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Bernardo Bertolucci
Director / Screenwriter
1940 -  
Born March 16, Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
Key Production Countries: Italy, France, UK 
Key Genres: Drama, Psychological Drama, Political Drama, Erotic Drama
Key Collaborators: Vittorio Storaro (Cinematographer), Ennio Morricone (Composer), Giovanni Bertolucci (Producer/Screenwriter), Jeremy Thomas (Producer), Gabriella Cristiani (Editor), Stefania Sandrelli (Character Player), Alain Midgette (Character Player), Gianni Silvestri (Production Designer), Mark Peploe (Screenwriter), Alida Valli (Leading Character Player)

Highly Recommended: The Conformist (1970)*
Recommended: The Spider's Stratagem (1970)*, The Last Emperor (1987)
Worth a Look: La Commare Secca (1962), Before the Revolution (1964), Last Tango in Paris (1972)*, 1900 (1976)*, Luna (1979), Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981), The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), Stealing Beauty (1995), Besieged (1998)
Approach with Caution: Partner (1968)**
* Listed in TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films section; ** Listed in TSPDT's Ain't Nobody's Blues But My Own section.

 
 
 
Links: [ Amazon ] [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Bertolucci Core ] [ Guardian Unlimited Interview (2001) ] [ 1989 BBC Interview ] [ Baseline Biography ] [ Bright Lights Film Journal Article (2006) ] [ Guardian Article (2008) ] [ New York Times Article (2010) ]
Books: [ Bernardo Bertolucci ] [ Bernardo Bertolucci: The Cinema of Ambiguity ] [ Bernardo Bertolucci: Interviews ]
 
The Conformist (1969)Before the Revolution (1964)Besieged (1998)The Last Emperor (1987)
 
     
  "At the age of twenty-one, Bernardo Bertolucci established himself as a major artist in two distinct art forms, winning a prestigious award in poetry and receiving high critical acclaim for his initial film, La commare secca. This combination of talents is evident in all of his films, which have a lyric but exceptionally concrete style." - Robert Burgoyne (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998)  
     
  "One of the cinema's greatest masters of visual beauty, especially when assisted by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, Bertolucci's films are also dramatically naive and pretentious far too often, even addled at times, resulting in risible scenes even when respected actors are used. But at least the nine Oscars won by The Last Emperor, one of his three near-masterpieces, have assured that Bertolucci will not simply go down in history as the man who made Last Tango in Paris." - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)  
     
  "One of the most accomplished directors of the contemporary Italian cinema... Bertolucci, who believes that "cinema is the true poetic language", had applied his celluloid poesy mostly to political-human themes, but with Last Tango in Paris (1972) he moved into the realm of the purely human. It established Bertolucci as a commercially viable director as well as a highly gifted one." - (The MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994)  
     
  "The psychological and intellectual man in society has been brilliantly explored by Bertolucci." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)  
     
  "I'm no longer interested in making political films. There's something old-fashioned about them. Young people now don't care for politics. It isn't present in life as it used to be. And increasingly I like films which reflect present-day reality." - Bernardo Bertolucci (1999)  
     
 
Please note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director that we haven't seen include The Dreamers (2003).
 7+
 

"Bernardo Bertolucci was, until the 1980s, another identifiably political Italian director, whose best remembered films were very much influenced by the political activity of the 1960s in Europe and the United States. From his first feature, Before the Revolution (1964) his films display nostalgia for the old order simultaneous with its denunciation. The disintegration of macho masculinity in the face of a (potentially) revolutionary Europe was central to Last Tango in Paris (1972), Bertolucci’s most controversial film... Bertolucci’s epic 1900 (1976), a portrayal of the rise of Italian communism and the struggle of the peasantry against the aristocracy, may be his defining political statement, after which he gradually abandoned many of his radical convictions." - Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

 
 
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See Also
Michelangelo Antonioni
Jean-Jacques Beineix
Catherine Breillat
Liliana Cavani
Francis Ford Coppola
Philip Kaufman
Anthony Minghella
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Francesco Rosi
Martin Scorsese
István Szabó
Luchino Visconti
 
Bernardo Bertolucci's Favourites
Accattone (1961) Pier Paolo Pasolini, Blue Velvet (1986) David Lynch, Breathless (1960) Jean-Luc Godard, City Lights (1931) Charles Chaplin, Germany, Year Zero (1947) Roberto Rossellini, Marnie (1964) Alfred Hitchcock, The Rules of the Game (1939) Jean Renoir, Sansho the Bailiff (1954) Kenji Mizoguchi, Stagecoach (1939) John Ford, Touch of Evil (1958) Orson Welles. Source: Sight & Sound (2002)
 
 
 
         
         

 

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