---
name: "Bernardo Bertolucci"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/bernardo-bertolucci"
fi1m_id: "bernardo-bertolucci"
imdb_id: "nm0000934"
tmdb_id: 4956
wikidata_id: "Q53009"
roles: ["Writer","Director"]
born: "16 March 1941"
died: "26 November 2018"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 7
average_as: "writer"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-10-02T22:53:00.754235+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Bernardo Bertolucci

## Identity

Bernardo Bertolucci

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/bernardo-bertolucci
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** bernardo-bertolucci
- **IMDb ID:** nm0000934
- **TMDB ID:** 4956
- **Wikidata ID:** Q53009
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_Bertolucci, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q53009, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000934/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/4956

Writer and director. Born 16 March 1941 in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italia. Died 26 November 2018.

## Details

- **Work:** Writer, Director
- **Born:** 16 March 1941, Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italia
- **Died:** 26 November 2018
- **Active:** 1964–1987
- **Also known as:** 베르나르도 베르톨루치, برناردو برتولوچی, Бернардо Бертолуччи, Б. Бертолуччи
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 7: 5 directing, 1 writing, 1 other
- **Frequently works with:** [Alberto Grimaldi](https://film.one/person/alberto-grimaldi.md), [Dominique Sanda](https://film.one/person/dominique-sanda.md), [Franco Arcalli](https://film.one/person/franco-arcalli.md), [Stefania Sandrelli](https://film.one/person/stefania-sandrelli.md)
- **Academy Awards:** 2 Oscars (2 won · 2 nominated)
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 1960s 84 (2), 1970s 79 (3), 1980s 80 (1), 2010s 76 (1)
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_Bertolucci, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q53009, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000934/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/4956

## Streaming the US now

- **Apple TV:** [*The Last Emperor*](https://film.one/film/the-last-emperor.md) (80), [*Listen to Me Marlon*](https://film.one/film/listen-to-me-marlon.md) (76), [*1900*](https://film.one/film/1900.md) (70)
- **Amazon Prime Video:** [*The Conformist*](https://film.one/film/the-conformist.md) (87)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Bernardo Bertolucci

> Bertolucci the writer builds men who want to be told what to do, then explains them a little too well. *The Conformist* is the case for him; *The Last Emperor* shows both the scale he could reach and the distance it cost him.

Marcello Clerici in *The Conformist* (1971) wants one thing, to be accepted by respectable people, and fascism obliges because it tells him how. Pu Yi in *The Last Emperor* (1987) is a small boy in a courtyard full of adults who kneel to him, and he has less say in his life than any of them. That is the Bertolucci character: a man defined by what the room around him expects of him. He wrote these men as well as filmed them, and the writing is where his habits show. He likes a man he can explain.

He began as assistant director to Pier Paolo Pasolini on *Accattone* (1961) and made his own first film, *La commare secca* (1962), at twenty-one. Before that he had studied literature and written poetry, and he never stopped treating cinema as a branch of it: the films that matter most are taken from novels, and *The Conformist* comes from Alberto Moravia. In 1968 he supplied story for Sergio Leone's *Once Upon a Time in the West*, which we rate higher than anything he directed, though it is Leone's film and we cannot say how much of its dread began on his page. The 1970s brought *Last Tango in Paris* (1972) and the long class epic *1900* (1976); after that came *The Last Emperor*, *The Sheltering Sky* (1990) and *Little Buddha* (1993), and with them the complaint, which we think fair, that the pictures grew while the people inside them shrank.

What works is the wanting. He understands how pleasant it is to follow rules and be approved of, and in *The Conformist* he makes that ordinary appetite frightening without asking us to admire the man who acts on it. What does not work is the diagnosis. Marcello's politics are traced to sexual repression so insistently that he starts to look like a case study, and we believe his cowardice more readily than the account of where it came from. The same hand is visible in *The Last Emperor*, written with Mark Peploe, his screenwriter on three films: history moves faster than Pu Yi can respond to it, and a stretch of explanation arrives just as a relationship has begun to interest us. Vittorio Storaro, who shot eight of his films, gives all of this a seductive surface, and the surface sometimes does the persuading the script has not.

We felt unexpectedly protective of the boy emperor when the ceremony around him made him look so small, and that is the writing as much as the staging: Bertolucci knows exactly how little the child has chosen. He once said he liked films that go out of control, where "it's like the cinema itself is taking over". His own rarely do. They are controlled to the last line, which is why the men in them are so easy to read and so seldom surprising. Start with *The Conformist*, then give *The Last Emperor* an unhurried evening and do not expect its emperor to become easy company.

## Biography

Bernardo Bertolucci was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Born in Parma on 16 March 1941, he died on 26 November 2018. A protégé of Pier Paolo Pasolini, he made his directorial debut at the age of 22.

