Little-seen today in the US, Bellocchio’s second feature secured his place at the forefront of Italian cinema in the late 1960s by adding politics to a savage look at the nuclear family rivaling that of Fists in the Pocket. A young man from a prominent family in a small town fancies himself a Maoist and so sets out to undermine his older brother’s run for office as a Socialist. He finds unlikely and unwitting allies in an ambitious working-class couple who ingratiate themselves into the family with disruptive results that have drawn comparisons to Losey’s The Servant. The film’s black humor and wild satire show Bellocchio engaged in a critique of the pretensions of and divisions within the Italian Left at the time. Pauline Kael, a fervent Bellocchio supporter, found in China is Near “the most fluid directorial technique since Max Ophuls.”