Love and Anger

Director: Marco Bellocchio, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jean-Luc Godard, Carlo Lizzani and Pier Paolo Pasolini
Year Released: 1969
Rating: 0.5

A deadly awful omnibus from the Vietnam days which has five prominent filmmakers making five dreadful short films. The Pasolini one is probably the best (relatively speaking), as his typical stand-in Ninetto Davoli skips around town with a giant fake flower while black and white footage of Che Guevara, LBJ and bombs dropping gets mixed in. The others are so bad it's stupifying: Lizzani's piece is short, inconclusive and could have very well been a deleted scene from another movie. The Bertolucci is some crackerjack performance piece that has youthful hippies humming in unison, then pretending to choke, then actually vomiting - meanwhile, a priest is dying. Godard's is more of JLG's old meta-tactics (you see enough Godard and you can see him cannibalizing himself), this time with his performers commenting on the film their making - basic point: yay for Marx, boo for L'amore-ica. The Bellocchio is just as aggravating, with University of Rome students shouting opinions about the War to each other for over twenty-five minutes. The title is misleading: this isn't anger, it's whining.