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oth dissatisfied. When asked about Bertolucci, Italian mainstream cinemagoers often know
his name, and might mention one or two titles from The Conformist onwards, but they always
comment about the difficulty in understanding his films. By contrast, the viewers who take
pleasure in the cognitive and intellectual activity required by the allusions and cross-
references in the films will invariably be disappointed by the predominance of visual
spectacle in Bertolucci's later work.
Notes
References
Aisin Gioro Pu Yi, (1965,) From Emperor to Citizen: Autobiography of Aisin Gioro Pu Yi , transl. by
W.J.F. Jenner, Peking: Foreign Languages Press.
'A real dramaturgical synthesis to balance the uncertain relationship between history and metaphor is
missing, but the direction of the film clearly stresses the second aspect, and therefore any negative
remark on the factual plausibility of the mise-en-scene becomes futile'. Tullio Kezich, La Repubblica,
October 1987, as re-presented in Inten>ista a Bernardo Bertolucci by Jean-Claude Mirabella, Pierre
Pitiot (Rome: Gremese Editore, 1999) p. 106.
Although Avatar narrates the struggle of a native population against an imperialist nation, the
protagonist is a paraplegic former marine, who changes sides because he is in love with the daughter of
the indigenous chief. He predictably becomes their hero as they fight back, and their possible future
leader. This narrative scheme, which is nonetheless supported by a glamorous depiction of the
imperialist power, is effective in enabling audiences to leave the theatre in a mood of feelgood serenity,
oblivious that the various real world Pandoras are facing a very different destiny from the fictive one.
Aisin Gioro, Pu Yi (1965) From Emperor to Citizen: Autobiography of Aisin Gioro Pu Yi,
translation from Chinese by Jenner, W.J.F., Peking: Foreign Languages Press.
Benjamin, W. (1966) Understanding Brecht, translated from German by Bostock A., (ed.
1973), London: NLB.
Brooks, P. (1976) The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the
Mode of Excess, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Burke, E. (1759) 'A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and
' Beautiful', in Ashfield, A. and de Bolla, P. (ed.) (1996) The Sublime: A Reader In
British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Carroll, N. (1999) 'Film, Emotion and Genre', in Plantinga, C. and Smith, G. (ed.)
Passionate Views, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
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