‘Last Tango In Paris’ director dies at age 77

ROME: Italian film director Bernardo Bertolucci (pic), whose films include Last Tango In Paris and

1900, has died in Rome aged 77, Italian media have reported.

Considered one of the giants of Italian and world cinema, Bertolucci was the only Italian ever to win the Oscar for best film, snapping up the award in 1988 for The

Last Emperor.

The biographical masterpiece about the last Chinese emperor won a total of nine Oscars, all of those for which it was nominated.

Bertolucci also acquired notoriety for his 1972 erotic drama Last Tango In Paris starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, which featured a controversial sex scene involving butter. He had been wheelchairbound for several years and won an honorary Palme d’Or for his life’s work at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Born in Parma, northeastern Italy, in 1941, Bertolucci made films that were often highly politicised.

His work dealt with workers’ struggles such as in 1900 and the fate of left-wingers in fascist Italy in The Conformist.

Bertolucci’s final completed feature was Me and You, adapted from a novel by Niccolò Ammaniti and released in 2016.

He had been married since 1978 to filmmaker Clare Peploe, but the couple had no children.—