The film rejects traditional narrative, favoring long takes, jump cuts, and allegorical storytelling. Legacy and Context 🎞️
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard , this segment explores the impossibility of communication and love in a world dictated by ideology and political conflict, featuring two lovers on a rooftop.
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini , this is perhaps the most famous segment. It follows a young man (Ninetto Davoli) walking through Rome with a giant red flower, blissfully unaware of the world's suffering and historical atrocities shown in superimposed newsreel footage. Amore e rabbia (1969)
Directed by Carlo Lizzani , this opening piece (sometimes omitted in certain versions) focuses on a hit-and-run accident, acting as a grim prologue to the film's themes of social apathy. Key Themes 🧠 The anthology is tied together by several recurring motifs:
It is often cited as a difficult watch for mainstream audiences but remains essential for students of 1960s counter-culture cinema. The film rejects traditional narrative, favoring long takes,
It stands as a rare time-capsule where the "Big Three" of Italian cinema (Pasolini, Bertolucci, Bellocchio) worked alongside the leader of the French New Wave (Godard).
Directed by Marco Bellocchio , this segment features a classroom debate that descends into chaos, mocking the rigid structures of both authority and radical student movements. It follows a young man (Ninetto Davoli) walking
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci , this surrealist piece depicts the dying moments of an old man surrounded by figures who represent different facets of his life and society, blending dreamlike imagery with existential dread.