Sutherland horrified by his own performance?

He played a very cruel guy, I haven't seen the whole film, I stopped watching after a horrible scene with him, where he slams a little kitten horribly harsh, it shocked me and I couldn't stop crying, we decided not to continue watching. I still wonder if he slammed a real kitten or if it was a doll.... I hope someone knows....

Sutherland's character was no "character" at all, it was a two-dimensional cartoonish joke.

"1900" could have been a great film, even given its heavy-handed and thoroughly hypocritical pushing of communist propaganda, if not for Bertolucci's ridiculous and cartoonish treatment of the Fascist characters. It's not enough for a clown like Bertolucci to turn the Donald Sutherland character into a child rapist and murderer but he also has to put in that torture-porn scene of Sutherland strapping a cute, furry cat to a wall and squashing it to death with his bare face! Of course, bashing and endlessly demonizing the hugely popular and truly revolutionary (against usury, bankers, freemasons and communists) Fascist movement of Mussolini which practically wiped out the Mafia, was the EASIEST thing anyone could do in the post-war years, and fully embraced by all Western capitalist film studios. This is because the same international bankers that finance the movie studios of the West and have the final say about the propaganda content of EVERY LAST film that is released or given any level of promotion (hence why you'll never see a pro-Fascist or even a pro-Palestinian film from any Western or Eastern film-maker promoted anywhere), also financed communism (Jacob Schiff of Kuhn Loeb financed Russian communism through Trotsky aka Bronstein and the rest followed). All post-war black propaganda was already bashing Hitler and Mussolini and their regimes 24 hours a day and brainwashed artsy-fartsy types like Bertolucci were merely the useful egos/idiots carrying the work forward by taking the path of least resistance while striking angry, rebel poses.

Bertolucci's technique is crude and obvious if one only reflects on it for a moment. He uses his true talent in constructing beautiful and poetic cinematic imagery to disguise the intellectually and morally corrupt political ideology constantly being pushed on a subconscious level, similar to the way a salesman sweet talks people into buying a faulty product. That's the fascination of Bertolucci: the fact that such a thoroughly sophisticated master of images that speak an entirely different and quite often truth-packed language of their own can also at the same time be the most heavy-handed and dishonest of propaganda pushers who doesn't even bother to craft three-dimensional characters, especially when it comes to those he wants to portray as villains.

So, Bertolucci hates Mussolini and the Fascists so much that he can't even bring himself to give them any humanity at all, lest even a *beep* in the armor be left open to an honest investigation of the true history of 20th century Italy and Europe? Well, let's quote Igor Stravinsky, an artist and true revolutionary of a stature Bertolucci will never reach, for the other side of the coin:

"I don't believe that anyone venerates Mussolini more than I... I know many exalted personages, and my artist's mind does not shrink from political and social issues. Well, after having seen so many events and so many more or less representative men, I have an overpowering urge to render homage to your Duce. He is the saviour of Italy and - let us hope - Europe". Later, after a private audience with Mussolini, he added, "Unless my ears deceive me, the voice of Rome is the voice of Il Duce. I told him that I felt like a fascist myself... In spite of being extremely busy, Mussolini did me the great honour of conversing with me for three-quarters of an hour. We talked about music, art and politics". --- Igor Stravinsky

And if that's not enough, let us quote Ezra Pound, another true individualist and revolutionary, someone who was forced to spend 13 years in a mental institution just for expressing anti-war and anti-usury convictions before and during WWII, while Bertolucci has yet to spend a day in jail for anything, including his much-hyped obscenity trial in Italy over "Last Tango":

"I personally think extremely well of Mussolini. If one compares him to American presidents (the last three) or British premiers, etc., in fact one can NOT without insulting him. If the intelligentsia don't think well of him, it is because they know nothing about `the state,' and government, and have no particularly large sense of values. Anyhow, WHAT intelligentsia?" -- Ezra Pound, Letter to Harriet Monroe, November 1925

"Mussolini has steadily refused to be called anything save `Leader' (Duce) or `Head of the Government,' the term dictator has been applied by foreign envy, as the Tories were called cattle-stealers. It does not represent the Duce's fundamental conception of his role. His authority comes, as Eirugina proclaimed authority comes, `from right reason' and from the general fascist conviction that he is more likely to be right than anyone else is." --Ezra Pound, Jefferson and/or Mussolini, 1935

"Fascism only regiments those who can't do anything without it. If a man knows how to do anything it's the essence of fascism to leave him alone." ~ Ezra Pound

So, why is it that two intellects of the stature of Stravinsky and Pound, who actually lived as adults in Italy during the Fascist era, have such a totally different opinion of this ideology than the future Mr "Get Me the Butter" who was barely out of his diapers in its last four years in power?

And how about Mussolini himself? Was he a two-dimenstional cartoonish bufoon?

"The nation has not disappeared. We used to believe that the concept was totally without substance. Instead we see the nation arise as a palpitating reality before us! ... Class cannot destroy the nation. Class reveals itself as a collection of interests--but the nation is a history of sentiments, traditions, language, culture, and race. Class can become an integral part of the nation, but the one cannot eclipse the other. The class struggle is a vain formula, without effect and consequence wherever one finds a people that has not integrated itself into its proper linguistic and racial confines--where the national problem has not been definitely resolved. In such circumstances the class movement finds itself impaired by an inauspicious historic climate." -- Benito Mussolini

Certainly not.

Just remember this: Bertolucci wants very badly for you to be bamboozled through his magnificent imagery to think that only a cat-torturing child-rapist and murderer could write the above words and for you to never reflect upon what they might really mean.

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