Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci. Image: AFP/Tiziana Fabi
Italian film director Bernardo Bertolucci, whose films include “Last Tango In Paris'” and “The Last Emperor”, has died in Rome aged 77, Italian media said on Monday.
Considered one of the giants of Italian and world cinema, Bertolucci was the only Italian ever to win the Oscar for best film, snapping up the award in 1988 for “The Last Emperor”.
The biographical masterpiece about the last Chinese emperor won a total of nine Oscars, all of those for which it was nominated.
He acquired notoriety for his 1972 erotic drama “Last Tango In Paris” starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider which featured a controversial sex scene involving butter.
He had been wheelchair-bound for several years and won an honorary Palme d’Or for his life’s work at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
Born in Parma, northeastern Italy, in 1941, Bertolucci made films that were often highly politicized, dealing with workers’ struggles in “1900” or the fate of left-wingers in fascist Italy in “The Conformist”. CC
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