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The success of The Last Emperor enabled Peploe - who in the past had attempted to
adapt Paul Bowles" novel The Sheltering Sky as a road movie - to obtain approval from
William Aldrich, who owned the cinematic rights, for the film to be made by Bertolucci, who
again collaborated with Vittorio Storaro and with the English producer Jeremy Thomas
(Peploe, 1990: 84-85). In this film the element of visual enchantment is 'acted out' by the
beauty of the Sahara desert, which is arguably the protagonist of the second part of the film.
The subsequent shooting of Little Buddha appears to be the apex of the phase of Bertolucci's
film-making characterized by the intent of overwhelming viewers' senses. At the same time it
can also be read as a sign of the director's reconciliation with his personal anxieties; an
interpretation confirmed by the fact that after Little Buddha he returned to film in Italy for
Stealing Beauty. The three films elicit homogenous viewing experiences by privileging what
Branigan terms a bottom-up process, (Branigan, 1992: 37) to indicate the viewer's
engagement with the perception of the images and sounds on screen. In these films, the
viewer's cognitive activity is reduced in favour of pure contemplation of the aural-visual
elements. Bertolucci's tendency to construct ambiguous screen characters is maintained,
together with the recurring effect in his films whereby the formation of viewer allegiance
with characters, despite prolonged alignment with them, is improbable. The only exception to
this is represented by the character of Jesse's father in Little Buddha, as the narration guides
viewers to share his existential concerns.
Although the affective component dominates the films' organization, their cognitive
structures remain complex. In Tlie Last Emperor, spectators need to follow the shifts between
the present time narrative and flashbacks; in Tlie Sheltering Sky, a suppressive narration
making extended use of time-space ellipses creates demands on the viewer; in Little Buddha
the real world narrative intersects with that of the telling of Siddhartha's story and merges
with it at certain points. These strategies act as a constant reminder that the subjectivity
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