getting wet
by
Douglas Messerli
Bernardo
Bertolucci and Sergio Citti (screenplay, based on a story by Pier Paolo
Pasolini), Bernardo Bertolucci (director) La
commare secca (The Grim Reaper) / 1962
But, in fact, the prostitute and her
murderer—a small time Friulian thug who wears clogs—hardly matter. The real
thread winding through these stories concerns love and sexual abuse. Few of
these characters have a private place to even meet for love-making or sex. A
former criminal lives with his girlfriend, who herself seems to be a pimp for
several women; but during the day in question he has decided to leave his
girlfriend who has provided him with living expenses and a new car, intending
to give her up for another woman. A gang of young men prey on lovers in a park,
stealing whatever they can, purses and radios. Two young teenage boys court two
girls, finally gathering in an older friend’s home to dance. Later, picked up
by a homosexual for illicit sex, they steal his coat, mistakenly believing it
might contain his billfold. A handsome
soldier on leave—a true “hick” as we would describe him in English—clumsily
attempts to pick up women, and, after touring the Coliseum, falls asleep on a
park bench. The homosexual actually witnesses the prostitute’s murder, at the
end of the film identifying the murderer to the police.
The only internal scenes, the apartments
of the prostitute and the gigolo’s lover, the home of the teenager’s friend,
and the final dance club where the murderer is caught, are small, cramped, and
in disarray.
Even the teenagers, who seem well
intentioned in their young love, turn to thievery, one of them possibly
drowning in the river as he attempts to swim away from the police who have come
to question him. As in many of Pasolini’s films, this early Bertolucci work portrays
a society where nothing seems to truly matter, as everyone strives to get what
little they can. But, as the repeated rainstorm motif makes clear, without a
societal umbrella to protect them, all of them are destined to get wet.
Los Angeles, July
2, 2016
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