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These are examples of the way in which the mise-en-scene and cinematography of The Last
Emperor generate a viewing experience characterized by interplay between the affective and
the intellectual.
From the sublime to intimate empathic phenomena
To depict Pu Yi's increasing melancholy caused by his isolation, the film's lighting and
colour scheme is toned down. In this regard Bertolucci asserted that Storaro conceived of the
'forbidden city" as preventing Pu Yi from experiencing the fullness of light and the fullness
of colour, and that Storaro managed to transform this into visual terms (Ranvaud, 1987: 277).
Hence there is a predominant use of dark blue and black for the costumes, and of brown and
ochre for both the interiors and the landscape, with ochre also used to create a more
overwhelming and unique emotional effect. It is arguable that at certain moments, a sense of
the sublime is induced in terms of the effect upon characters, an effect also perceived
indirectly by viewers, hi the context of the body of writing on the subject, it is arguably
Edmund Burke's concept of the sublime that is evoked in The Last Emperor, what Burke
considered to be the product of three elements; terror, obscurity, and power, because each
component is related to our deep fears of pain and death. According to Burke, terror is our
emotional response to 'ideas of pain and danger', and it is indivisible from the idea of power,
whether concrete or abstract, because this represents the enormous strength' that can inflict
pain and death (Burke, 1759: 131-137).
The mise-en-scene symbolizes the infliction of pain and socio-political death upon Pu
Yi by turning the same vastness, which had earlier played an integral role in the spectacle of
his socio-political affirmation, into an emblem of his new status as a socio-political non­
entity. To place the greatest dramatic emphasis on this transition, a monochromatic colour
scheme is adopted to heighten the sense of immense void created by the size of a courtyard in
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