw in a movie house was the best one by far.There are scenes that seem to last forever, long after the point has been made. The trial of Alfredo for ex., where we have to digest songs, hymns, political speeches and hear poor peasants venting their spleens. Or when Attila is attacked with dung cakes, did they need 10 min. of movie time for that single scene? Some others are just superfluous, like the one of Olmo killing the pig and then the guy who took the rap for the murder of the Pioppi kid coming back to tell him he knew who was the murderer. What was the purpose that? The same with the scene in the tavern where Ana & Alfredo meet the epileptic prostitute. They reconcile there but did they need the whole scene for that? And I don't even remember the sequence with Attila & Regina being held in the stable and the cemetery, which are both useless anyway. I just remember seeing both hunted down in the fields and then taken down with picks and that was good enough for me.There's also criticism about the lack of character development and that's right, but only if referring to the 320 min. version. The time a director has available for his flick is rather short—usually no more than 90 to 150 min. average—which means choices got to be made, the usual one between plot and characters. That's why some action packed flicks like Guns Of Navarone or Capricorn One contain no character development at all. In such event--charged movie like 1900 even 160 min, are barely enough to contain all the action, which spans times of social upheaval and war, so we can forgive it for its lack of character development. But that's unforgivable for a 320 min. movie, there's no such excuse there. The same for the terrible editing: after an excruciatingly long scene, which is prolonged two o three times what should have been its normal length, a jump cut suddenly brings us one decade ahead. In the short version you don't even notice how bad the editing is, as you are being overwhelmed by a frantic, eventful, plot development.This is obviously a movie that should have lasted no more than 150 to 180 min. and which was stretched to almost three times that length by a director who thought he could do no wrong and that anything he included in his flick had to be masterful. But there's something ever worse, as I remember. The first 90 min, are the same in both versions--i.e. until Olmo comes back from the war—which is no surprising, considering that that's the best part of the movie mainly because it contains the scenes of such greats as Lancaster and Hayden. That means that the remaining 60 to 90 min, of the second part has been stretched to a humongous four hours! No wonder I couldn't recognize here the same film I saw decades ago, after those initial 90 min.I won't rate this movie because, if I did I couldn't give more than 3 or 4/10, and that would be unfair as there's a far better movie in there. Al I can recommend is, look for the short version and judge it by yourself.

This is one of my favorite movie is very long about 6 hours but its so good that you don't care i saw this movie the first time in in a revival movie house in New York City i love the movie from beginning to end is a masterpiece ,plus is the wonderful Dominique Sanda one of the most beautiful and talented actress in the world , plus Laura Betti a great actress she play the fascist wife of Donald Sutherland both are evil and perfect in their part plus Burt Lancaster never been better than here evil rich old man , Robert de Niro and Gerad Depardieu i am not a fan of either one are good here, Stephanie Sandrelli a great Italian movie star is good too , don't miss the movie i know is very long but you will not mine just go with the emotion and the time in history plus remember is Dominique Sanda in this movie