Gerald Depardieu

(YouTube Streaming, December 2022) Look, if it comes down to “Should you watch 1900?”, the answer is a qualified no. No, unless you’re in the mood to go back to early-twentieth-century rural Italy for a multi-decade drama chronicling the relationship between two very different men—forty-five years of story presented in a four-hour movie (five and a half in the full version). No, unless you really want a scene in which both Robert de Niro and Gerald Depardieu are both shown getting a hand job—yes, there’s erect full-frontal nudity. No, unless you want to see Donald Sutherland play a raving psychopath that nails a cat to a wall and (separately) murders a kid. No, unless you’re in a mood to listen to writer-director Bernardo Bertolucci endlessly discuss the path to fascism from peasant exploitation. But I’m probably making 1900 feel far more interesting than it is, because very little in the film’s execution actually warrants its endless running time—most of what’s covered here feels overly familiar, already seen, executed without discipline or flair. Bertolucci’s trademark display of earthy eroticism and high-minded political ideas works at shorter lengths but seems lost without direction here. Accordingly, the film is a slog to watch—which explain why most viewers will focus on celebrity nudity and raving psychopathy as respites from the boredom. It takes a special kind of viewer to make it to the end of 1900—maybe it’s you, but chances are that it’s not.