The maestro has passed on.
According to THR, Academy Award-winning Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci died at the age of 77 over the weekend.
His filmography is voluminous. Bertolucci was no doubt a provocateur of big, epic statements. I'm rather mixed on his Best Picture winner “The Last Emperor,” a well-photographed but meandering epic that could only be made to win the big prize in the '80s. No, the Bertolucci will forever love and adore is the artist that gave us the Marlon Brando/Maria Schneider controversy-ridden “Last Tango in Paris,” a film that broke barriers for sex on-screen and which depicted a sexually-charged relationship between a widowed man and a young woman. His lifelong partnership with cinematographer extraordinaire Vittorio Storraro is well-known; they made a total of 9 films together, including “The Conformist,” which could very well be deemed as his masterpiece, and the best photographed movie of all-time. Controversy would follow him again in 2003 with the NC-17 rated “The Dreamers” starring Michael Pitt, Eva Green and Louis Garrel-- An incredibly sexy film that has aged like fine wine over the years.
Bertolucci’s final film was made 9 years after "The Dreamers," the 2012 feature, “Me and You.”