Bernardo Bertolucci: The Cinema of Ambiguity

Often widely disparate in subject, genre, time place, and technique, Bertolucci's films are linked by the intensity of their maker's "search for the mystery of life," as Claretta Tonetti writes in this study of the director's life and work. Never expecting to solve the mystery, Bertolucci presumes only to explore it. Intent on capturing the confusing, contradictory feel of real life, Bertolucci's cinema is above all else observant of ambiguity. ooTonetti traces the evolution of his career from the appearance of The Grim Reaper in 1962 to the release of Little Buddha in 1994. Evident in this progression are the spare technique and highly charged political content of his earlier films; the edgy study of loneliness, sexuality, and betrayal in Last Tango in Paris (1972); and the lush, painterly style of the epic 1900 (1976) and the Oscar-winning Last Emperor (1987). Also in evidence are several signifi-cant influences on Bertolucci's artistic development: his "real" father, the poet Attilio Bertolucci; his cine-matic father, the controversial novelist, poet, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini; the cultivated, intel-lectual atmosphere of his family home in Parma; and the vital, earthy world of the farmers just beyond his doorstep.