["Before the Revolution" is] a poignant love story epitomizing a young man's growth through the dense, chaotic jungle of contemporary civilization. Like many of the best modern films, the drama is difficult, subtle and extraordinarily complex in its imagery.

Mr. Bertolucci, who is nothing if not ambitious, has attempted a symbolic autobiography that is classical in its construction. Fabrizio, the protagonist, is a Stendhal character, residing in Parma and ultimately marrying a bourgeois girl named Clélia. Hs is also an Italian Holden Caulfield, flailing his adolescent limbs and querying intellect against the social structures of 1962.

The title derives from Talleyrand—"Only those who lived before the revolution knew how sweet life could be." In a typical gesture of searching youth, the boy revolts against everything in his surroundings—his respectable middle-class family, his lovely but dull childhood sweetheart, the political climate in his provincial town. He dallies with Communism, with abstract philosophy, with art, and, most meaningfully, with his striking, unhappy young aunt, who falls hopelessly in love while realizing she is only filling an adolescent's temporary need.

It is a moving story on the most immediate level, and the director has given it sweeping connotations. When the boy, unable to cope with the extraordinary young woman, abandons his struggles and lets her drift away, the drama reverberates with evocations of loss. His failure at love symbolizes a death of the past, an angst-ridden sense of futility in any kind of revolutionary striving, whether emotional, political or merely intellectual, amid the defeat of contemporary society.

Viewing life in such romantic terms is the special province of a very young director, but Mr. Bertolucci has approached his story with such deep feeling that its full implications are communicated. This is a young man's film, but it has large social references.

Cinematically, it is also filled with references, to the best modern directors in Italy and France. Knowledgeable viewers can detect strong influences from Roberto Rossellini and Alain Resnais in Mr. Bertolucci's sophisticated style.

Astonishingly, he has managed to assimilate a high degree of filmic and literary erudition into a distinctively personal visual approach. Technically, he displays authoritative control. Here is a new talent of outstanding promise.