page_title: Bernardo Bertolucci
section_title: Directorial breakthrough
hierarchical_section_title: Bernardo Bertolucci / Career / Directorial breakthrough
caption_attribution_description: Los Angeles, California. 12.22.09.
context_page_description: Bernardo Bertolucci was an Italian director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky, Little Buddha, Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers.
  In recognition of his work, he was presented with the inaugural Honorary Palme d'Or Award at the opening ceremony of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
  From 1979 until his death in 2018, he was married to screenwriter Clare Peploe.
context_section_description: Bertolucci initially wished to become a poet like his father. With this goal in mind, he attended the Faculty of Modern Literature of the University of Rome from 1958 to 1961, where his film career as an assistant director to Pasolini began. Shortly after, Bertolucci left the University without graduating. In 1962, at the age of 22, he directed his first feature film, produced by Tonino Cervi with a screenplay by Pasolini, called La commare secca (1962). The film is a murder mystery, following a prostitute's homicide. Bertolucci uses flashbacks to piece together the crime and the person who committed it. The film which shortly followed was his acclaimed Before the Revolution (Prima della rivoluzione, 1964).
  The boom of Italian cinema, which gave Bertolucci his start, slowed in the 1970s as directors were forced to co-produce their films with several of the American, Swedish, French, and German companies and actors due to the effects of the global economic recession on the Italian film industry.
  Bertolucci caused controversy in 1972 with the film Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Massimo Girotti. The film presents Brando's character, Paul, as he copes with his wife's suicide by emotionally and physically dominating a young woman, Jeane (Schneider). The depictions of Schneider, then 19 years old, were regarded as exploitative. In one scene, Paul anally rapes Jeane using butter as a lubricant. The use of butter was not in the script; Bertolucci and Brando had discussed it, but they did not tell Schneider. She said in 2007 that she had cried "real tears" during the scene and had felt humiliated and "a little raped". In 2013 Bertolucci said that he had withheld the information from Schneider to generate a real "reaction of frustration and rage". Brando alleged that Bertolucci had wanted the characters to have real sex, but Brando and Schneider both said it was simulated. In 2016 Bertolucci released a statement where he clarified that Schneider had known of the violence to be depicted in the scene, but had not been told about the use of butter.
  Following the scandal surrounding the film's release, Schneider became a drug addict and suicidal. She later became a women's rights advocate, in particular fighting for more female film directors, more respect for female actors and better representation of women in film and media. Criminal proceedings were brought against Bertolucci in Italy for the rape scene; the film was sequestered by the censorship commission and all copies were ordered destroyed. An Italian court revoked Bertolucci's civil rights for five years and gave him a four-month suspended prison sentence. In 1978 the Appeals Court of Bologna ordered three copies of the film to be preserved in the national film library with the stipulation that they could not be viewed, until Bertolucci was later able to re-submit it for general distribution with no cuts.
  Bertolucci increased his fame with his next few films, from 1900 (1976), an epic depiction of the struggles of farmers in Emilia-Romagna from the beginning of the 20th century up to World War II with an international cast (Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland, Sterling Hayden, Burt Lancaster, Dominique Sanda) to La Luna, set in Rome and in Emilia-Romagna, in which Bertolucci deals with the thorny issue of drugs and incest, and finally La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo (1981), with Ugo Tognazzi.
  He then wrote two screenplays based on Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. He hoped this would be his first film set in America, but nothing came of it.
caption: Bertolucci's star on Hollywood Walk of Fame
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D90", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "QuickTime 7.6.3", "Image DateTime": "2010:01:03 13:36:52", "Image HostComputer": "Mac OS X 10.6.2", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "266", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "32178", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "32302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7414", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "24/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "1600", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:12:22 05:28:20", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:12:22 05:28:20", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "9/2", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "38", "EXIF SubSecTime": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4288", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2848", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "57", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}