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
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.
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.
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.
English dialogue is the best in the world. So dry and direct. The Italian language is beautiful, but it is too literary.
New York has always embraced me.
Having no children had been a kind of choice up to the moment when, from a choice, it became a sadness.
A name? Oh, Jesus Christ. Ah, God, I've been called by a million names all my life. I don't want a name. I'm better off with a grunt or a groan for a name.
If you mention any ideological thing about shooting Last Tango in Paris, I was thinking I was doing a political film.