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The Last Emperor

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The Last Emperor
Image:Last emperor poster (1987).jpg
Promotional poster of The Last Emperor.
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
Written by Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ruocheng Ying, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Maggie Han, Ric Young, Vivian Wu, and Chen Kaige
Music by Ryuichi Sakamoto
David Byrne
Cong Su
Cinematography Vittorio Storaro
Release date(s) November 18, 1987
Running time 160 Min.
USA 218 Min. DVD
Language English
IMDb profile
This acticle is related to a 1987 film. A 1984 Chinese-made TV series about Puyi also called The Last Emperor (末代皇帝)

The Last Emperor is a 1987 biographical film which tells the life story of Aisin-Gioro Puyi, the last Emperor of China.

It stars John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ruocheng Ying, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Maggie Han, Ric Young, Vivian Wu, and Chen Kaige. When released theatrically the film ran 160 minutes; the extended version currently available on DVD runs 218 minutes.

The movie was written by Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci, and directed by Bertolucci. It is considered a plausible portrayal of the life of Aisin-Gioro Puyi. Some characters in the movie (such as Pu-Yi's Japanese handler) were composites of actual characters, but most of the characters and the incidents correspond to actual people and events that occurred in Pu-Yi's life.

At the same time, many historians [citation needed] have wondered if the documents which were the basis of the film such as Pu-Yi's autobiography and his British tutor's (Reginald Johnston) description of him are accurate. In the film and in these documents, Puyi has been portrayed as a pawn of more powerful forces, but many [citation needed] have pointed out that had Puyi portrayed himself otherwise, he could have been executed.

This was the first feature film ever authorized by the government of the People's Republic of China to film in the Forbidden City.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film opens in 1950 with Pu-Yi's re-entry into the just-proclaimed People's Republic of China as a prisoner and war criminal, having been captured by the Red Army when the Soviet Union entered the Pacific War in 1945 (see Operation August Storm) and put under Soviet custody for five years. Pu-Yi attempts suicide which only renders him unconscious, and in a flashback, apparently triggered as a dream, Pu-Yi relives his first entry, with his nurse, into the Forbidden City.

The theme is one of being the objectified plaything of powerful and mysterious forces, whether as Emperor or as a war criminal, and structurally the movie is a series of chronological flashbacks to Pu-Yi's early life (his hot-house upbringing, unexplainable events including his brother's childish challenge to his status as the Emperor, his arranged marriage and so on), and flash-forwards to his prison life, which is portrayed, probably [citation needed] under the influence of the Chinese government as a condition for authorizing production in China, as a sort of re-education camp and not a Gulag. Another Chinese government influence was [citation needed] the fact that Pu-Yi, allegedly bi- or homosexual [citation needed], was portrayed in the film as heterosexual.

Image:Last emperor1.jpg

But owing to the re-education including newsreels of Japanese war crimes in Manchuria and the defeat of Japan, Puyi realizes accurately his need to assume responsibility for his complicity in Japanese atrocities. Subsequently, the film ends with a flash-forward to the mid-1960s during the Mao cult and the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

Puyi is portrayed as a gardener (where there is a dim echo of Hirohito's postwar career as a marine biologist) who lives a proletarian existence. But on his way home from work, he happens upon a Mao parade, complete with children playing pentatonic music on accordions en masse and dancers who dance the rejection of landlordism by the masses, aroused by rectified Mao thought.

His prison camp commander is one of the "dunces" punished as insufficiently revolutionary in the parade, and in a deliberately ironic scene, the last Emperor makes imperial remonstrance to the Red Guard students, but is so clearly, to the students, an ordinary prole that they do not bother doing more than telling him to "fuck off" (which is Bertolucci's accurate rendition of the way in which Mandarin became significantly more crude in the Mao era).

