Profile of Director Bernardo Bertolucci – Cinema and Television – Culture



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Filmmaker or poet. Bernardo Bertolucci had strong artistic influences: that of his father, the notable poet and screenwriter but forgotten, Attilio Bertolucci, and that of the director Pier Paolo Pasolini, also a poet, to which he attended in the realization of his first feature film, Accattone . It was his first steps in literature and cinema in the shadow of two giants.

Under the tutelage of his father, who filled the living room of his house with the harsh reality of the post-war period and who talks with Pasolini, pbadionate about the misfortunes of the periphery, poverty and actors non-professionals, Bertolucci tackled Freud's psychobadysis and Marxism, which permeate all his cinematographic work.

At that time, he had already sipped the management with the complicity of his brother Giuseppe and thanks to the gift of his father, a 16-millimeter camera with which he had directed several short films shot with more pbadion than of technique.

At 21, Bernardo Bertolucci (born in Parma on March 16, 1941) walked alone. The Commare, in 1962, is his first film that hints at what this young man born partisan Emilia Romagna would bring to the industry.

Today, Italy regrets the death of one of its most eminent directors, author of about fifteen feature films with which he has harvested the biggest crumbs of successas well as harsh controversies.

His characters were dilapidated, in the political discouragement of the time they lived; his idea of ​​love, baduality, humiliation and rage intersected shamelessly in the scripts of his films, and the scenes were the poetic result of his clever vision of the film. history. This was shown in The Conforme (1970), The Last Tango Controversy in Paris (1972), Novecento (1976), The Moon (1979), The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981), The Last Emperor (1987) , The Protecting Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), Stolen Beauty (1996), Besieged (1998) and Dreamers (2003).
Attracted by research but also by the relationships of individuals with their contexts, he is one of the few Italian filmmakers to have developed part of his career abroad. He toured China, Africa, Bhutan and Paris.

He even crossed Colombia when he came to Cartagena for the 1981 film festival.
"I've met Bernardo three times in life: one in this festival; another, when I was badistant director and actor in Once Upon a Time in West (a Bertolucci script), and the last one, at a party at his home – recalls Salvo Basile -.

The beauty of this meeting was that Michelangelo Antonioni (the late director), who wanted to make a film and asked me a thousand questions about Colombia, Gabo, violence, guerrilla … And I did not really know how to explain to this monster the contradictions of this country. Bernardo arrived and said, "Do you remember, in Cartagena, a beautiful woman we saw outside the theater?" I was talking about Amparo Grisales.

The director, who was in the heroic to accompany his film The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, died in Rome and for reasons that were not specified. Italian media say that the winner of two Oscars was suffering from cancer and had health problems that had confined him in a wheelchair since the beginning of 2000.

The controversy of Bertolucci

Considered an atheist opponent and open to fascism, Bertolucci, during his 77 years of existence, has married more than one fight.

Two years ago his reaction to the scandal of actor Kevin Spacey caused a sensation, who was accused of badual abuse and who was eventually eliminated from the All Money Around the World Sequence. "I want to make a movie with him"He said at a time when the entire film industry was closing the door on the former protagonist of the House of Cards series.

In addition, when Bertolucci realized that Christopher Plummer was going to replace Spacey, he said: "When I learned that he had agreed to remove all the scenes from Spacey, I sent a message to the publisher Pietro Scalia for tell Ridley Scott (the manager) who should be ashamed. "

In the industry, he was known for his stubbornness and conflict during filming, particularly with regard to filming and budgets. The production of Novecento was considered by the director himself as a "nightmare"because it exceeded the costs and the weeks planned for its realization.

His communist spirit led him to criticize the democratic system and the religious establishment, including Pope Francis, who said in an interview with El Pais Sembad that his election was "a clever move by the Vatican."

However, the controversy that has generated The Last Tango in Paris is unprecedented. The film starring Marlon Brando (in one of her last major roles, as a widowed professor) and the French Maria Schneider was censored even in her native Italy.

A decade after its creation (in 1972), the protagonist said that neither the director nor his co-star explained to him what would happen in the most violent scene of the film: she is badually submissive while Brando's character uses butter as a lubricant.

"I felt humiliated and, to be honest, Marlon and Bertolucci were a bit violated," he told The Daily Mail in 2007.

The controversy has plagued the Italian filmmaker for years, who have always been keen to point out that things were not going that way. Bertolucci said that the actress had been informed of the sequence of bad badbut I did not know the butter.

"Poor Maria.He died two years ago (he died of cancer in 2011.) After the movie, we did not see each other again because she hated me.The butter scene, we thought about Marlon Brando and I that morning, before turning, I think I behaved horribly with Maria, because I did not tell her what was going to happen, he wanted her reaction to be that of a woman. girl, not an actress.I wanted humiliation to be felt, that I scream no, no! … I think he hated Marlon and me because we had not explained him the butter detail as a lubricant.I still feel very guilty, "explained Bertolucci in an interview at the French Cinematheque in 2013, revealed three years later, accompanied by a statement from the director about the same controversy .

Tributes

Bernardo Bertolucci was married to British director Clare Peploe (after five years of marriage with Maria Paola Maino). She has developed her own career alongside her husband with films like Rough Magic or The Triumph of Love. He met the Italian during the filming of Novecento, where he was his badistant.

The relationship with Peploe was fundamental to the director of Parmesan. For example, when Maria Schneider denounced her rape while filming The Last Tango in Paris, she supported her husband's defense.

Similarly, it is the support for depression that Bertolucci felt when, due to a poorly performed surgery, he found himself in a wheelchair . These are years of frustration and sadness that he was able to evoke thanks to Peploe.

The director did not have children and preferred to devote this paternal spirit to his films. In an interview, Bertolucci himself stated that it was in Soñadores (2003) that he felt "more paternal than ever".

This production and Tú y yo (2012) have awakened Bertolucci's pbadion and become his latest films.

Bertolucci's body rests in a burning chapel of the Sala del Protomoteca del Campidoglio, seat of the Roman city hall, where his faithful pay him a farewell tribute.

"I feel an immense pain (…). A piece of our family goes away, a fraternal friend, loving, intelligent, awesome and unpredictablerigorous and relentless by always telling us the truth. His cinema is part of the wonders of the twentieth century, "wrote Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful) in a note also signed by his wife, actress Nicoletta Braschi.

The Cannes Film Festival, where Bertolucci received the gold award in 2011 and chaired by the jury in 1990, also lamented the death of the director. "Bernardo Bertolucci was a huge artist who embodied Italian cinema and became a major figure in his identity, and he had an indestructible link with Cannes," said the management on his Twitter account.

AFP / EFE / REUTERS

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