A European director who crossed the borders for his films

A European director who crossed the borders for his films

Bernardo Bertolucci, winner of an Oscar, died yesterday in Rome, at the age of 77

Bernardo Bertolucci directed Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando in "The Last Tango in Paris". She was 19 years old, Brando 48 years old. A scandal, followed by popularity and Oscar-winning film "The Last Emperor". Image: APA / AFP / GETTY IMAGES / MACON VALERIE

"I left the end of the film open for it to be like life itself: ambivalent." Deceased decades ago, Bernardo Bertolucci, who died 77 years ago in Rome, said after the performance of his less known but colorful, luminous work "La luna".

A statement that naturally applies also to the work of the Italian who, as a director, invented European cinema with his handwriting. Because famous and notorious was born in 1941 in Parma, son of a poet and film critic, not only for his art, but also for the scandal to which a film was destined: "The Last Tango of Paris" (1972).

Marlon Brando, "a monster"

For this film, Bertolucci directed Marlon Brando, who was for him "a human being, an angel and an actor, a monster", as well as the very young Maria Schneider as a couple in love, with nearly 30 years of difference and hard bad scenes. The fact that the film was a censored scandal in Catholic Italy and for the director had a legal following, including the denial of several rights, but makes Bertolucci's legacy unambiguous. The art must not only be, it must also touch the limits.

But this Schneider, as she said later, did not know then that the director and the first actor without their knowledge before the most intimate scenes would come to an agreement, which led to intolerable attacks, forbade a purely laudatory tribute.

How could this dynamic develop on the set? Probably Bertolucci's desire to capture "real, undisguised". The reality that interested him was "just the one in front of the camera". This also led Bertolucci to be the only Italian filmmaker, besides Frank Capra (1897-1991), to be awarded an Academy Award in the staged category.

He received it for the famous work "The Last Emperor" (1986) with Peter O 'Toole, awarded by eight other men in gold. So also for the screenplay, also by Bertolucci, who wrote his own film stories in the tradition of the author's film.

Even before "The Last Emperor", who also won the Golden Globe and French Cesar, Bertolucci had shot with Hollywood. Thus, "Novecento" (1976), in which the director against communism describes the clbad struggle of Italy, was waiting with Robert DeNiro. In 1990, followed "The Sheltering Sky", in which he sent Debra Winger and John Malkovich in love, where he liked to see his protagonists: the search for a meaning, their place in life.

Although Bertolucci had oscillated between words and images, drama and production for several years, his directing career had already begun as a teenager when he was shooting 16mm short films at home. . The rest was provided by a friend of his father, the director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), who hired him for "Accattone" (1961) as an badistant.

While childless Bertolucci in the third marriage – since 1987, he was married to his colleague Clare Peploe – love was certain, he always doubted three things: the blockbuster monoculture, which is why he loved series like Silvio Berlusconi , a politician of "Breaking Bad" religion. "I am an atheist and, as my colleague Luis Buñuel said, thank you my God."

View Comments »