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There is a horrible scene in 1900 - where the padrone played by Burt Lancaster rolls in the bog with the cows, a psychosexual revelation scene which Bertolucci's directorial obsessions could not leave out - taking place in an architecture not too dissimilar to this. For some the past is an ugly place full of cruelty, repression and injustice. Man being unkind to man is the vision that such a scene might create whereas for others it is where, once a upon a time, there was a sense of 'nobility' which, when analysed, is a way of looking at human society as a tree. Yes the trunk is the support, the main part but without the branches and the leaves, it has no reason to be.
Those few things that ruin this scene are the symbols of progress. Cables, trusses, pylons are the very objects of modern industry much celebrated in Soviet art. Visions where peasants are made to believe in a new world order in which among other things like exercising power and enforcing happiness, the workers are to be its new engineers. They embark on the long march to the imaginary place where they will build roads, dams, towers, electric pylons and railway tracks. If they do not fall by the wayside, they will eventually reach the politburo where inside there is a large stage and a thousand seats. In this gleaming auditorium built for the heroes of the revolution, all they have to do for the rest of their lives is smile and clap. They clap and clap unendingly while those on the stage play musical chairs.
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