The right to a past: Amelio and Bertolucci with Fortini

This article begins from Franco Fortini’s considerations about the generational strife between fathers and sons in the mid-1970s to frame a discussion about the ways in which cinema has given shape to this widely discussed sociocultural aspect of the long 1968. In particular, the article analyses Gianni Amelio’s Colpire al cuore ( Blow to the Heart ) (1982) and Bernardo Bertolucci’s La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo ( Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man ) (1981) as exemplary instances of the way in which the father–son relationship becomes the vehicle for a meditation on the relationship (or lack thereof) between the individual and history. The article concludes with a discussion of the films as symptomatic representations of the affective and political situation of their time.