The Italian poet Attilio Bertolucci ( born in a hamlet in the countryside ) wrote: " As a capital city it had to have a river.

During his time in Hollywood, Wurlitzer also wrote the screenplays Walker ( directed by Alex Cox ), 1987, Candy Mountain which he co-directed with Robert Frank, 1988, and Little Buddha ( directed by Bernardo Bertolucci ), 1993.

Bertolucci had proposed the film to the Chinese government as one of two possible projects.

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.

Bernardo Bertolucci proposed the film to the Chinese government as one of two possible projects-the other was an adaptation of La Condition Humaine by André Malraux.

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.

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.

His first film was 1977's Berlinguer ti voglio bene, also by Bertolucci.

Having been raised in such an environment, Bertolucci began writing at the age of fifteen, and soon after received several prestigious literary prizes including the Premio Viareggio for his first book.

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.

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

The Italian produced Last Tango in Paris ( 1973 ), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci was one of the first films to openly contain nudity in a commercial film, and led to the boom of fashion erotic films between 1970 and 1980, such as the French produced Emmanuelle ( 1974 ) and the Frenco-German production Story of O ( 1975 ) by Just Jaeckin, the Franco-Japanese production In the Realm of the Senses ( 1976 ) by Nagisa Oshima, and the Italian-American produced Caligula ( 1979 ) by Tinto Brass.

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.

Bertolucci was born in the Italian city of Parma, in the region of Emilia-Romagna.

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

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

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.

During the actual scene, she has also said she was crying real tears as she felt humiliated and violated by both Brando and Bertolucci.

He felt it was a violation of his craft, specifically his use of the Method acting technique, for Bertolucci to cause him to inhabit such a vile character.

The film caused criminal proceedings to be brought against Bertolucci in Italy for the anal rape scene, and the film was sequestered by the censorship commission and all copies were ordered to be destroyed.

Many years after, when the censorship commission had been abolished, the film reappeared ( because Bertolucci had kept a clandestine copy ) and was projected in a slightly censored version.

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.

The screenplay for the movie was written by Bertolucci himself, Umberto Contarello and Niccolò Ammaniti, and expected to release late 2012.

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.

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.

Independently produced by Jeremy Thomas, it was directed by Bertolucci and released in 1987 by Columbia Pictures.

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

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 ".

In Italy, he was always dubbed into Italian, and his work stretched into collaborations with renowned Italian directors, including Valerio Zurlini in Summer Violent and The Desert of the Tartars, Ettore Scola in La terrazza, Bernardo Bertolucci in The Conformist, and Dino Risi in the cult film The Easy Life.

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.

The screenplay was written by Leone and Sergio Donati, from a story devised by Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Dario Argento.

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.

Bertolucci has worked almost exclusively with Thomas from then on.

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.

He has worked under major directors, such as Stephen Frears ( in the 1988 period drama Dangerous Liaisons ); Gus Van Sant ( in the 1991 independent film My Own Private Idaho ); and Bernardo Bertolucci ( in the 1993 film Little Buddha ).

* 1941 – Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian film director

** Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian writer and film director

Then Bernardo Bertolucci cast him in a small speechless role as a window upholsterer in the film La Luna which evaded American distribution due to its subject matter.

Bernardo Bertolucci (; born 16 March 1941 ) is 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

In 1987, Bertolucci directed the epic The Last Emperor, a biographical film telling the life story of Aisin-Gioro Puyi, the last Emperor of China.

Bertolucci co-wrote the film with Mark Peploe.