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Bernardo Bertolucci.
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Bernardo Bertolucci (born 1940), director of Last Tango in Paris and The Last Emperor, is considered one of the modern masters of international filmmaking.The grandchild of a revolutionary who grew up...
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In the following review, Burgoyne discusses how Bertolucci's 1900 portrays history from the perspective of both the individual and the peasant class as a whole.
History in Bertolucci's 1...
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In the following interview, Bertolucci discusses the making of The Sheltering Sky, how the film differs from The Last Emperor, and his relationship with his film crew.
It's fair to say that if ...
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In the following essay, Loshitzky explores how Bertolucci's work has come to define postmodern cinema and the ways in which his films are an answer to the modernism of filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard...
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In the following negative excerpt, Kauffmann argues that Bertolucci's The Last Emperor lacks drama and seems more like a travelogue than a film.
Marx and Freud have dominated Bernardo Bertolucc...
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In the following essay, Loshitzky analyzes the role of sexuality and sexual ambiguity in Bertolucci's films.
Bertolucci's fascination with bisexuality and androgyny is a recurrent motif ...
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In the following interview, Bertolucci reflects on his body of work and career in the film industry.
Bernardo Bertolucci doesn't like looking back.
“I like looking in front of me. I see ...
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In the following review, Kehr asserts that the simplicity and intimacy of Besieged proves Bertolucci's maturity as a filmmaker.
The past twenty years have witnessed a gradual globalization of t...
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In the following essay, Kline examines the role of the Orpheus myth in Last Tango in Paris.
I hear the echo of those tangos I watched danced on the pavement On an instant that today stands out alone W...
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In the following review, Rony presents a historical analysis of The Last Emperor in order to portray how Bertolucci engages the viewer in a game of belief versus disbelief.
There seem to be two respon...
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In the following positive review, Blake asserts that The Last Emperor exhibits a return to the brilliance of Bertolucci's early career.
Many people, especially as they pass through the peak of ...
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In the following review, Fairbank discusses the literary origins of Bertolucci's The Last Emperor.
The Last Emperor is a spectacular film photographed in brilliant color. It is also a moral dra...
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In the following review, Wilson argues that although segments of Bertolucci's The Last Emperor are “magnificent,” they do not create a unified whole.
‘Is it true I can do a...
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In the following essay, Zaller discusses the importance of The Last Emperor and praises Bertolucci for his combination of the tragic and the ridiculous in the film.
The theme of this movie is change. ...
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Critical Essay by Eugene Archer
["Before the Revolution" is] a poignant love story epitomizing a young man's growth through the dense, chaotic jungle of contemporary civilization....
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Critical Essay by Marsha Kinder and Beverle Houston
One way of understanding [Last Tango in Paris] is to see it in the context of Bertolucci's earlier works. The central conflicts in Last Tango...
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Critical Essay by Stanley Kauffmann
Already [Partner] is heavily dated. Cinematically it's redolent of high sixties Godard; politically it's full of late sixties rhetoric and gesture. Bu...
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Critical Essay by Roger Greenspun
For part of its basic situation, and for the names given the central characters, [Before the Revolution] draws directly upon Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Par...
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Critical Essay by Robert Zaller
At the climactic moment of Bernardo Bertolucci's Before the Revolution, the film's hero, Fabrizio, confesses he cannot join the revolution because he suff...
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Critical Essay by Linda L. Williams
Beyond [their] basic theme, the obvious similarities [between Bertolucci's Before the Revolution and The Charterhouse of Parma,] Stendhal's rich and s...
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Critical Essay by John Thomas
[If Before the Revolution is] a failure, it's a beautiful one; far more exciting than some of the easy successes we applaud and forget each year. [It's ofte...
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Critical Essay by Stanley Kauffmann
The line of Bernardo Bertolucci's career is beginning to look as wretched as Robert Altman's. Bertolucci, too, began with something more than promise ...
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Critical Essay by Philip French
Bertolucci has the reputation of being one of the great intellectuals of European cinema, making films that transpose Stendhal, Borges and Dostoievsky to modern Italy, ...
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Critical Essay by Richard Roud
Bernardo Bertolucci has described The Spider's Strategy [released in the United States as The Spider's Stratagem], one of the two films he completed in 197...
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Critical Essay by Robert Chappetta
[The] elaborate, oblique style of The Spider's Stratagem works better in its parts than as a whole (which is usually true of Bertolucci's films). Like ...
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Bernardo Bertolucci
Critical Review by Robert Burgoyne
