Poet, documentary filmmaker, director, producer, polemicist, author, internationally recognized master. Bernardo Bertolucci was the last of the greats which made twentieth-century Italian cinema even greater. He died today in Rome at the age of 77.
He was born in Parma on March 16, 1941. Art was a family prerogative: son of the poet Attilio Bertolucci and Ninetta Giovanardi, brother of Giuseppe, also a film director and playwright), nephew of the film producer Giovanni Bertolucci. Among his friends and admirers of him: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia, Elsa Morante, Cesare Garboli, Enzo Siciliano, Dacia Maraini.
His cinematic journey begins right next to Pasolini. His first job is in fact that of Pasolini's assistant director in the film Beggar (1961) with Franco Citti and Adriana Asti (whom he will marry). In 1968 his greatest masterpiece arrives: Once Upon a Time in the West, of which he wrote the story with Dario Argento and Sergio Leone as director.
International fame comes with Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando, interpreted together with Maria Schneider, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Maria Michi and Massimo Girotti. A cult film, targeted by the bigoted censorship of those years, destined to remain in history and recently restored.
And again in 1976 it comes Nine hundred, fresco of the Emilian peasant struggles from the early years of the century to the Second World War with Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland, Sterling Hayden, Burt Lancaster, Dominique Sanda, but also Stefania Sandrelli, Alida Valli, Laura Betti, Romolo Valli and Francesca Bertini .
The greatest recognition comes in 1987 with the last emperor, a great international success that won nine Academy Awards, including those for best film and best director. It is no coincidence that Bertolucci is the first and only Italian to win the Oscar for best director.
Among the last works, in 2003, there is The Dreamers. “Cinema – he said – I would simply call it life. I don't think I've ever had a life outside of cinema; and in some ways it was, I admit, a limitation.”
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