Final curtain for the movie legend who made Last Tango
OSCAR-winning film director Bernardo Bertolucci died yesterday aged 77 following a battle with cancer.
The Italian, whose hit movies included Last Tango In Paris and The Last Emperor, passed away surrounded by his loved ones in Rome, his spokeswoman Flavia Schiavi confirmed.
The Parma-born director and screenwriter was regarded as one of the most celebrated – and controversial – European film-makers.
After starting his career as an assistant director to Pier Paolo Pasolini on his 1961 film Accattone, he went on to direct his first feature, 1962’s La Commare Secca, at the age of just 21.
But it was his controversial 1972 erotic drama Last Tango In Paris that brought him to the attention of cinemagoers worldwide.
The film, which starred screen legend Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, told the story of a US businessman who begins a sexually charged relationship with a young French woman.
The movie’s graphic sex scenes saw it banned in a number of countries, while others severely censored the footage.
Bertolucci’s most successful film was 1987’s The Last Emperor, a biopic of Chinese emperor Puyi, which won nine Oscars, including Best Picture.
Bertolucci won two Oscars for his work on the film, for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
In addition to his Oscars, the director was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008 and was also given an honorary Palme d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
The son of poet Attilio Bertolucci, Bertolucci once said he felt as if his work encapsulated a different genre.
In 1990, he said: “When it comes to commercial cinema, I have the strange pleasure of feeling that I’m from another tribe, an infiltrator.
“Maybe I’m an idealist, but I still think of the movie theatre as a cathedral where we all go together to dream the dream together.”
The director, who was also behind films The Conformist, The Dreamers, 1900 and The Sheltering Sky, had been wheelchair- bound for several years. His final feature, Me And You, was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012. Former festival president Gilles Jacob said he was saddened by the death of “the last emperor of Italian cinema, the lord of all epics and all escapades”. Hollywood actor Antonio Banderas, 58, also tweeted in tribute to the director and hailed him as a “master of filmmakers”. The British Film Institute said in a statement yesterday: “We’re sad to learn that Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci has passed away at the age of 77.” Bertolucci was married to the English writer and director Clare Peploe, 76, and the couple had no children. It is expected his funeral will take place in the next few days.