1967 Italian film
China is Near (Italian: La Cina è vicina) is a 1967 Italian film written and directed by Marco Bellocchio. It is a satirical movie about the struggle for political power. It focusses on the conflict between a middle class professor running for office as a socialist and his brother, who is a Maoist.
Synopsis
A pair of working class lovers - a secretary and an accountant, scheme to marry into the rich labnded gentry. Their targets are a professor, Vittorio Gordini Malvezzi ,(Glauco Mauri), who is running for municipal office as a Socialist candidate, and his sister Elena, (Elda Tattoli), a great lady who lets every man in town climb on top of her but won't marry because socially they're all beneath her. Vittorio doesn't get what is going on. Their little brother Camillo, a seventeen year old seminary student turned Maoist provides the title of the film when he scrawls 'China is Near' on the walls of the Socialist Party building, his brother's campaign headquarters.
Criticism
The film was warmly reviewed by Pauline Kael in The New Yorker on its release: " China is Near has the boudoir complications of a classic comic opera...Bellochio uses the underside of family life for borderline horror and humor. His people are so awful they're funny...[Bellochio]..only twenty-eight - perhaps only a very young director can focus on such graceless, mean-spirited people with so much enjoyment..he probably exhibits the most fluid directorial technique since Max Ophuls.."
