Luna, La 1979

Vincent Canby, New York Times: No amount of purloined Verdi can transform these banalities into anything else, while the film's ending, if it means what it certainly seems to mean, would embarrass a backstage Broadway musical movie, much less a backstage Rome opera movie. Read more

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader: Loud, vulgar, and frequently obnoxious, the film nevertheless has a perfect integrity in its excesses. This is filmmaking from the groin, unabashed and unrestrained. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Did a little bird try to warn Bertolucci that this material was, to put it kindly, two bricks short of a load? Read more

Chris Auty, Time Out: Ravishing to look at, but the movie's real curiosity is the way it fails to reverse Bertolucci's usual preoccupations. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: La Luna is a spectacle-sized melodrama filled with a variety of themes -- plots and subplots that merge asymmetrically into a melodramatic mold. Read more