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whileiamdying · 2 years

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Production Notes — Background

Bernardo Bertolucci's THE LAST EMPEROR was filmed entirely on location in China in 1986. Bertolucci and his producer Jeremy Thomas were the first Western filmmakers to be allowed to make a film about modern China and it took two years of complex negotiations to obtain the unprecedented permissions which also allowed them to film in hitherto forbidden locations.

On August 4th, 1986, in the Chinese capital Beijing (formerly Peking), the cameras finally rolled on one of the biggest and most ambitious films ever made.

The independently financed production is an epic tale which embraces the entire sweep of twentieth century China and the years of the most tumultuous changes the country has ever seen.

Yet despite its cast of thousands, Itys palatial and exotic locations, its sumptuous design film is also the intimate story of an extraordinary and unique man and his journey of self- discovery, a man who started life as the ruler of half the world's population and ended it as a humble gardener in Peking.

Bertolucci was fascinated by the life of the ex-Emperor and the question which became the heart of his film -can a man change? Did Pu Yi change and if so, how much during the years of his re-education in prison?

"Pu Yi's story can be described in many ways," says Bertolucci. "As a journey from darkness to light or as the Chinese say, changes from a dragon to a normal person, from an Emperor to citizen.

Pu Yi, the last emperor, came to the Imperial throne in 1908 at the age of 3, the Son of Heaven, Lord of Ten Thousand Years, was forced to abdicate at the age of six, was thrown out of the Forbidden City in 1924 with his two wives and drawn into the life of a Western-style playboy. In 1931, he succumbed to the seductive Japanese invitation to mount the throne again and became a puppet emperor in the Japanese controlled state of Manchukuo. Captured by the Russians in 1945, he was returned to China in 1950, expecting to be executed by the communists. Instead, he spent ten years in gaol in the hands of an enlightened prison governor and emerged a changed man. He returned to Peking at the start of the Cultural Revolution and became a gardener, more free than he had ever been before. He died in 1967.

John Lone stars as Pu Yi, Joan Chen as the Empress Wan Jung, and Peter O'Toole as Reginald Johnston, the emperor's tutor. The Director of Photography is two-time Oscar winner, Vittorio Storaro, Production Designer is Ferdinando Scarfiotti and Costume Designer is James Acheson. The screenplay is written by Mark Peploe with Bernardo Bertolucci. Jeremy Thomas is the producer.

In March 1984, Bernardo Bertolucci and Mark Peploe first visited China with proposals for two films. One of them was "From Emperor to Citizen," the autobiography of Pu-Yi which Bertolucci has recently read. The Chinese response was warm and immediate - they welcomed the idea of a Western director filming the story of the last emperor of China.

The filmmakers were pleasantly surprised by the lack of restraints imposed by the Chinese. Although negotiations were long and complex, due to complications inherent in the meeting of two different cultures, the Chinese gave THE LAST EMPEROR unlimited cooperation through the Cinema Film Co-Production Corporation in exchange for the Chinese distribution rights to the film. They approved the script, commenting only on factual inaccuracies and demanding no alterations.

Pu-Yi’s eldest surviving brother, Pu Chieh and Li Wenda who helped Pu-Yi to write his autobiography, acted as official advisers on the film. In unofficial capacities, there were also many other survivors of the period who were tracked down by the production, including Jin Yuan, the prison governor, and Big Li, the manservant.

The logistics of the production were staggering. THE LAST EMPEROR brought together people from six nations. Actors came from America, Great Britain, China, Hong Kong, and Japan to play the 60 main characters in the story, 100 technicians from Italy, 20 from Britain and 150 Chinese worked for 6 months of shooting to put the film on the screen and 19,000 extras, including soldiers of the People's Liberation Army, appear altogether in the immense crowd scenes.

Costume designer lames Acheson gathered 9,000 costumers from all over the world. Imperial Aunt so the wonders and peasants, Japanese army uniforms, Kuomintang uniforms and western dresses fashionable in the Twenties and Thirties were among the many that were bought or made in China and cities as far apart as London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Rome, Spoleto in Italy, and Brighton in England.

The inner man had to be catered for as well. An Italian chef wa brought from Rome and with him came 220 kilos of Italian mineral water, 200 kilos of Italian coffee, 500 litres of olive oil and 2,000 kilos of pasta.

