'Last Tango in Paris' Director Bertolucci Dies at 77
by EG
Bernardo Bertolucci has died at the age of 77. He was best known for directing Last Tango in Paris, in which he and star Marlon Brando were accused of surprising actress Maria Schneider with a brutal rape scene at the end of the film. Read on for details.
Via Deadline.
Bernardo Bertolucci, a towering figure of world cinema, has died aged 77.
The influential Italian auteur, perhaps best known for epic The Last Emperor, which won nine Oscars, and groundbreaking works such as Last Tango In Paris and The Conformist, has passed away in Rome following a battle with cancer his publicist has confirmed.
Bertolucci was a key figure in the extraordinary Italian cinema of the 1960s and early 1970s but also made a successful transition to big canvas Hollywood filmmaking with 1987’s The Last Emperor, whose Oscars included Best Picture and Best Director for Bertolucci.
Bertolucci was born in the Italian city of Parma in 1941, the son of a poet and teacher. His father was friends with future avant-garde filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, then a novelist and poet, and Pasolino hired the 20-year-old Bertolucci as his assistant on his 1961 debut, Accattone. Bertolucci made his own directorial debut on 1962 feature La Commare Seca (The Grim Reaper) and later in the decade would write on Sergio Leone’s epic spaghetti western Once Upon A Time In The West.
Bertolucci’s career took off with political features such as Before The Revolution (1964) and the highly influential The Conformist from 1970. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Stefania Sandrelli star in the latter, the story of a weak-willed Italian man who becomes a fascist flunky and goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.
The film marked the beginning of Bertolucci’s long-term collaboration with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, with whom he would work on The Spider’s Stratagem (1970), Last Tango In Paris (1972) and epic and starry drama 1900.
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