LA VIA DEL PETROLIO – I. LE ORIGINI
1967, 48′
Original Italian version
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Screenplay: Bernardo Bertolucci with the advice of Alberto Ronchey
Cast: Mario Feliciani, Giulio Bossetti, Nino Castelnuovo
Country: Italy
Distribution: Archivio Storico ENI
After two years of enforced unemployment, Bertolucci agreed to make an industrial documentary commissioned by the Italian oil company Eni and later broadcast by RAI. Having set out to search for oil, he discovered—as Enrico Mattei did—the developing world. What is primarily expressed between the lines in the three episodes of La via del petrolio is the mad desire to experience contemporary reality at 24 images per second. La via del petrolio – I. Le origini was shot in Persia (today Iran) and documents drilling for oil in different regions of the country, also through direct accounts given by Italian workers. Particularly riveting is the description of the installation of a cableway at an altitude of 3300 meters (11,000 feet), as well as the scene in which a warning flare is fired at night, which would inspire the start of Bertolucci’s film Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981).