Twenty vintage cars, including Delages, Ford Model T's, Fiats, Lancias, Buicks, Hispano Suizas and Mercedes limousines, plus motorcycles with side cars and a child's bicycle for the young Emperor, were shipped by sea to China to appear in the film.

The production spent four months in China on location in Beijing, Dalian and Changchun in Manchuria with interiors completed over two months at Cinecittà Studios in Rome.

Many weeks were devoted to filming inside the Forbidden City, home for so many years to the ruling dynasties of China. Bertolucci describes it as "the set Hollywood dare not build, the Disneyland of China". The Forbidden City is one of the most impressive sights anywhere in the word. It stands in the heart of Peking, its 250 acres entirely enclosed by high red walls, some of them 50-feet thick. It has 9,999 rooms (the Chinese believed that only heaven had 10,000 rooms) built around a bewildering jigsaw of courtyards, alleys, and gardens. Here Pu-Yi spent 16 years of his life, unable to go outside, surrounded by thousands of eunuchs and the ladies of the court. Forbidden no longer, it is now one of China's greatest tourist attractions swallowing up over 50,000 visitors a day. During filming, whole palaces and courtyards were closed off for the production as curious tourists gathered in their thousands to watch.

In Beijing, the production was based at the Beijing Film Studios where 1,200 Chinese normally eat, sleep and work according to the Chinese system of belonging to a work unit that also houses and feeds you. The studios normally produce 15-18 feature movies while LAST EMPEROR was shooting, most other activity stopped as all available studio space was given over to the mammoth production.

Here production designer Ferdinando Scafiotti designed and built a number of sets including the Empress Dowager’s bedchamber and the emperor’s living quarters.

Exterior sets included a thronging ancient Peking Street scene, the Emperor's father's house and the Fushun prison yard. So sturdy was the house and its courtyard, built by the Chinese in brick and stone, that after filming it was immediately turned into living quarters for the studio workers.

China is a country in the throes of remarkable changes that are transforming it almost in front of the visitor's eyes.

"My film resembles China because its story is also about change,” says Bertolucci.

"All my previous films were journeys from light towards darkness. THE LAST EMPEROR goes the opposite way, from darkness to light.”

The Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI was born in Parma, Italy in 1941. Through his father Attilio Bertolucci, a well-known pol, he met the director Pier Paolo Pasolini and in 1961 abandoned his course in modern literature to work as an assistant director on Pasolini's first film "Accatone."

The following year, Bertolucci published "In Cerca del Mistero,” a collection of poems which was awarded Italy's prestigious Viareggio Opera Prima Prize and wrote the screenplay of the film, which was to be his first as a director, “Commare Secca" (The Grim Reaper). The film was well received at the Venice Film Festival and Bertolucci went on to make his second feature, “Before the Revolution.”

Bertolucci then had to endure the frustration of not being able to raise the finance lo make a Feature film, making a series of documentaries and writing screenplays culminating in directing.

"The Conformist", his brilliant adaptation of the Alberto Moravia novel, which firmly established his reputation as a major figure in contemporary cinema.

1973 was the year of "Last Tango in Paris", which inspired Pauline Kael of the New Yorker 10 liken the first screening of the film to the riotous first night of the 1913 performance of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" and to call it "the most powerfully erotic movie ever made. Bertolucci has altered the facc of an art form". His next production, "1900", made in 1976, was the equally powerful and again controversial study of the dissolution of northern Italy's traditional agricultural society.

In 1975 Bertolucci founded Fiction Films, the company through which he produced his subsequent films, "La Luna” in 1979 and "Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man," in 1981.

The Producer: Jeremy Thomas

JEREMY THOMAS, who was born in Ealing, rather a pithias rare fed some in R, ins it atis include the "Doctor" movies and his uncle, Gerald, directed the highly successful "Carry On" series of films. Cinema has been part of Thomas' life since he was a child and his vacations were spent around the locations or in the studio where his father happened to be working at the time.

Thomas' only ambition was to work in movies and from the age of ten he began to make his own films with friends. Originally, he wanted to be a director but says, "Somehow I ended up being a producer. I would still like to direct but now the reality of what it takes to make a really good film looks more difficult to me.

