Bernardo Bertolucci | Biography, Movies, The Dreamers, Last Tango in Paris, & Facts | Britannica (2025)

Bernardo Bertolucci (born March 16, 1941, Parma, Italy—died November 26, 2018, Rome) was an Italian film director who was perhaps best known for his film Last Tango in Paris (1972), the erotic content of which created an international sensation.

Bertolucci was raised in an atmosphere of comfort and intellectualism. His father—a poet, anthologist, teacher of art history, and film critic—was a strong early influence. Bertolucci’s early childhood interest in films came as a result of attending frequent screenings with his father. His first two films, shorts about children, were filmed when Bertolucci was 15 years old. His first book, In cerca del mistero (1962; “In Search of Mystery”), won the Premio Viareggio, one of Italy’s top literary awards. A short time later he embarked on his film career as assistant director to Pier Paolo Pasolini. After his work on Pasolini’s Accattone (1961), Bertolucci left the University of Rome without graduating and set off on an independent study of film.

In 1962 Bertolucci made his first feature film, La commare secca (The Grim Reaper), which he filmed on location in Rome. The film brought him recognition as a promising young director but was a box office failure. His second feature, Prima della rivoluzione (1964; Before the Revolution), fared no better commercially but won notice at the Cannes film festival. Unable to obtain financial backing for his film projects, Bertolucci directed documentary films and worked with Julian Beck and his Living Theatre on Agonia (“Agony”), Amore e rabbia (Love and Rage), and other productions. His next film, La strategia del ragno (1970; The Spider’s Stratagem), reflects an increasing interest in the interior life of his characters. His Il conformista (1970; The Conformist) is the film in which Bertolucci attained full maturity as a director. The film’s protagonist is a young civil servant who attempts to deal with his own inadequacies through conformity to the prevailing social order in Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini. Ultimo tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris), released two years later, portrayed a level of eroticism previously considered taboo in general-release films in its study of an affair between a middle-aged widower (Marlon Brando) and a young actress.

Bertolucci’s later films included the grandly scaled Novecento (1976; 1900), the intimate Luna (1979; “Moon”), and La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo (1981; The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man). He scored a notable critical success with The Last Emperor (1987), an epic portrayal of the tragic life of P’u-i (Pu Yi), the deposed last emperor of China; the film won nine American Academy Awards, including those for best film and best direction (by Bertolucci). In 1990 he directed The Sheltering Sky, an adaptation of Paul Bowles’s novel of the same name. Subsequent films included Stealing Beauty (1996), which centres on an American teenager’s visit to Italy, and The Dreamers (2003), an erotic thriller about an American student in Paris during the student protests of 1968.