Last Thursday night FMC broadcast a good-quality, matted transfer of Bertolucci's controversial 1979 film. I recall seeing it on Cinemax back in the day, but this is the first time I recall it surfacing on the Fox Movie Channel, and it's worth recording. (Even if you don't much care for stars Jill Clayburgh and Matthew Barry, now a prominent casting director and featured in a film he recently cast, ALPHA DOG, it has Alida Valli, Veronica Lazar, Tomas Milian, and Roberto Benigni, among others--and Fred Gwynne, too, in the opening Brooklyn Heights scenes.)

Given the incestuous content involving a 16-year-old (not as explicit as I remembered, when I was all of 15 years old) it's hard to imagine a film like this being made today. I didn't really "get" it then, and I still don't know what Bertolucci was up to; it's operatic and elusive and crazed in spots and maybe "campy," and much derided by the critics back in the day. But it's gorgeously shot by Vittorio Storaro (1.85:1), has a Morricone score, and prettily/70s dressed opera performances lip-synched by Clayburgh.

FMC has it on again Jan. 23 at 2am, EST...after that, who knows when it will turn up?

I taped LUNA - letter-boxed - on my DVR off of FMC on 12/12/07, so it looks like it's starting to get a regular rotation.