From school, Thomas went to work in a film processing laboratory and a year later moved into the cutting rooms as an assistant, before graduating to editor, After working with the director Phillipe Mora, editing “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime,” Thomas went with him to Australia in 1974 and there he produced his first film, "Mad Dog Morgan* , which Mora directed He spent two years in Australia and then returned to England where he put together *The Shout" with a screenplay by Michael Austin from a story by Robert Graves, directed by Jerzy Skolimovsky, which won the Grand Prix de lury at the Cannes Film Festival. He then found himself on "the producing circuit", gradually becoming responsible for ambitious projects.

Thomas' films are all extremely individual and owe nothing to box-office patterns of fashionable trends. They range from "The Great Rock’n'Roll Swindle" directed by Julien Temple to “Bad Timing” directed by Nicolas Roeg; “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” directed by Nagisa Oshima; "The Hit" directed by Stephen Frears and "Eureka” and "Insignificance", directed by Nicolas Roeg. Britain's National Film Theatre presented a season of his films and in 1986 he won the prestigious Vittorio de Sicca Prize. In 1987 he was honored by an invitation to be a member of the jury of the Cannes Film Festival.

In 1985 Thomas set up his own film distribution company, Recorded Releasing, which releases some eight films a year. He also founded Recorded Cinemas and through this company owns two cinemas, The Gate in Notting Hill, London, and the Cameo in Edinburgh. He has also set up his own video production company, Vivid.

The Story

Peking, 1908. A three-year old boy is removed from his home and his mother and is carried through the night to the Forbidden City, the heart of ancient China. His name is Pu-Yi.

Days later he is placed on the Dragon Throne and becomes “The Lord of Ten Thousand Years,” ”The Son of Heaven,” ruler over almost half of the world’s population. Py-Yi is the Emperor of China and the loneliest boy on Earth. But three years later, in 1912, China becomes a republic, the Qing dynasty is forced to abdicate, and more than 3,00 years of imperial rule come to an end.

Almost the only person who does not understand this is the boy emperor. While the convulsive tides of modern history transform the world outside, the strange mediaeval life in the Forbidden City hardly changes.

As Pu-Yi grows surrounded by high consorts, courtiers and oven 1500 eunuchs, he is still treated as a god, free to do almost anything he wants, except to live in the present or to set foot outside the palace. Unwittingly, he has been cast as the leading actor in an elaborate play, performed on the largest stage on earth, I which the other actors are conspiring to keep reality for him. Reality if the Chinese people, they are the audience and they have abandoned the theatre long ago.

Pu Yi is 18, married with two wives, when the charade collapses and expels the ex-emperor from the Forbidden City. In 1924 a republican warlord captures Peking and expels the ex-emperor from the Forbidden City. Aided by his friend and tutor, the Scottish Mandarin Sir Reginald Johnson, Pu Yi flees to Tientsin.

For a few years he enjoys the life of a western playboy before becoming increasingly dissatisfied. Now he is an actor without a role, as well as without an audience.

In 1931, Japan invades Manchuria and Pu Yi makes the great choice, and the great mistake of his life. He accepts the Japanese invitation to return to the land of his ancestors and becomes the emperor of the new state of Manchucko. It is the beginning of a nightmare for himself, for China and for the rest of the world which is soon at war.

The last emperor of China is one of the most extraordinary anti-heroes of modern times, an oriental Peter Pan floating like a cork on the stream of history.

His life embraces the whole century, from the end of the Qing dynasty to the first republic of Sun Yat Sen; from the warlords of the twenties to the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-Shek; from the Japanese invasion to the State of Manchukuo, where Pu Yi becomes a puppet emperor controlled by the Japanese; from the Second World War to the foundation of the People's Republic; from a decade of Mao's re-education programs to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In 1959, after ten years in a communist jail, Pu-Yi was pardoned.

In 1960 he returned to Peking and became and gardener in the Botanical Gardens, freer in his terms than he had ever been before. For the first time in his life, he could bicycle in the streets, eat in a restaurant or ride on a public bus.

Traditionally, a Chinese emperor is "the first to sow and the first to reap." His purpose is to set an example. Perhaps Pu-Vi achieved this at the end of his life when he became a citizen of the People's Republic of China. It was the part he played best.

Pu Yi died in 1967.

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