Bertolucci directed and co-wrote the screenplay for *The Last Emperor* (1987), becoming the first Italian filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director. The film also won the Academy Award for Best Picture. He contributed to the story of *Once Upon a Time in the West* (1968) and is known for other films including *The Conformist* (1971), *Last Tango in Paris* (1972) and *1900* (1976).

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, bbc.co.uk.*

## On Fi1m (7)

### Directed (5)

- *The Last Emperor* (1987), Fi1m 80, Director, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/the-last-emperor.md)
- *1900* (1976), Fi1m 70, Director, Writer — [page](https://film.one/film/1900.md)
- *The Conformist* (1971), Fi1m 87, Director, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/the-conformist.md)
- *The Spider's Stratagem* (1970), Fi1m 80, Director, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/the-spiders-stratagem.md)
- *Before the Revolution* (1964), Fi1m 76, Story, Director, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/before-the-revolution.md)

### Wrote (1) — the average rests on these

- *Once Upon a Time in the West* (1968), Fi1m 91, Story — [page](https://film.one/film/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west.md)

### Also credited (1) — thanks, archive footage, uncredited

- *Listen to Me Marlon* (2015), Fi1m 76, as Self (archive footage) (uncredited) — [page](https://film.one/film/listen-to-me-marlon.md)

## Complete filmography (46)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *The Echo Chamber* (2026), Story
- *La nostra magnifica ossessione - Bernardo Bertolucci e la sua generazione* (2025), Actor
- *Marco Melani: The Man with the Golden Eye* (2021), Actor
- *Cinecittà - I mestieri del cinema Bernardo Bertolucci* (2019), Actor
- *Filmstudio, mon amour* (2015), as Sé stesso
- *Henri Langlois vu par...* (2014), Director
- *Venice 70: Future Reloaded* (2013), as (segment Bernardo Bertolucci) · Director
- *Me & You* (2012), Screenplay, Director
- *Behind Love and Anger* (2005), Thanks
- *The Dreamers* (2003), Director
- *Ten Minutes Older: The Cello* (2002), Director, Screenplay
- *Histoire d'eaux* (2002), Director
- *The Triumph of Love* (2001), Writer, Producer
- *Kiarostami in Close up* (2000), as as Self
- *Besieged* (1998), Director, Writer
- *Bahia de Todos os Sambas* (1996), Thanks
- *Stealing Beauty* (1996), Director, Story
- *Little Buddha* (1993), Director, Story
- *Golem, the Spirit of Exile* (1992), as Le Maître de la Cour
- *The Sheltering Sky* (1990), Director, Screenplay
- *12 Directors for 12 Cities* (1989), Director
- *Bologna* (1989), Director
- *The Last Emperor* (1987), Director, Screenplay — Fi1m 80, [page](https://film.one/film/the-last-emperor.md)
- *Postcards from China* (1985), Director
- *Farewell to Enrico Berlinguer* (1984), Director
- *Io con te non ci sto più* (1983), Producer
- *Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man* (1981), Director, Writer
- *Luna* (1979), Story, Screenplay, Director
- *1900* (1976), Director, Writer — Fi1m 70, [page](https://film.one/film/1900.md)
- *Il silenzio è complicità* (1976), Screenplay, Editor
- *Last Tango in Paris* (1972), Director, Screenplay, Story
- *L'inchiesta* (1971), Producer
- *Health Is Ill* (1971), Director
- *The Conformist* (1971), Director, Screenplay — Fi1m 87, [page](https://film.one/film/the-conformist.md)
- *The Spider's Stratagem* (1970), Director, Screenplay — Fi1m 80, [page](https://film.one/film/the-spiders-stratagem.md)
- *Love and Anger* (1969), Director, Writer
- *His Day of Glory* (1969), Co-Director
- *Once Upon a Time in the West* (1968), Story — Fi1m 91, [page](https://film.one/film/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west.md)
- *Partner* (1968), Director, Writer
- *The Path of Oil* (1967), Director
- *Il canale* (1966), Director
- *Before the Revolution* (1964), Story, Director, Screenplay — Fi1m 76, [page](https://film.one/film/before-the-revolution.md)
- *La Commare Secca* (1962), Director, Screenplay
- *Accattone* (1961), Assistant Director
- *The Death of a Pig* (1956), Writer, Cinematography, Director
- *La teleferica* (1956), Director

