The Passion of Pierre Clémenti: European cinema's christ-devil child 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Clémenti's next politically charged role came in Glauber Rocha's Cabezas cortadas (1970) which was filmed in Cadaques (where Bunuel had shot L'Age d'or). A leading figure in the Brazilian Cinema Novo movement, Rocha's film depicts the social and political problems in dictatorial Latin America. The heavy political overtones secured it a mixed critical reception on its release. In conversation with Rocha, Miklos Jancso, Jean-Marie Straub and Simon Hartog in 1970, Clémenti expressed his horror at the current state of world cinema.

"It’s fucked, the American cinema . . . until it reinvents a new filmic language. But under current conditions, all the big studios are wiped out . . . The cinema in France is becoming more and more alienated, more in harmony with TV, with the television chains. And I feel that a cinema that is really trying to relate to people, to alter their consciousness, will be pushed to one side." ⁵

In Jancso's La Pacifista (1970), he played a guilt-ridden anarchist struggling with his motives. At the same time he was also shooting for Yvan Lagrange's two short films, la Lecon des choses and Renaissance, in which he stars alongside friends Valerie Lagrange and Zouzou, and he played Tiresia opposite Britt Ekland's Antigone in Liliana Cavani's I Cannibali. Not well-received critically, it was perhaps just another cinematic milestone in this productive year in Clémenti's career, as, on top of all these roles with eclectic modern directors, he was also filming Bertolucci's Il Conformista, which many perceive as the director's breakthrough film, and certainly the one that brought him his first taste of great international acclaim. Once again Clémenti plays a rough diamond; in this case a predatory gay chauffeur. In addition to these, he also filmed two more of his own underground shorts, Esméralda, and L'Ange et le demon, and he starred with Tina Aumont and Louis Walden in Franco Brocani's dreamlike Necropolis. Still in the same year he found himself filming again with Garrel in La Cicatrice interieure, in which his son Balthazar also features. The film revolves around an utterly lost and disorientated Nico, and her music supercedes the need for a proper script, should such a thing even have occurred to Garrel back in those days. Clémenti appears as a naked horseman/archer in the middle of a desert, which provides the entire backdrop to this most ethereal of films.

At this point then, he was at the peak of his career, at least in terms of output, but things were about to move in a strange direction. Shortly after filming with Brocani, Clémenti was arrested in July 1971 in Rome while staying in a friend's apartment, on charges of drug possession. He was imprisoned for 16 months in Regina Coeli in Rome. The experience marked him profoundly. Many of his friends in the world of cinema believe he was really imprisoned for his political leanings, as he was very much on the side of the extreme Italian left, and it was the era of the Moro affair. His son, Balthazar, who answered the door to the police, believes he drugs were planted. It was in prison that he wrote his memoir, Quelques messages personnels (dedicated to Louis Aragon), which railed against the Italian authorities and its penal system, and also documented aspects of his working with various directors.

One of the witnesses in Clémenti's trial was Federico Fellini, despite Clémenti's earlier refusal to work with him on Satyricon."He appeared to me to be an engaging person, who inspired friendship and tenderness, who looked for advice . . . a conscientious actor, in summary an exquisite man" (QMP) Fellini stated. Clémenti greatly admired Fellini, though they had never managed to work together, as he greatly admired many other Italian filmmakers who he had worked with: Visconti, Pasolini, Bertolucci, De Sica, Brocani, Cavani. Even at the height of his career he spent more time filming in Italy than in France.

"I believe they are the direct descendants of the spirit of the Renaissance. They have the sense of the beauty and the finesse, but they are not cut off from the people. They don't conduct themselves like an elite, an aristocracy of artists who would live like parasites due to the largesse of the system, but they are nonetheless where it's at. I believe that they really work for the Italian general public, that they know how to put their ancient and vast culture to the service of life."

Next page: "I don't have the will to be part of films that don't even deserve to be made"