BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI

(16 March 1941 - 26 November 2018)

The Italian film director and screenwriter Bernardo Bertolucci, who has died aged 77 from lung cancer, was originally something of a literary hero, having written from the age of fifteen. He won several literary awards and had plans to be a poet, like his father Attilio (who helped Pier Paolo Pasolini publish his first novel). The connection led to Bernardo working with Pasolini on his first film, Accattone, in 1961. The following year saw Bertolucci’s dḗbut as a director, La commare secca, a thriller about a murdered prostitute, with a screenplay by Pasolini. Before the Revolution followed, along with other films including Partner, based on Dostoyevsky’s novel The Double. The Conformist, adapted from Alberto Moravia’s novel, gave Bertolucci a worldwide audience and several awards. Jean-Louis Trintignant played the fascist killer Marcello. Bertolucci then adapted a Jorge Luis Borges political story for The Spider’s Stratagem (1970) and in the same year made Last Tango in Paris, his most controversial film, with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. Budgeted at $1.25 million, it reaped over $96 million at the box office and boosted the sales of butter. The director went on to make more films including 1900, with Robert De Niro, La Luna with Jill Clayburgh, Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man with Ugo Tognazzi and Anouk Aimḗe, and The Last Emperor with Peter O’Toole, which won nine Oscars. After that the rest of his output, The Sheltering Sky, Little Buddha, Stealing Beauty, Besieged and The Dreamers, did not fare that well at the box-office. However, his work was much appreciated at film festivals where he won nearly fifty awards and had over thirty more nominations. His last film was Me and You in 2012. Bernardo Bertolucci was first married to the Italian actress Adriana Asti and from 1978 to the screenwriter and director Clare Peploe. They had no children.

MICHAEL DARVELL