With this famous panorama of Italian peasant life from 1900 to 1945, director Bernardo Bertolucci seems to have set out, quite consciously and deliberately, to make a movie masterpiece. But his own heavy stylisation acts against a film that often looks like an old painting, but lacks the master touch to bring it to life. For, instead of intimate drama, Bertolucci offers us the modern mix of sex, violence and four-letter words. Sctalogical embellishments are allowed to dominate a potentially far greater theme. Of the actors, Burt Lancaster and Sterling Hayden bring some life to their characters - although both disappear all too soon from the film. Vittorio Storraro's photography, simply out of this world, and Ennio Morricone's superb music are constant reminders to Bertolucci of the kind of film he should have made.

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