Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucciis an Italian film director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky 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. Since 1979 he has been married to screenwriter Clare Peploe...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth16 March 1941
CityParma, Italy
CountryItaly
My father basically had two ways of judging anything. Either something was poetic or it wasn't.
What always made me proud - almost blushing with pride - is that Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg all told me that 'The Conformist' is their first modern influence.
The problem in Hollywood is that they try to become the only kind of cinema in the world, okay? The imposition everywhere of a unique culture, which is Hollywood culture, and a unique way of life, which is the American way of life.
For American filmmakers, the Oscars is like a mystic thing. For me, it was being in a mirror of my dreams when I was dreaming of Hollywood when I was an adolescent.
I like being able to see an innocence in people. I see a lot of beauty in youth. Young people are in progress. Their faces and bodies and minds are constantly changing. It's exciting to capture that on film.
When I shoot, I try to feel the body and the face and the weight of the actor, because the character until that moment is only in the pages of the script. And very often, I pull from the life of my actors. I'm always curious about what these characters and these actors are hiding about their lives.
I think politics is a higher build in life. You know? If you diffuse under normal, common sense of a story, you make it political. If you choose a conventional way for a story, or refuse to use the conventional way, you make it political.
I started in '69 to have psychoanalysis, and I realised very soon that I was changing, and that's I think why my movies were changing. They became much more open to dialogue.
I don't see my movies. When you ask me about one of my movies, it just goes in my memory because maybe sometimes I confuse one for another. I think all movies are like sequences, which is the body of my work.
If you mention any ideological thing about shooting 'Last Tango in Paris,' I was thinking I was doing a political film.
If I don't fall in love with my characters, I cannot shoot.
I started very, very young to make movies - I was 21. And at the age of 27, 28, I'd done already three movies.
I saw 'Avatar' and liked it very much. It was a great achievement.
I make movies in order to make things understood, not to be shocking.