any non-communists love this movie?

You make a good point: the left-wing is definitely the good guys; less nuance than usual about that. What is not so clear is that we are talking about Communists, except in the soft, Eurocommunist Italian sense (P.C.I.) Actually it is more about the history of the Socialists, who were the real voice of the workers through most of the period covered in the story.

I remember much of the film very well, but would enjoy revisiting the scenes in the early days with De Niro and Burt Lancaster, two superior actors, and looking closely at the quality of Italian in it (DeNiro's in Godfather II holds up pretty well, for an Italian-American).

I am a Christian and found this film as a beautiful film, i gave it 9 out of 10 stars.
I did not particularly love the film i just though it was beautiful and poetic.


"Well I'll make him an offer he can't refuse"
..........Michael Corleone

I'm distinctly capitalist, but I really liked the movie. However the communists can go on, and on and on.

I ain't communist but, boy, I love this movie. In terms of drama, direction, acting, cinematography and music, 1900 is a nasty heavy-hitter.

I actually don't think it's pro-communist (although that might have been Bertoluci's intention), at least not in the obvious sense. It's very ambivalent. Take the first scene for instance when the little boy yearns to be armored, then walks in on Alfredo, points the weapon at him and screams "Hail Stalin!" (or long Live Stalin or something along the lines of that). In 1976 you would have been aware that Stalin was pretty *beep* and this makes the boy look extremely ignorant which I suppose was actually Bertoluci's intention as we can later see he gets sad when his gun is taken away (just like if one of his toys was removed). Likewise the kids (Olmo and Alfredo) are entirely overdone when it comes to ideology. This makes them look quite ridiculous. Is it possibly plaied as a dark joke (like the Verdi death)? I find that the film actually portrays the events in a relatively historic way. The communist protests after the war were what led to facism in the first place (as facism was a reaction to the supposed chaos caused by socialists). I find that in the film the young people do indeed look overly ambitious and their ambition seems misguided, like the young boy in the beginning, they kind of look like ignorant fanatics, while Olmo over time grows wiser and learns to restrain himself when it's necesary. Likewise many of the peasants are portrayed to be rather passive. They let all of this happen and then in the end they want to kill the padrone for letting it happen, while Olmo simply says that they should get rid of the padrone, that this position shouldn't exist - and indeed logic tells us that the padrone is only one man, he is nothing against all the other people and they could have toppled him anytime if they really wanted to. Yet they didn't do it and become just as blamefull as him. They also treat Atila and Regina in a very similar way as they treated the peasants. There's a lot more ambivalence but I'll leave it there. I think actually the film is quite reflective. The characters are overdone but the events portrayed follow the actual history quite well and everyone can make his own mind up about it.

Oh and to answer the question: I found that it had some flaws (a flawless 5 hour movie would be quite a thing though) but overall it is a fantastic movie. I lean much to the left but I'm by no means a communist.

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"You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were and I say Why not?"