LOS ANGELES – Oscar-winning Italian director Bernardo
Bertolucci, who directed the Academy Award-winning “The Last Emperor,” has died
at age 77.
Known for the films “The Conformist” and “Last Tango in
Paris,” in which he examined politics and sexuality through a personal style of
storytelling and his own unique camera work has died of cancer at his home in
Rome today, his publicist Flavia Schiavi has confirmed.
Bertolucci’s greatest work was “The Last Emperor,” an
adaptation of the autobiography of China’s last imperial ruler, Pu Yi, which
swept the 1987 Academy Awards where it won best picture and best director and
in every category in which it was nominated.
“The Last Emperor” was the first feature film to be authorized by the government of the People's Republic of China to be filmed in the Forbidden City. Bertolucci had proposed the film to the Chinese government as one of two possible projects. The other film was La Condition Humaine by André Malraux. The Chinese government preferred The Last Emperor, and made no restrictions on the content. The Last Emperor became the first western film made in China and about the country to be produced with full Chinese government cooperation since 1949.
Bertolucci initially wished to become a poet like his
father. With this goal in mind, he attended the Faculty of Modern Literature of
the University of Rome in 1958, where his film career as an assistant director
to Pasolini began. Bertolucci later left the University without graduating. In
1962, at the age of 22, he directed his first feature film, called “La commare
secca” (1962). The film is a murder mystery, following a prostitute's homicide.
He followed it with his acclaimed “Before the Revolution” (Prima della
rivoluzione) in 1964.
Bertolucci caused controversy in 1972 with his film “Last
Tango in Paris,” starring Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Jean-Pierre Léaud and
Massimo Girotti. The film tells the story of Brando's character, Paul who copes
with his wife’s suicide by emotionally and physically dominating a young woman,
Jeane, played by Schneider. The depictions of Schneider, who was then 19, were
regarded as exploitative. In one scene, Paul anally rapes Jeane using butter as
a lubricant. But using butter was not in the script originally. Bertolucci
ultimately was prosecuted in Italy and received a four-month suspended prison
sentence, but had his civil rights suspended for five years.
In 1996, he directed “Stealing Beauty,” then “The Dreamers”
in 2003, which describes the political passions and sexual revolutions of two
siblings in 1968 Paris.
In 2007, Bertolucci received the Golden Lion Award at the
Venice Film Festival for his a lifetime of acclaimed work and in 2011 he also
received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
In his final film, 2012’s “Me and You” was screened out of
competition at the Cannes Film Festival and was released early in 2013 in the
UK. Written by written by Bertolucci himself, Umberto Contarello and Niccolò
Ammaniti, the film is an adaptation of Niccolò Ammaniti's young-adult's book
“Io e te” (You and Me).
