Bernardo Bertolucci 1

Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci
Born March 16, 1940Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Years active 1962 - Present

Spouse Adriana Asti (div.)

Clare Peploe (1990-)

Parents Attilio Bertolucci (1911-2000)

Ninetta Giovanardi

Bernardo Bertolucci (born March 16, 1940) is an Italian film director and screenwriter, whose films include The
Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers.

Early years and background

Bertolucci was born in the Italian city of Parma, in the region of Emilia Romagna. He is the elder son of Ninetta, a
teacher, and Attilio Bertolucci, who was a poet, a reputed art historian, anthologist and film critic.[1] Having been
raised in such an environment, Bertolucci began writing at the age of fifteen, and soon after received several
prestigious literary prizes including the Premio Viareggio for his first book. His father's background helped his
career: the elder Bertolucci had helped the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini publish his first novel, and Pasolini
reciprocated by hiring Bertolucci as first assistant in Rome on Accattone (1961). But Bertolucci's potential had
already been noticed by others, such as Sergio Leone, who asked him to write the storyline for Once Upon a Time in
the West. Leone later rejected it as too cerebral for an American audience.
Bertolucci has one brother, the theatre director and playwright Giuseppe (b. February 27, 1947). His cousin was the
film producer Giovanni Bertolucci (June 24, 1940 - Feb, 17, 2005), with whom he worked on a number of films.
Bertolucci's first wife was Adriana Asti, star of his early film Prima della rivoluzione. In 1978, he married Clare
Peploe, a British screenwriter who has since directed a few films as well.

First film
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 from 1958 to 1961. As noted above, this is where his film career as an
assistant director to Pasolini began. Shortly after, Bertolucci left the University without graduating. In 1962, at the
age of 22, he directed his first feature film, La commare secca (1962) The film is a murder mystery, following a
prostitute's homicide. Bertolucci uses flashbacks to piece together the crime and the person who committed it. The
film which shortly followed was his acclaimed Before the Revolution (Prima della rivoluzione, 1964).
The boom of Italian cinema, which gave Bertolucci his start, slowed in the 1970s as directors were forced to
co-produce their films with several of the American, Swedish, French, and German companies and actors due to the
effects of the global economic recession on the Italian film industry. It has been speculated that this is the point in its
history at which Italian cinema began to depend upon the international market.
Bernardo Bertolucci 2

Collaboration with co-producers

In order both to finance them and to appear competitive in the now-international entertainment industry, directors
were increasingly forced to co-produce their films with foreign companies and Bertolucci was no exception. Last
Tango in Paris (1972), starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, exemplified the new trend for Italian movies to
attempt to make more money by employing foreign actors in starring roles: Last Tango in Paris included only one
Italian actor, Massimo Girotti, in a main role. Bertolucci's 1900 (1976), starring Burt Lancaster, Donald Sutherland,
Robert de Niro, and Gérard Depardieu, is another reflection of the Italian film industry's increasing dependence on
the international market, even though the film itself is entirely focused on an Italian theme: it chronicles the lives of
two men during the political turmoils that took place in Italy in the first half of the 20th century.

Politics
Bertolucci is actively political, and a professed Marxist. Like Visconti, who similarly employed many foreign artists
during the late 1960s, Bertolucci uses his films to express his political views; hence they are often autobiographical
as well as highly controversial. His political films were preceded by others re-evaluating history. The Conformist
(1970) criticised Fascist ideology, touched upon the relationship between nationhood and nationalism, as well as
issues of popular taste and collective memory, all amid an international plot by Mussolini to assassinate a politically
active leftist professor of philosophy in Paris. 1900 also analyses the struggle of Left and Right. The 1987 epic The
Last Emperor (recently re-released at an extended 219 minutes) allowed Bertolucci to influence politics both through
his characters and through the act of making the film itself. He was granted unprecedented permission to film in the
Forbidden City of Beijing, and the film's central character Pu Yi undergoes a decade-long communist re-education
under Mao which takes him from the peacock colors of the palace to the grey suit worn by his contemporaries to live
out his life as a gardener.

