This is an epic film that you may have missed in 1976 because it was made in Europe. But it was made by the master director Bernardo Bertolucci with an international cast that includes a young Donald Sutherland (in one of his best acting roles as a sadistic fascist), an older Burt Lancaster (who plays an elderly grandfather padrone [landowner] of a large farming operation in Italy), Robert De Niro (his grandson Alfredo Berlinghieri who grows up to become the padrone), Sterling Hayden (who also does a very good job as an older actor playing a grandfather figure for the peasants), a very young thin Gerard Depardieu (who plays Olmo Dalcò, a peasant boy who grows up as friend to Alfredo), and beautiful Dominique Sanda (who marries Alfredo but leaves him because she didn't feel that Alfredo was strong enough a man to get rid of the negative fascist influences in his life). This movie is a fine depiction of the 1% in the early 1900s in Italy and their control over the peasants who farm their land and the fascists they bought with their money. This movie has explicit sex scenes and a scene of child molestation implication. However, every scene is a visual masterpiece in cinematography, direction, and of course acting, because a good director brings it all out. Romolo Valli, Francesca Bertini, Stefania Casini.
~Van of Urantia*MPAA = Motion Picture Association of America
*4DFR = An alternative, 4th-Dimensional, rating is supplied by the author of this review
