Bernardo Bertolucci's Birthday
On March 16, 1941, 80 years ago, in the city of Parma, the Italian province of Emilia-Romagna, the son of Bernardo was born into the family of the famous Italian poet, writer, art critic and film critic Attilio Bertolucci. Bernardo's mother, Australian-born Ninetta Giovanardi, the daughter of an Italian and Irish, was a teacher.
Much has been written about Bertolucci, especially after his death in 2018. But we want to recommend an earlier publication about Bertolucci (and a number of other outstanding film directors), written by the respected Russian film critic Andrei Plakhov.
And we also want to share some facts from the life of Bernardo Bertolucci that we found curious.
Bernardo Bertolucci, neither in life nor in films, did not hide his leftist political views. He supported the Italian Communist Party, was an atheist. As he said himself: "I lived in a kind of dream of communism". At the same time, in our opinion, Bertolucci's political creed was more clearly expressed as follows: "I am still against any kind of censorship. It's a subject in my life that has been very important."
His film Last Tango in Paris (1972) was pronounced obscene as was banned 'forever' by Italian courts. The director lost his civil rights for 5 years, couldn't vote and received a four months suspended sentence. And in the United States, this film received two nominations for an Oscar and a Golden Globe. And Roger Ebert rated this film 4 stars out of 4 possible and included it in his list of "Greatest Films". How different are the ideas of decency in different countries!
A curious observation is given on the IMDB website: One of eight Italians to have been nominated for the 'Best Director' Academy Award. The others are Federico Fellini, Pietro Germi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Franco Zeffirelli, Gillo Pontecorvo, Lina Wertmüller and Roberto Benigni. Bertolucci is the only one who won the award.(for the film "The Last Emperor"). Moreover, in that year, when the Italian Bertolucci was Oscar-nominated as Best Director for The Last Emperor (1987) (and won), none of his Best Director fellow nominees were from the United States: Adrian Lyne and John Boorman (UK), Lasse Hallström (Sweden) and Norman Jewison (Canada) making that particular instance unique in Oscar history. That is, if at least one representative of an exceptional nation participated in the nomination, Bertolucci would also not have seen the Oscars.
However, Bertolucci spoke of the Oscar Award as follows: "You know for American filmmakers, the Oscars is like a mystic thing. For me it was being in a mirror of my dreams when I was dreaming of Hollywood when I was an adolescent".
Well, about Hollywood and America in general, Bertolucci spoke so: "A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy. I don't think you can in any way export culture with guns or tanks. I think that I used to love Hollywood movies. I remember great phases and moments. But, unfortunately, now is not the moment."
In total, during his career as a film director, Bernardo Bertolucci made 16 full-length feature films, plus two short stories for movie almanacs. Creative activity brought Bertolucci 51 film awards, plus 35 times he was nominated.
Of the 16 films made by Bertolucci, 3 are included in the Golden Thousand. Given the above merits to the world cinema, Bernardo Bertolucci is included in the list of 100 greatest directors, compiled by FilmGourmand.
Bernardo Bertolucci died in Rome of lung cancer at the age of 77. He died in the arms of his wife, the British screenwriter Clare Peploe, with whom he lived the last 39 years of his life.
In honor of the anniversary of the great Master, we would like to remind fans of his work frames from his best films.