Evaluation
Bertolucci's films often deal with the themes of sex, politics and cinephilia. Last Tango in Paris examines sex in an
extremely carnal and disturbed way. It is seen as an erotic film which opened the door to eroticism in general-release
films. The Conformist is based political themes, more specifically, fascism, and the relationship between personal
comfort and ideals. The film deals with Fascist Italy and can be seen as both artistic and intellectual. This film is
thought to demonstrate his excellence as a director. While he has directed, written, or been otherwise involved in
dozens of movies over five decades, and his range is extremely broad, these themes nonetheless figure prominently
throughout his work, especially in his most noted and most recent releases. Stealing Beauty offers little heterogeneity
and The Dreamers manages to include all three subject matters and little else. Whether this narrowness is
Bertolucci's intent or merely a symptom of the narrowness some critics accuse him of, he has used the controversy
aroused by his films iconoclastically to encourage people to reconsider themselves and their society; he is often
considered successful in pushing back the boundaries of propriety. Bertolucci enthusiasts will also notice the
similarities between characters in films, particularly in the two most recent (Stealing Beauty, 1996, and The
Dreamers, 2003). For example, the two female leads in both films (Liv Tyler and Eva Green), are fair of skin,
slender, dark haired and blue eyed. Both characters are heavy smokers during the fashionable ages of youth, and both
are shown losing their virginities at the age of nineteen (the same age of actress Maria Schneider during the
production of Last Tango in Paris). Tyler, Green and Schneider appear in full frontal nude scenes. In both Stealing
Beauty and The Dreamers, Bertolucci speaks of 'proof of love,' using almost exactly the same lines each time.
In 2009, Bertolucci was one of ten directors interviewed in Angela Ismailos' documentary film Great Directors.
Bernardo Bertolucci 3

Spiritualism, certainty and self-doubt

Bertolucci also has a talent for putting the human soul under the microscope. Psychoanalysis is as central to his films
as it is to Woody Allen's, and Marlon Brando claimed that Bertolucci's sharing of psychoanalytical confidences with
the star on the set of Last Tango in Paris helped elicit the performance that many consider Brando's best. Bertolucci
himself is also known for the number of psychologists who have followed him everywhere, even interpreting his
dreams, as a subject of dissertations and research on the creative artist. His interest in understanding the human
condition has led to the many explicit scenes in his films.
Last Tango in Paris presents Brando's character Paul as he finds comfort in an anonymous affair after the death of
his wife in violent circumstances. The film caused controversy in Italy for an anal penetration sex scene, and it was
sequestered by the censorship commission and all copies were ordered destroyed. An Italian court revoked
Bertolucci's civil rights for five years and gave him a four-month suspended prison sentence. Many years after, when
the general modesty had changed and the censorship commission had been abolished, the film reappeared (because
Bertolucci had kept a clandestine copy) and was projected in a slightly censored version.
In this and other films, Bertolucci examines the power of sexual relations in people's lives. Stealing Beauty gives a
visual account of a girl growing into a woman during a summer abroad. His latest work, The Dreamers, has been
criticised not only for its extensive sex scenes but also for the inclusion of male masturbation. In it, the sexual
relations of three main characters serve to expose their thoughts. For instance, when Theo is shown to masturbate it
is in the context that the one he loves the most, his sister, seems to be growing away from him and he can see the
development of a relationship between the newcomer and his sister that excludes him. The film hints at a relationship
between brother and sister, a relationship that borders on incest. The chaos in ordered family relationships mirrors
the chaos on the streets outside as France experiences the turbulent May 1968 days of the student revolt.

Red Harvest
During the making of Last Tango in Paris, Bertolucci toyed with the idea of adapting Dashiell Hammett's book Red
Harvest into a feature film. That material had formed the basis for Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More (Per un
pugno di dollari), Kurasawa's Yojimbo, countless others have used its premise since. The reason for this was his
wanting to branch out into other forms of cinema. Bertolucci wrote two screenplays, the first draft was written
almost entirely as a political film, from which emerged a story inspired by socialist syndicalism of the late '20s in
America. The second draft was more faithful to Hammett's original story and changed the setting to 1934. Actors
considered for the role The Continental Op were Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson. In Rome,
Bertolucci and Warren Beatty talked in great detail about the film, and in 1982 Bertolucci left Europe for Los
Angeles where he was to shoot Red Harvest, but five years went by and the film was never made.

Academy Award
In 1987, Bertolucci directed the epic The Last Emperor, a biographical film telling the life story of Aisin-Gioro Puyi,
the last Emperor of China. The film was independently produced by noted British producer Jeremy Thomas, who
became Bertolucci's preferred producer. Bertolucci has worked almost exclusively with Thomas from then on. The
film was independently financed and three years in the making. Bertolucci won the Academy Award for Best
Director. The movie starred John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ruocheng Ying, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun,
Ryuichi Sakamoto, Maggie Han, Ric Young, Vivian Wu, and Chen Kaige. Bertolucci co-wrote the film with Mark
Peploe. The Last Emperor uses Puyi's life as a mirror that reflects China's passage from feudalism through revolution
to its current state.
At the 60th Academy Awards, The Last Emperor won all nine Oscars for which it was nominated: Best Picture, Best
Director, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, Best Cinematography, Best Film
Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Music, Original Score and Best Sound
Bernardo Bertolucci 4

The Last Emperor was the first feature film ever authorized by the government of the People's Republic of China to
film 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.

