Shortly after, Bertolucci left the University without graduating.

In Rome, Bertolucci and Warren Beatty talked in great detail about the film, and in 1982 Bertolucci left Europe for Los Angeles, where he was to shoot Red Harvest, but five years went by and the film was never made.

Because of the exploitative nature of Bertolucci's depiction of Jeane, the film can easily be seen as a sexist, masculinist rape fantasy, especially given that Bertolucci himself openly admits that the film was inspired by his own sexual fantasies, though many critics dismissed the concerns as moralistic.

Bertolucci has also written many screenplays, both for his own films as well as for films directed by others, two of which he also produced.

During the making of Last Tango in Paris, Bertolucci toyed with the idea of adapting Dashiell Hammett's book Red Harvest into a feature film.

Bertolucci later changed his mind about shooting in 3D, calling the idea " vulgarly commercial ".

The Last Emperor is a 1987 biopic about the life of Puyi, the last Emperor of China, whose autobiography was the basis for the screenplay written by Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci.

* Bernardo Bertolucci wove the closing of the Cinémathèque into the beginning of his 2003 film The Dreamers — a film about young lovers amidst the 1968 French uprisings.

In a later documentary about Khyentse Rinpoche entitled Words of my Perfect Teacher, his role in the film is discussed along with a short interview with Bertolucci.

In the 1970s, during production of the film Last Tango in Paris, he had cue cards posted about the set, although director Bernardo Bertolucci declined his request to have lines written on actress Maria Schneider's rear end.

Written by Bertolucci and Susan Minot, the film is about an American teenage girl who travels to a lush Tuscan villa near Siena to stay with family friends of her poet mother who recently committed suicide.

This was followed by Bertolucci secondo il cinema ( 1976 ) a documentary about 1900 shooting, and the thriller Effetti speciali.

Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci planned to shoot a movie about the dramatic Carlo Gesualdo's life and music but the plan was regretfully never accomplished.

The boom of Italian cinema, which gave Bertolucci his start, slowed in the 1970s as directors were forced to co-produce their films with several of the American, Swedish, French, and German companies and actors due to the effects of the global economic recession on the Italian film industry.

* Bertolucci secondo il cinema ( 1976, TV )

Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Bertolucci released a documentary in 2006, Pasolini prossimo nostro, based on an interview with Pasolini done on the set of Salò in 1975.

The movie The Dreamers of Bernardo Bertolucci, based on the novel The Holy Innocents of Gilbert Adair tells the story of an American university student in Paris during the protests.

* Bernardo Bertolucci claimed to have based his 1964 film Prima della rivoluzione ( Before the Revolution ), on the novel.

The film The Dreamers ( 2003 ) directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, with a script by Adair, was based on his book The Holy Innocents, which Adair revised and re-released under the same title as the film.

The Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci proposed adapting the film in the 1980s to the Chinese government ; they preferred his alternative proposal, The Last Emperor, a 1987 biopic based on the life of the Chinese Emperor Puyi.

This period brought him work on several European productions, with directors such as Luchino Visconti and Bernardo Bertolucci.

The film's script was written by Leone and his longtime friend and collaborator Sergio Donati, from a story by Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, both of whom went on to have significant careers as directors.

His father's background helped his career: the elder Bertolucci had helped the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini publish his first novel, and Pasolini reciprocated by hiring Bertolucci as first assistant in Rome on Accattone ( 1961 ), where he met his first wife, Adriana Asti.

His cousin was the film producer Giovanni Bertolucci ( 24 June 1940 – 17 February 2005 ), with whom he has worked on a number of films.

This, and the ultimate portrayal of her character, caused her great emotional trauma, and to her death on 3 February 2011, she still had not forgiven Bertolucci for what she considered an emotional rape of her being and identity.

Bertolucci has worked almost exclusively with Thomas from then on.

Bertolucci is said to be working on a historical romance centering on 16th-century classical musician ( and murderer ) Carlo Gesualdo.

An extended version currently available on DVD runs 218 minutes ; cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and director Bernardo Bertolucci have confirmed that this version was created for television and does not represent a " director's cut ".

His most notable work was for Sergio Leone ; he and Bernardo Bertolucci collaborated on the story for the spaghetti western classic Once Upon a Time in the West.

He appeared with a hero of his, Marlon Brando in the Bertolucci film Last Tango in Paris, although the two never met, since all of Léaud's scenes were shot on Saturdays and Brando refused to work on Saturdays.

His career was diverse and he composed frequently for major art house directors, most often François Truffaut ( including Jules and Jim ), but also for Jean-Luc Godard's film Contempt ( Le Mépris ), and for Alain Resnais, Louis Malle, and Bernardo Bertolucci, besides working on several Hollywood productions, including Oliver Stone's Platoon and Salvador.

Director Bernardo Bertolucci found him on the first session of casting in Paris.

* A huge sheltering tree on a hilltop near the end of Stealing Beauty, a 1996 film by Bernardo Bertolucci, crowns a series of images evoking the primordial Paradise garden.

He is the elder son of Ninetta, a teacher, and Attilio Bertolucci, who was a poet, a reputed art historian, anthologist and film critic.

Bertolucci uses flashbacks to piece together the crime and the person who committed it.

After his divorce from Adriana Asti, Bertolucci married Clare Peploe, screenwriter and director with Mark Peploe of Professione Reporter, and who had already collaborated with Michelangelo Antonioni.

He is a professed Marxist and like Visconti, who similarly employed many foreign artists during the late 1960s, Bertolucci uses his films to express his political views ; hence they are often autobiographical as well as highly controversial.

On 27 September 2009, Bertolucci was one of the signers of the appeal to the Swiss government to release Roman Polanski, who was being held while waiting to be extradited to the United States.

Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra, Francesco Rosi, Alberto Moravia, Giulietta Masina, Marcello Mastroianni and Bernardo Bertolucci were among those who publicly mourned his death.

The Last Emperor won all nine Oscars for which it was nominated, including two for Bernardo Bertolucci, who won for his direction and for co-writing the screenplay, adapted from the title character's autobiography.

In 1975, Benigni had his first theatrical success with Cioni Mario di Gaspare fu Giulia, written by Giuseppe Bertolucci.

Bertolucci became infamous in 1972, with the controversial film Last Tango in Paris, with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Massimo Girotti, when a scene featuring the anal rape of character Jeane by character Paul using butter as a lubricant, among other depictions of the young Schneider that were thought to be exploitative, caused serious concern due to its representation of women.

Bertolucci answered this by saying he too much identified with Brando's character to humiliate him in such a way.

Brando too felt raped by Bertolucci, and did not speak to him for many years as a result of the trauma of being involved with the film.

Bertolucci increased his fame with his next few films, from Novecento ( 1976 ), an epic depiction of the struggles of farmers in Emilia-Romagna from the beginning of the 20th century up to World War II with an impressive international cast ( Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland, Sterling Hayden, Burt Lancaster, Dominique Sanda ) to La Luna, set in Rome and in Emilia-Romagna, in which Bertolucci deals with the thorny issue of drugs and incest, and finally La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo ( 1981 ), with Ugo Tognazzi.

Bertolucci co-wrote the film with Mark Peploe.

Bertolucci was furious at Shochiku Fuji's interference with his film, calling it " revolting ".

It includes a booklet featuring an essay by David Thomson, interviews with production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti and actor Ying Ruocheng, a reminiscence by Bertolucci, and an essay and production-diary extracts from Fabien S. Gerard.