Bernardo Bertolucci Biography
Bernardo Bertolucci was born in 1941 in Parma to Professor Ninetta Giovanardi and her father Attilio Bertolucci, poet, art historian, translator and critic. In 1943, after the September armistice, the family moved to escape the war in the remote village of mountain of Casarola, where they live on a half board basis. In 1954 the entire family moved to Rome, living in the Monteverde Vecchio neighborhood in Via Giacinto Carini. In 1956, during the summer holidays in Casarola, fifteen-year-old Bernardo shot his first short film, La teleferica, using a borrowed 16mm camera. Three months later he made The Death of the Pig on his grandfather's farm in Baccanelli. Bertolucci won a prize in 1960 for his book of poems In Search of Mystery, and in the same year he spent a month at the legendary Cinémathèque Française in Paris, together with his cousin Giovanni Bertolucci. In 1961 Bertolucci dropped out of university to work as assistant to family friend and neighbor Pier Paolo Pasolini, his father's literary "discovery", on the set of Accattone. In 1962 he made his directorial debut with La Commare Secca, based on a story by Pasolini, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. In 1964 Bertolucci presented Before the Revolution at the Cannes Film Festival, a film that declared itself to be in line with the Italian current of the French Nouvelle Vague (especially Jean-Luc Godard). The film features theater actress Adriana Asti, known on the set of Accattone. Although the film won international awards, it took three years for it to be released abroad. In 1967, after struggling to find funding for a new project, he made the three-part documentary La via del petrol and the experimental short film Agonia, which was included in the film Love and Anger, as well as co-writing the screenplay for The Classic Sergio Leone's film, Once Upon a Time in the West. In 1968 Before the Revolution, finally released outside Italy thanks to Henri Langlois, had considerable success among the students of the Sorbonne, who were already rebelling. Bertolucci remained naked in the eyes of critics until 1972's Last Tango in Paris, an infamous, scandal-ridden film that became a symbol of censorship. The film faced fierce opposition, was removed from theaters and even burned following a Supreme Court ruling. Only one copy was saved to be preserved in a film library, thanks to the intervention of the President of the Republic. Bertolucci was sentenced to two months in prison and deprived of the right to vote for five years for portraying an immoral story.
After this harsh experience and the ruthless confrontation with common morality, Bertolucci works on the epic historical drama 1900, which retraces the first forty-five years of the twentieth century through the relationship between two boys of different social classes. The cast included Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu and Stefania Sandrelli. Bertolucci then directed two other auteur productions, The Sheltering Sky, based on the cult novel by Paul Bowles, shot between Morocco and Algeria (a bitter story that tells the agony of love) and Little Buddha, a journey into the depths of Tibet is one of the most fascinating oriental religions. In 1996 Bertolucci returned to film in Italy, specifically in Tuscany, with the comedy drama Stealing Beauty, where love and death were recurring themes. In 2000 he wrote the screenplay and produced Clare Peploe's film The Triumph of Love. In 2001 he appeared in the film by Laura Betti and Pier Paolo Pasolini, The Reason for a Dream, dedicated to the great master of both artists. After a long illness, Bernardo Bertolucci passed away in Rome on 26 November 2018, at the age of 77.
