Synopsis
The Spider's Stratagem (Strategia del ragno, 1970) is an Italian drama by Bernardo Bertolucci that you can watch online on iFILM. Athos Magnani arrives in a drowsy town where his father — a celebrated hero of the anti-Fascist resistance — was gunned down years before he was born.
The son carries the same name and the same face. Locals greet him as if a ghost had wandered back into the square, where the dead father still stares out from a monument and the truth of his killing sits buried under an odd, collective silence. The more Athos questions his father's old comrades and former lover Draifa, the thicker the web of half-truths grows. What was sold to the town as martyrdom at Fascist hands turns out to be something quite different, and the young man finds himself stuck in it like a fly.
The film is loosely drawn from Jorge Luis Borges' short story "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero." Bertolucci shot it right after The Conformist, and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro bathes the provincial Emilia landscape in golden light where time seems frozen. Slow, hypnotic cinema for anyone who likes a mystery that refuses neat answers. Stream The Spider's Stratagem (1970) online on iFILM.
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