Suicide, incest, the rampant distress of the bourgeois intelligentsia, the corruption of the church, the placing of the head over the heart – all scenarios in a grand cinematic opera created by Bertolucci at the tender age of 22.

We are taken running through the mind of Fabrizio, passionate, demented by grief over the recent suicide by drowning of his canary-haired Agostino, intimate friend, who idolised him. Driven by dark impulses he silently says farewell to his angelic fiancée Clelia, and wades into a rabid liaison with his aunt Gina (Adriana Asti), equally unstable as himself and nymphomaniac.

The camera is restless, moving towards death and destruction, scattering shots, perhaps trying to climb into the coffin also.

The title of this landmark in political cinema, “Before the Revolution,” seems an eerie prognostication of the anarchic events of 1968, of an utter depletion of faith of any kind.