Giulio Brogi makes inward-looking men worth sustained attention. His restraint gives The Spider's Stratagem its unsettling human centre, though even a performance as absorbing as his cannot quite overcome the film's emotional distance.
Fi1m perspective
In The Spider's Stratagem (1970), Giulio Brogi plays both a father and his son, and recognising him does not make either man easier to know. We found it unsettling because the same features kept bringing the other man to mind. Bernardo Bertolucci makes that resemblance central to his mystery, but Brogi keeps both men worth watching in their own right. His restraint suits a film that asks us to study people closely. It is a strong performance in a film we recommend with a reservation about its emotional distance.
His work with Paolo and Vittorio Taviani gives us another place to look for that concentration. I sovversivi (1967) was his cinema debut, and he made four films with the brothers. In St. Michael Had a Rooster (1972), he plays Giulio Manieri, an imprisoned anarchist. The extended solitary passages require him to hold our attention without another actor to respond to, a useful test of the restraint that marks his screen acting.
The Spider's Stratagem also shows the limit of what that kind of acting can do for an intricate script. Brogi keeps both men interesting while we compare them, but elsewhere people can seem important chiefly for their place in the plot. Alida Valli's Draifa gives us another compelling presence, yet our attention keeps returning to the puzzle. Brogi gives the film a firm human centre, though he cannot make its other characters less remote.
The later career brought Voyage to Cythera (1984) with Theo Angelopoulos, followed by more selective film work from the 1990s. A supporting part in Daniele Luchetti's The Yes Man (1991) belongs to that quieter stretch, while theatre and television remained part of his working life. For an introduction, we would still choose The Spider's Stratagem. Save it for an evening when following a difficult mystery sounds like pleasure rather than homework.
Biography
Giulio Brogi was an Italian actor. He was born in Verona and died in Negrar in 2019.
Brogi began working in theatre in the 1960s with directors including Giorgio Strehler, Luigi Squarzina and Franco Zeffirelli. He appeared in films from 1967, including The Spider's Stratagem (1970) directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, in which he played both Athos Magnani Jr. and Athos Magnani Sr.
Other notable screen roles include St. Michael Had a Rooster (1972), Voyage to Cythera (1984) and The Yes Man (1991). He continued acting in film and television into the 2010s.
