ABSTRACT
Bertolucci's experience of psychoanalysis left him fascinated by dreams and their resemblance to cinematic sequences. Bertolucci has always been concerned to make cinema new and strange to eye, ear and mind. Enthusiasm for youthful American culture coexisted with resentment against that nation. In part this was directed at US economic dominance, the market cause of the very cultural invasion French young people were enjoying. After a long hissing silence, but before the gas can have its fatal effect, a gathering brouhaha heralds the passage of demonstrators below the apartment. They were also angered by the antiquated conditions in the overcrowded universities, their outdated curricula, remote professorate and inflexible bureaucracy. Bertolucci has placed Matthew in February 1968 at a nodal point of political fermentation-right at the start of what the young man refers to as 'our very own cultural revolution'.
