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Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci dies
Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, whose films include "The Last Tango in Paris" and "1900", died in Rome at the age of 77, Italian media reported Monday.
Considered one of the giants of Italian and world cinema, Mr. Bertolucci was the only Italian to win the Oscar for best film, winning the award in 1988 for "The Last Emperor".
This biographical masterpiece of the last Chinese emperor won a total of nine Oscars, in all the categories for which he was nominated.
The filmmaker gained notoriety with his 1972 erotic drama "The Last Tango in Paris", with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, who presented a controversial sex scene involving butter.
He had been in a wheelchair for several years and had won an honorary Palme d'Or for all of his work at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
Former festival president Gilles Jacob said he was saddened by the death of the "last emperor of Italian cinema, lord of all epics and adventures".
"The party is over: you have to be two to dance the tango," Jacob told AFP.
Born in 1941 in Parma, in the north-east of Italy, Bertolucci produced films that were often highly politicized, dealing with workers' struggles in "1900" or the fate of the leftists of Fascist Italy in "The Conformist".
Mr. Bertolucci acknowledged that in "The Last Tango in Paris", 19-year-old Maria Schneider was unaware that the character played by Marlon Brando would use butter as a lubricant during the scene in which the actor simulates a penetration anal.
"The only thing new was the idea of butter. That's what, and I learned it many years later, annoyed Maria, and not the violence of the scene that was envisioned in the film's script. "
"It is both comforting and scary that anyone can be so naive to believe that what happens on a movie screen actually takes place," he said of the audience.
Maria Schneider, who was suffering from substance abuse and depression before her death in 2011, said four years ago that she felt "a little raped" during the scene and was deeply angry for years after have filmed the film.
When asked in 2013 how he would like to be remembered, Bertolucci told AFP: "I do not care."
"I think my films are there, that people can see them," he said during a presentation of the 3D version of the "Last Emperor" to mark the 25th anniversary of his international release.
"And sometimes I laugh, thinking that I will be remembered more as a talent scout for young girls than as a filmmaker," he said.
The list of stars he has discovered includes Dominique Sanda in "The Conformist" in the 1970s, Maria Schneider in "The Last Tango in Paris" (1972), Liv Tyler in "Beauty Volée" in 1996 and Eva Green, who debuted on screen in "Innocents" in 2003.
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