Customer Reviews

The Last Emperor

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The film "The Last Emperor", as seen through the eyes of the talented Italian film maker Bernardo Bertolucci, is not an accurate presentation of Pu Yi the last Emperor, and was never meant to be. Bertolucci's film has all the temperament and grandness of an Italian made Opera performed at La Scala. It is HIS film, just as much as the films made by another famous Italian film director Federico Fellini are HIS way of telling a story through his own eyes. In September 2003 I came to Shenyang, the industrial hub in North East China, in earlier times called Mukden, in Manchuria. I had come specifically to visit the Imperial Palace, the residence of the real last Emperor Pu Yi. But, being the flamboyant Italian Latino Bertolucci was, he decided to move the whole film set to Beijing where the Imperial Palace and the Forbidden City, its roofs and gardens where even more grandiose than the Imperial Palace in Shenyang (Mukden). For me it was a great pleasure to be there and walk through the yards and buildings with its Imperial yellow colored stone roofs. I 1977 I made a research tour to Rome's famous film making place "Cinecitta". It lays some kilometers outside the Capital. There, for the first time I could see with my own eyes the film set of Federico Fellini's epic film "Rome" and "Satyricon", the latter being made some years before; some of the film set still standing there to be admired. The film by Bertolucci is a master's piece of work, a director with exceptionally high quality standards with regards to visualization and drama. People interested in the history of Manchuria and the Second Japanese-Chinese war as well as Pu Yi must see this film. I also recommend reading the book about the last Emperor, which one can find here on Amazon.