Bernardo Bertolucci inteveriew

it's generic in tone, but it's nice to read anything by this guy imho...you can definitely see his European sensibilities in the interview.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5499444/site/newsweek/

It Is So Sad to Just Accept’
Now in his fifth decade of making movies, Bernardo Bertolucci is still stirring things up
BERTOLUCCI
Severine Brigeot / Fox Searchlight-AP
A young American (Michael Pitt, reflected in mirror) takes a bath with his French lover (Eva Green) and her brother (Louis Garrel) in a scene from Bertolucci's latest film, 'The Dreamers'

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Jennifer Barrett
Newsweek
Updated: 6:53 p.m. ET July 23, 2004

July 23 - Bernardo Bertolucci has been making provocative films for more than four decades. His latest movie, “The Dreamers,” released this week on DVD, is no exception. Fox Searchlight initially sought to edit down the film, which is about the sexual awakening of a young American who moves in with a troubled girl and her brother in Paris during the protests of 1968, so that it could get an R rating when it was released in the United States five months ago. But Bertolucci balked and Fox ended up leaving the film alone, settling instead for an NC-17. It’s one of just a handful of films this year to earn the “adults only” stamp from the Motion Picture Association of America (others include “Young Adam” and the French film, “High Tension”).

Despite the restrictive rating, the film grossed about $2.5 million in U.S. ticket sales (and about $12.4 million worldwide). Still, Fox Home Entertainment has opted to offer two different DVDs for viewers: the uncut NC-17 version and a toned-down R-rated cut. Bertolucci, now 64, is no stranger to censors. His “Last Tango in Paris,” which starred Marlon Brando as a middle-aged man who has a sadomasochistic affair with a teenage girl, was banned initially in his native Italy when it came out in 1972. But while the filmmaker concedes that some more sexually explicit scenes may not be appropriate for younger viewers, he questions Americans who appear aghast at the thought of teenagers being exposed to sexuality on film, yet allow them to see graphically violent films. Bertolucci spoke by phone from Rome with NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett in New York about censorship, sexuality and the story behind his latest film. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: There’s been a lot of controversy in the United States over the sex scenes in "The Dreamers." I know cuts had originally been planned, so how did you convince the distributor to keep them in with a NC-17 rating?
Bernardo Bertolucci: In the beginning, Fox Searchlight, the distributor of the film, decided they couldn’t come out with the NC-17 rating because they were claiming that no Hollywood distributors would come out with it, which was a strange sudden change of gear because we had been told by them that the movie could go out as is. So there were two or three months of major anxiety, and then it was finally relieved by the fact that there was a decision close to the opening of the film to break this kind of secret law and to come out with it as NC-17. I think that was important because there are a number of movies that are not American—what in Hollywood, they call "the rest of the world"—that could rarely be seen just because they have this major thing that they are movies for adults. But I don’t see why in the United States the adults have to see movies for children.

How important are the nude scenes that earned the NC-17 rating to this film?
I think it would be a bit of a disgrace to the innocence of the film to cut them. The scenes the rating commission gave an NC-17 to were the scenes about the great innocence of the three kids. The fact of being naked, it’s not a sin apart from some obscure Christian—and not only Christian—religions. It would be like putting a fig leaf on the genitals of Adam and Eve … To me, it is more morbid to hide things than to show them in that film. I would never do it.

What if Fox had insisted?
Well, I had to go with the R rating because we had a deal. But I am really pleased they changed their minds and came out with it in its entirety.

Bernardo Bertolucci
I understand that there are two DVD versions though—the original and a toned-down R-rated version. Why is that?
The DVD audience has the chance of choosing if they want to go straight to hell [laughs] or if they are grown-ups and can decide for themselves. I am still against any kind of censorship. It’s a subject in my life that has been very important. Up to age 12 or 13, there must be some protection [for viewers], but it’s horrible violence that can shock more than sex. At the opening of my film, I remember everybody was asking me about that scandal with Janet Jackson because she had shown a nipple on TV.

What did you think of that?
I said, where is the problem? They said, Oh, the family was around the TV, even the children. And I tried to explain that the children, among everybody, are the ones who are most familiar with the nipple because it has only been a few years since they have been on their mother’s nipple! It’s a very puritanical country you live in.

In some ways, yes.
In many ways.

Do you see a double standard in the United States in the way that the MPAA evaluates violence and sex in movies?
In many movies it is pure exploitation of violence. When you saw violence in an old American Western movie or action movie, it was often justified. But now there is a school of violence in movies and it is, for me, boring because I can see all the tricks. But for children it can be terrifying. And I think it creates a sense of emulation much more than sex does.