Upcoming projects
Bertolucci is said to be working on a historical romance centering on 16th Century classical musician (and murderer)
Carlo Gesualdo.[2]
Bertolucci's next feature film will be an adaptation of Niccolò Ammaniti's young-adult's book Io e te (You and Me),
the first film he will create in 3D. The screenplay for the movie was written by Bertolucci himself, Umberto
Contarello and Niccolò Ammanniti, and expected to release late 2012.[3]

Filmography
• La commare secca (1962)
• Before the Revolution (Prima della rivoluzione, 1964)
• La via del petrolio (1965)
• Il Canale (1966)
• Partner (1968)
• Amore e rabbia (1969, episode "Agonia")
• La strategia del ragno (The Spider's Stratagem, 1970)
• Il conformista (The Conformist, 1970)
• La salute è malata (1971)
• Ultimo tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris, 1972)
• 1900 (Novecento, 1976)
• La Luna (Luna, 1979)
• La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo (1981)
• L'ultimo imperatore (The Last Emperor, 1987)
• The Sheltering Sky (1990)
• Little Buddha (1993)
• Stealing Beauty (Io ballo da sola, 1996)
• Besieged (1998)
• Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (2002)
• The Dreamers (2003)
• Io e te (You and Me, 2012)
Bernardo Bertolucci 5

References
[1] "Bernardo Bertolucci Biography (1940?-)" (http:/ / www. filmreference. com/ film/ 34/ Bernardo-Bertolucci. html). Filmreference.com. .
Retrieved 2010-09-14.
[2] Sheri Jennings, Bertolucci to receive Venice's special Golden Lion (http:/ / www. screendaily. com/
bertolucci-to-receive-venices-special-golden-lion/ 4033178. article), Screen Daily.com, 18 June 2007. Retrieved 10 January 2010.
[3] Gemmi, Nicoletta (February 18, 2011). "Bernardo Bertolucci girerà il suo prossimo film in 3D" (http:/ / www. primissima. it/ cinema_news/
scheda/ bernardo_bertolucci_girera_il_suo_prossimo_film_in_3d/ ). .

External links
• Bernardo Bertolucci (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000934/) at the Internet Movie Database
• Ebiri, Bilge (September 2004). "Bernardo Bertolucci" (http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/
04/bertolucci.html). Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database.
• Jeremy Isaacs, "Face to Face: Bernardo Bertolucci" (http://zakka.dk/euroscreenwriters/interviews/
bernardo_bertolucci_513.htm), BBC interview, September 1989
• Roger Ebert, review, The Last Emperor (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/
19871209/REVIEWS/712090301/1023), Chicago Sun-Times, December 9, 1987
Article Sources and Contributors 6

Article Sources and Contributors

Bernardo Bertolucci  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=422913132  Contributors: Abenr, Abie the Fish Peddler, Actio, Ajsmen91, All Hallow's Wraith, Andre Engels, Andres,
Angr, Asparagus, Attilios, Beetstra, Belovedfreak, Ben-Zin, Bertilvidet, Big Smooth, Biruitorul, Brookie, C777, CalJW, CanisRufus, Canterbury Tail, Circeus, CommonsDelinker, Coolville,
Correogsk, D6, DStoykov, Dahn, Dancter, Debabrata Ganguly, Deineka, Denny, Doh286, Donmike10, Download, Dr. Blofeld, Easchiff, Everyking, Feudonym, Foobarnix, Frecklefoot, Gabbe,
Garion96, Ghosts&empties, Gianfranco, Girolamo Savonarola, Grenavitar, Gzornenplatz, Hans yulun lai, Harryboyles, Headbomb, Hede2000, Heslopian, Hmrox, Hu, Hu12, Huangdi, Island,
Ivan Bajlo, JASpencer, JB82, Jahsonic, Jainituos, JeezBreeze, Jeremy O' Connell, Jewel366, Joaquin008, Joey80, Johnfos, Jonathan F, Joseph A. Spadaro, Jzummak, KF, KHLehmann,
Kbdank71, Koavf, Kookyunii, Kubra, La revista, Liftarn, Lockesdonkey, Lorenzop, Lousyd, Lugnuts, Luke4545, M baptiste, Magnus Manske, Mav, Mike Rosoft, Mike bzh, Mike hayes, Mistico,
Mlaffs, Myrmidon3, Nathan W B, NawlinWiki, NightCrawler, Nixeagle, Not a dog, Ohnoitsjamie, OlEnglish, Olivier, Orpheuss, Pacaro, Panarjedde, Paulae, Paulo Oliveira, Porlob, Quadpus,
Quywompka, R'n'B, RHaworth, RS1900, Randhirreddy, Remember, Rich Farmbrough, Roadrunner, Robert K S, RodC, Rohmerin, Roscoe W. Chandler, Rynne, S20cap, SandorKrasna, Scohoust,
Sharnak, SimonP, Simonides, Simonxag, SmilesALot, Spacejam2, Speedoflight, Sugarbat, Tarrant on Wiki, Tazmaniacs, Ted Wilkes, Teknolyze, The kicker, Theartisticnerd, Themfromspace,
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