In the interval between Before the Revolution and Partner, Bertolucci directed his only substantial documentary, a fascinating exploration of the “path of oil,” following its extraction in Iran to its dispersal throughout Europe. Commissioned by ENI, the nationalized petroleum company of Italy, Bertolucci's meditation on the complex process of gas production seems nonetheless slyly preoccupied by the colonial enterprise underlying it; Middle Eastern nations supply the raw materials of modernity but don't benefit from its advancements. Divided into three parts, Bertolucci's grandly shot black-and-white film experiments with the nonfiction form as he discovers aesthetic riches buried in its substrate. Whereas “The Origins” ruminates on the antiquated economies of many oil-bearing nations, “The Journey” applies a more poetic approach to the visual grandeur of the Suez Canal and the open seas. By the third part, “Across Europe,” Bertolucci has abandoned the conventional narrator for a fictional reporter who refers to Cocteau, Mizoguchi, Welles, and others in a reflection of cinema's own origins. What is most striking, however, is the revelation that however much oil refining may have improved over the years, the politics are still as crude.