You’ve been critical of Hollywood in the past, calling it a “monoculture.” Do you still feel that way?
A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy. I don’t think you can in any way export culture with guns or tanks. I think that I used to love Hollywood movies. I remember great phases and moments. But, unfortunately, now is not the moment. Though there are some good movies always on the fringe, independent productions.

Are there American filmmakers that you admire now?
I like the new blossoming in the last four or five years, with people like P.T. Anderson and David Lynch and [Quentin] Tarantino. They are great. It is the normal productions which are really uninteresting.

You mean mainstream movies?
Yes, those, that are totally uninteresting.

But Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” was released as a mainstream movie. It was a huge blockbuster hit.
It became mainstream, which is fantastic. I think for him it was excellent.

What attracted you to Gilbert Adair's book "The Holy Innocents," on which ‘The Dreamers’ is based?
First of all, it gave me the chance of visiting a moment that I really loved a lot, the late '60s. It was a kind of magic moment in many senses. There was a fantastic projection of the future, of utopias, which were very noble in some ways. I remember being young in the '60s ... We had a great sense of the future, a great big hope. This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world. This is one reason. Also a second reason is that it reminded me a lot of [Jean] Cocteau’s book “Les Enfants Terribles,” which was written in 1929. In “The Holy Innocents,” the archetype of the brother and sister was just moved to 1968.

Are there instances in the film that remind you of your own experiences as a filmmaker in Paris in the 1960s?
Yes. That kind of love—that passionate love—for movies, I know it very, very well. What was great in 1968 was that you could conjugate that with lots of jazz and philosophy and politics and everything could go together.

The film re-enacts the Paris protests of 1968, which started with students demonstrating against the government’s closure of the Cinematheque Française, which showed films other theaters would not, but grew to include millions of disgruntled French workers. Do you see any similarities to current events?
I think that, for example, when [Henri] Langlois was fired [as director of the Cinematheque Française, setting off the protests], it is something that could happen today. And I would be very curious to see how the people reacted. I wonder if you would have a riot today….

I'm not sure people feel so passionately about film anymore, but there have been massive protests around the globe over the past year against the war in Iraq.
Yes, it’s very encouraging. There are still young people in the world whose brains have not been atrophied by television. That is a good sign. But if you think of the majority, I don’t think you have the same kind of excitement in the youth today that there was in 1968—or in general in the 1960s.

Do you think the protests of 1968 were successful?
You know, people today tell me that the 1968 protests were a failure. I ask why? They say because it didn’t work and the revolution didn’t happen and there was no major change. But I think this is a complete historical injustice because I remember life before 1968, and I can see the incredible changes. Before 1968, our life was full of authority—all authoritarian figures. After 1968, you didn’t have that because people didn’t accept it. And the most important change was the relationship between men and women, the position [equality] between men and women. The people who weren’t there don’t know that a lot has been done. I feel it is a form of a reformist position now to say that 1968 doesn’t count. It had a great importance and resonance in our lives.

Was that part of the message of the film?
I don’t film messages. I let the post office take care of those. I just really wanted to do a film about the initiation to life, love, sex, friendship of these three kids. That’s all I wanted to talk about, and this kind of telling the young audiences of today that if it was possible to be against [authority] in 1968, it is still possible today to be against.

Against authoritarianism?
To be against authority, or to know that every time we feel strongly that we disagree with something, to say it, and not to be resigned. It is so sad to just accept and to be resigned.

You certainly haven’t in your career.
Well, I just do what I feel. And I’ve been lucky.

What’s next for you?
I am working on something, but for some superstitious reasons, I prefer not to talk about it.

 

Critical response to The Dreamers was mixed at best, so I didn't rush out to see it. Too bad for me, I probably should have. Then again, I haven't thought much of a Bertolucci picture since 1900 (get it?). Little Buddah was his, I think, and that was tame. Sheltering Sky was a big disappointment, but then again I had read the Bowles book and I'm skeptical about translating fiction to film. At any rate, I plan to see Dreamers on video and I hope Netflix offers the director's uncensored version.
His comments on free speech, censorship, pornography (sex vs. violence), and the imposition of American culture and 'democracy' happen to be in accord with my own beliefs. He states them well, without provocation and hysteria. I've heard Europeans and particularly the French describe us as a puritanical society before and they're right. But the movies lost their sexiness and eroticism all over the world sometime in the mid to late seventies, right about the time of the AIDS epidemic. Those two events are always linked in my mind.