“Bertolucci’s paean to unhinged passion references Stendhal, Godard, Rossellini, Chekhov, and others as it follows a young bourgeois reinventing himself as a progressive Marxist—and embarking on an affair with his aunt.”—Pacific Film Archive

“A richly romantic work”—Pauline Kael

"The Italian left and right both attacked the film for ideological reasons. It was really a generational question. We belonged to the generation that was too young to have participated in the resistance against Fascism and too old to belong to the generation of 1968. And we really discovered politics at the end of the period of commitment. It was an empty, really hollow moment and that explains the ambiguity of my film and why I'm not afraid to name it. It's even doubly ambiguous: both on the level of a certain political discourse and on the level of aesthetics, of the language of film. I think film directors, especially young directors, those who are still training, should just try to define themselves in realtion to the world, or society, or history, but also vis a vis cinema itself. You have to ask tirelessly 'what is cinema?' event if you can't give a dogmatic answer. What's wonderful is to see a film and to discover the cinema through this film." - Bernardo Bertolucci