## Gallery

- ![Bernardo Bertolucci](https://film.one/media/person/102529/gallery-b3236dba5bd8.jpg) Bernardo Bertolucci — © Elisa Caldana / Associazione Culturale Cinemazero from Pordenone, Italia, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Bernardo_Bertolucci.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Title: Bernardo Bertolucci, film director Creator(s): Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer Date Created/Published: ca. 1971. Medium: 1 photograph : color transparency](https://film.one/media/person/102529/gallery-1ac829c6a72b.jpg) Title: Bernardo Bertolucci, film director Creator(s): Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer Date Created/Published: ca. 1971. Medium: 1 photograph : color transparency — Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Bernardo_Bertolucci%2C_film_director.jpg/1280px-Bernardo_Bertolucci%2C_film_director.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Title: Bernardo Bertolucci, film director Creator(s): Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer Date Created/Published: ca. 1971. Medium: 1 photograph : color transparency](https://film.one/media/person/102529/gallery-ed2f2431af91.jpg) Title: Bernardo Bertolucci, film director Creator(s): Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer Date Created/Published: ca. 1971. Medium: 1 photograph : color transparency — Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/Bernardo_Bertolucci%2C_film_director_%28cropped%29.jpg/1280px-Bernardo_Bertolucci%2C_film_director_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Bernardo Bertolucci (a sinistra) e Pier Paolo Pasolini (al centro) sul set di Accattone, nella primavera del 1961.](https://film.one/media/person/102529/gallery-77d7018b504c.jpg) Bernardo Bertolucci (a sinistra) e Pier Paolo Pasolini (al centro) sul set di Accattone, nella primavera del 1961. — Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Bertolucci_e_Pasolini.jpg/1280px-Bertolucci_e_Pasolini.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Bernardo Bertolucci](https://film.one/media/person/102529/gallery-b8f10430cf45.jpg) Bernardo Bertolucci — Image via TMDB
- ![Bernardo Bertolucci](https://film.one/media/person/102529/gallery-ff94bfc7734e.jpg) Bernardo Bertolucci — Image via TMDB
- ![Bernardo Bertolucci](https://film.one/media/person/102529/gallery-cac452e57822.jpg) Bernardo Bertolucci — Image via TMDB
- ![Bernardo Bertolucci](https://film.one/media/person/102529/gallery-52c154ac32f5.jpg) Bernardo Bertolucci — Image via TMDB

## Awards

### Academy Awards — 2 won, 2 nominated

- 1988: Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (won), for *The Last Emperor*
- 1988: Best Director (won), for *The Last Emperor*
- 1974: Best Director (nominated), for *Last Tango in Paris*
- 1972: Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated), for *The Conformist*

### BAFTA Film Awards — 1 won, 1 nominated

- 1989: Best Film (won), for *The Last Emperor*
- 1989: Best Direction (nominated), for *The Last Emperor*

### Golden Globes — 2 won, 2 nominated

- 1991: Best Director (nominated), for *The Sheltering Sky*
- 1987: Best Screenplay (won), for *The Last Emperor*
- 1987: Best Director (won), for *The Last Emperor*
- 1973: Best Director (nominated), for *Last Tango in Paris*

### Other awards — 13 won, 11 nominated

- honorary doctorate from the University of Parma 2014: honorary doctorate from the University of Parma (won)
- David di Donatello for Best Director 2013: David di Donatello for Best Director (nominated), for *Me and You*
- David di Donatello for Best Film 2013: David di Donatello for Best Film (nominated), for *Me and You*
- European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award 2012: European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award (won)
- star on Hollywood Walk of Fame 2008: star on Hollywood Walk of Fame (won)
- European Film Award - People's Choice Award for Best Director 2004: European Film Award - People's Choice Award for Best Director (nominated), for *The Dreamers*
- Goya Award for Best European Film 2004: Goya Award for Best European Film (nominated), for *The Dreamers*
- Nastro d'Argento for the director of the best film 2004: Nastro d'Argento for the director of the best film (nominated), for *The Dreamers*
- Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts 2001: Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts (won)
- David di Donatello for Best Director 1999: David di Donatello for Best Director (nominated), for *Besieged*
- David di Donatello for Best Film 1999: David di Donatello for Best Film (nominated), for *Besieged*
- Leopard of Honour 1997: Leopard of Honour (won)
- David di Donatello for Best Director 1996: David di Donatello for Best Director (nominated), for *Stealing Beauty*
- David di Donatello for Best Film 1996: David di Donatello for Best Film (nominated), for *Stealing Beauty*
- César Award for Best Foreign Film 1988: César Award for Best Foreign Film (won), for *The Last Emperor*
- David di Donatello for Best Director 1988: David di Donatello for Best Director (won), for *The Last Emperor*
- David di Donatello for Best Film 1988: David di Donatello for Best Film (won), for *The Last Emperor*
- European Film Academy Special Jury Award 1988: European Film Academy Special Jury Award (won), for *The Last Emperor*
- Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic 1988: Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (won)
- Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay 1988: Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay (nominated), for *The Last Emperor*
- Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film 1987: Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film (won), for *The Last Emperor*
- Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film 1973: Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film (nominated), for *Last Tango in Paris*
- National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director 1971: National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director (won), for *The Conformist*
- Sutherland Trophy 1970: Sutherland Trophy (won), for *The Conformist*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/bernardo-bertolucci