Bernardo Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci (born March 16, 1940) is an Italian writer and film director.

Evaluation of Bertolucci's films

Many critics consider sex and politics the defining characteristics of Bertolucci's films. While he has directed, written, or been otherwise involved in dozens of movies over five decades, and his range is extremely broad, these themes nonetheless figure prominently throughout his work, especially in his most noted and most recent releases. Stealing Beauty offers little heterogeneity and The Dreamers manages to include both subject matters and little else. Whether this narrowness is Bertolucci's intent merely a symptom of the narrowness some critics accuse him of, he has used the controversy aroused by his films iconoclastically to encourage people to reconsider themselves and their society; he is often considered successful in pushing back the boundaries of propriety.

Related Topics:
Critics - Politics - Movies - Stealing Beauty - The Dreamers - Society

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Bertolucci also has a talent for putting the human soul under the microscope. Psychoanalysis is as central to his films as it is to Woody Allen's, and Marlon Brando claimed that Bertolucci's sharing of psychoanalytical confidences with the star on the set of Last Tango in Paris helped elicit the performance that many consider Brando's best.

Related Topics:
Soul - Microscope - Psychoanalysis - Woody Allen - Last Tango in Paris

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Bertolucci himself is also known for the number of psychologists who have followed him everywhere, even interpreting his dreams, as a subject of dissertations and research on the creative artist. His interest in understanding the human condition has led to the many explicit scenes in his films.

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Last Tango in Paris presents Marlon Brando's character Paul as he finds comfort in an anonymous affair after the death of his wife in violent circumstances. The film caused controversy in Italy for a sodomy scene, and it 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. Many years after, when the general modesty had changed and the censorship commission had been abolished, the film reappeared (because Bertolucci had kept a clandestine copy) and was projected in a slightly censored version. Stealing Beauty gives a visual account of a girl growing into a woman during a summer abroad.

Related Topics:
Censorship - Stealing Beauty

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In these and other films Bertolucci examines the power of sexual relations in people's lives. His latest work, The Dreamers, has been criticised not only for its extensive sex scenes but also the inclusion of male masturbation. In it, the sexual relations of three main characters serve to expose their thoughts. For instance, when Theo is shown to masturbate it is in the context that the one he loves the most, his sister, seems to be growing away from him and he can see the development of a relationship between the newcomer and his sister that excludes him.

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Thus, some critics have come to the conclusion that Bertolucci is out to shock and that his pictures are nothing more than political and sexual in nature. Others argue that his Freud-meets-Marx approach has created some of the finest films of the last half-century. Keanu Reeves, once said of him, “Bernardo has that balance of artistic vision and the machines.”

Related Topics:
Freud - Marx - Keanu Reeves

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