Puyi then visits the Forbidden City as an ordinary tourist, and meets an assertive little boy who wears the red scarf of the Pioneer Movement and therefore represents "the future". The boy demands that Puyi step away from the throne. However, Puyi proves to the little boy that he was indeed the Son of Heaven as Pu-Yi sat on his old throne he found his pet cricket that he used to pet as a child which he gave it to the little boy, and in the only unexplained, mystical scene, the cricket is still alive after 40 years, the little boy turns to thank Puyi, he sees that the Emperor has disappeared. The viewer is left to imagine the Emperor as having passed the Mandate of Heaven to the current leadership [citation needed], and borne aloft to the Western sky. And then, as in a dream, a tourist klaxon calls Americans together in front of the throne a few years later, after China had opened to the West, and the tour guide, as in a dream, sums it all up for us, encapsulating Puyi's life in a few sentences and informing us of his date of death.


Spoilers end here.

[edit] Awards

The film won every Academy Award for which it was nominated (9). Along with Best Picture it won Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Music, Original Score, Best Sound and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.


[edit] DVD

The DVD is padded out with more footage from the stifling palace of Manchukuo showing how Puyi was blind, at first, to the way in which he was a puppet. In particular, a character appears in the DVD that did not in the movies, and the drug-addled opium pusher appointed Minister of Defense by the Japanese, who becomes a sort of demon when he surfaces in Puyi's prison camp, whispering the awful truth to Puyi at night. In addition, the extra footage shows more detail about the way in which Puyi was unable to take care of his own needs without servants.

[edit] Trivia

  • Pu Yi's younger brother, Pu Chieh, and Li Wenda, who helped Pu Yi write his autobiography, were brought in to act as advisors on the film.
  • 19,000 extras were needed over the course of the film.
  • The Buddhist lamas who appear in the film could not be touched by women, so extra male wardrobe helpers were hired to dress them.
  • Bernardo Bertolucci proposed the film to the Chinese government as one of two possible projects - the other was "La Condition Humaine" by André Malraux. The Chinese preferred this project.
  • This is the first MPAA-rated PG-13 film to win the Academy Award for "Best Picture" (not counting subsequent films that have since been re-rated).
  • Jeremy Thomas managed to raise the $25 million budget for his independent production single-handedly.
  • During filming of the immense coronation scene in the Forbidden City, Queen Elizabeth II was in Beijing on a state visit. The production was given priority over her by the Chinese authorities and she was therefore unable to visit the Forbidden City.
  • The Japanese distributor of the film elected to remove stock footage of the Nanking Massacre from the film's initial theatrical release in that country. This footage was restored to later editions after complaints were lodged by the director.
  • Olympic figure skater Lu Chen of China skated to the musical score of "The Last Emperor" in her world championship winning long program

[edit] Cast

[edit] External links

Academy Award for Best Picture: Winners (1981–2000)

1981: Chariots of Fire | 1982: Gandhi | 1983: Terms of Endearment | 1984: Amadeus | 1985: Out of Africa | 1986: Platoon | 1987: The Last Emperor | 1988: Rain Man | 1989: Driving Miss Daisy | 1990: Dances with Wolves | 1991:  The Silence of the Lambs | 1992: Unforgiven | 1993: Schindler's List | 1994: Forrest Gump | 1995: Braveheart | 1996:  The English Patient | 1997: Titanic | 1998: Shakespeare in Love | 1999: American Beauty | 2000: Gladiator


Bernardo Bertolucci
La commare secca • Prima della rivoluzione • La Via del petrolio • Il Canale • Partner • Amore e rabbia • La strategia del ragno • The Conformist • Last Tango in Paris • 1900 • La Luna • La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo • The Last Emperor • The Sheltering Sky • Little Buddha • Stealing Beauty • Besieged • Ten Minutes Older: The Cello • The Dreamers
de:Der letzte Kaiser

es:El último emperador fr:Le Dernier Empereur ko:마지막 황제 it:L'ultimo imperatore nl:The Last Emperor ja:ラストエンペラー no:Den siste keiseren pt:The Last Emperor ru:Последний император (фильм) sv:Den siste kejsaren zh:末代皇帝 (电影)

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