1900

1900 (Novecento, 1976) is Bernardo Bertolucci's sprawling historical epic, and you can watch it online on iFILM. On a summer morning in 1900, two boys are born on the same Emilian estate: Olmo, the bastard son of poor peasants, and Alfredo, heir to the landowner. Vittorio Storaro's camera then follows them across half a century.

Childhood friends split by class, the two men drift to opposite ends of Italy's coming upheaval. Olmo (Gérard Depardieu) joins the socialists and farmhands; Alfredo (Robert De Niro) inherits the land and tries to stay above the fight. Around them fascism rises, embodied by Attila (Donald Sutherland), a sadistic overseer who terrorizes the countryside as Mussolini tightens his grip. Burt Lancaster, Sterling Hayden, Dominique Sanda and Stefania Sandrelli round out the cast.

This is enormous filmmaking in every sense — the full cut runs over five hours. Bertolucci wasn't after a tidy family saga but a portrait of an entire age, from peasant work songs to street violence, with nothing softened. Its frank treatment of sex and brutality stirred scandal and censorship battles on both sides of the Atlantic.

It's a film that asks for your time and pays it back: monumental, politically furious, gorgeously shot. A perfect pick for an evening given over to the great auteur cinema of the seventies. Stream 1900 (1976) online on iFILM.