The movie begins on the day of Verdi's death (for no particular reason, I'm afraid). It records the births of boys in two families -- one to a rich landowning family, the other to peasants living on their land. The boys grow up together as playmates, and there's a Huckleberry Finn sort of charm to the scenes in which they trap frogs and dare each other to lay down on the tracks while a train thunders overhead. But the movie has decades to cover and can't linger to get us deeply involved.
The boys grow up (the rich one into Robert De Niro, the poor one into Gerard Depardieu). Their fathers (Burt Lancaster and Sterling Hayden, respectively) die, and so the young men become heirs to the ancient customs and feuds of the region. Mussolini is on the rise, and the town's leading fascist blackshirt (Donald Sutherland) works for De Niro and persecutes the local Communists (including Depardieu).
And then ... well, a synopsis might resemble Genesis, filled with marriages and births, deaths and murders, rivalries and betrayals and thefts and passions. De Niro marries a beautiful young woman (Dominique Sanda), and Sutherland murders a child on the wedding day and tries to pin the blame on Depardieu. And Bertolucci's camera, always moving, swooping, gliding effortlessly from one stunning composition to another, hardly seems to stop to see these events: It's as if the movie has a beauty apart from its content, and Bertolucci dazzles us visually as an apology for the narrative mess he's in.
There are scenes you will remember (and, yes, "1900," for all its problems, is a movie that film buffs should see). There's the scene at the wedding when a white horse -- a wedding gift -- is brought into the room. And the moment, also at the wedding, when Sanda takes off her white veil and places it on the head of a bitterly jealous guest. A confrontation between the two men that ends with Depardieu throwing a sausage after the departing De Niro. Scenes in the snow, and marvelously-painted harvest scenes. And the sudden violence of Sutherland, killing a cat, and Depardieu, killing a pig, and the townspeople, killing Sutherland.
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