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I won’t go into the movie itself. It is already well known. It swept the Oscars winning all 9 for which it was nominated, including Best Relate and Best Director. A first for an independent foreign film. It is an historical yarn about a culture which until then was microscopic known in the West. It tells the tale of China’s Last Emperor, a customary and ineffectual man who came to the throne hailed as The Son of Heaven and The Lord of 10,000 Years. His danger was to be born at the twilight of Imperial Rule in China. Enthroned as a God, he is cast out by Chinese Republicans, stale as a puppet by the invading Japanese, humiliated by the Communists and then “re-educated” to finally become a “useful” member of society - a celebrated gardener. It is the myth of one man’s tragedy and of an primitive civilisation’s painful march into the new era. A film not to be missed.
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This is a truly stunning site. Criterion at its best. Spread over 4 discs, it includes both versions of the film, fully restored and remastered, plus an additional 6 hours worth of Extras; about everything you could possibly want to know about the film, the director or the central character, Pu Yi.
The roaring controversy however is over the decision to reduce the film from its recent 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio down to a narrower 2:1. Vittorio Storaro who was responsible for this has defended his action and Criterion has taken the line that they follow the wishes of the creator. However after having seen the unusual cropped versions, my preference is composed for the older 2.35:1 widescreen.
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The newer versions by and stout perceive lovely and you won’t peer the cropping unless you do a 1 to 1 comparison. However in more than a few scenes, the fresh visual composition looks askew - awkward and unsightly. Scenes that were originally perfectly framed now appear inadvertently cropped - arms, ears, sometimes whole figures are slash in half - Eg. during the enthronement of minute Pu Yi, the court official who issues the proclamation is standing toward the left edge of the cloak but is otherwise supposed to be fully visible. In the unusual 2:1 sever for the TV version, he is sever into half. In the modern 2:1 prick for the Theatrical version, the panning is more to the left and only his arm is missing. This is objective one of many instances which anger viewers. Criterion should remember that its customers are avid cinephiles who scrutinise films in minutest detail and demand faithfulness to the unique release. I for one do not remove marvelous to a creator coming help to redo his work with the result that it looks uglier than before. Especially when I know that he has an ulterior motive for the revision.
For those who are calm unaware, Vittorio Storaro pioneered a novel film format in 1998 called Univisium (aka Univision) which unprejudiced so happens to have a 2:1 aspect ratio. It is intended as a compromise format between the 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio and the novel 1.78:1 widescreen TV aspect ratio. Storaro wants his novel 2:1 aspect ratio to be the current universal aspect ratio for all films. So far only he has dilapidated it in shooting his newer films. No one else is alive to so he has gone about reformatting (cropping) all the older films he has shot into this fresh 2:1 Univisium format. He has already mutilated Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” to the chagrin of film fans worldwide. Now he has near round to mangling Bernado Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor”.
His various statements in back of this cropping are illogical, contradictory and at points ludicrous. The quiz is, when did he first consciously effect his pictures for the 2:1 format? Criterion cites Storaro’s claim that “The Last Emperor was the first film he shot specifically for 2.0 framing”. Storaro on an earlier occasion had already made the claim that he first conceived of shooting for 2.0 during the filming of “Apocalypse Now” intention support in 1978. He said this in back of his cropping the war classic down from its recent 2.35:1 to 2:1 for its Redux Edition and subsequent video transfer. These two statements are patently contradictory and cannot both be upright.
Both “Last Emperor” and “Apocalypse Now” were shot in Technovision which is in 2.35:1. The only format using 2:1 aspect ratio at that time was the broken-down SuperScope. Why settle 2.35:1 Technovision, when (as he now insists) he wanted to shoot in a 2:1 aspect all along? Criterion also trots out the red herring that the producers had initially hoped to release it on 70mm. But that means composing for 2.2:1 not an queer ratio like 2:1. Actually I personally occupy the films were indeed smooth for 2.2:1 and they would scrutinize unbiased true if reframed in that ratio. The only reason for cropping it down to 2:1 is to accommodate Storaro’s unique Univisium format. For all the Storaro apologists out there (and there are many), the Oscars he won for “Last Emperor” and “Apocalypse Now” were for the films in their unique 2.35:1 presentation NOT the novel 2:1 crops. I hope Criterion bans him from supervising any more transfers of his obsolete films. In his monomaniacal quest to promote his Univisium dream, he has become more like a vandal than an artist.
But enough carping. Aside from the cropping deliver, Criterion’s transfer of The Last Emperor is the best so far. Truly dazzling record quality. One caveat however. The 218min TV Version is not up to the quality of the Theatrical Lop. The TV version is darker, grainier, softer, cooler and has slightly higher incompatibility. You’ll perceive it immediately if you inspect the films one after the other. Unruffled, it’s edifying enough to eclipse any previous versions.
A minor detail on the TV version: The single profanity uttered in the current film - where the Red Guard curses Pu Yi during the Cultural Revolution, has now been eliminated. In the TV version, the modern “F___ Off,” has been replaced with a more polite “Buzz Off”.
The Extras are what accomplish this Criterion space really worth getting.
There are 2hr 40mins worth of extras on Disc 3 and another 2hr 45mins worth of extras on Disc 4. I especially liked the Southbank Show’s 61min Special Edition (British ITV Production) on the Making of The Last Emperor. It includes interviews with Pu Jie, the Emperor’s younger brother, as well as the prison governor who helped “re-educate” him. We also procure to peep archive footage of the sincere Pu Yi, as the Japanese puppet in Manchuria, his assume by Russian paratroopers, his testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, and finally his “re-education” at a Chinese labour camp.
On more than one occasion, Bertolucci speaks of the penultimate “Cricket” scene as a metaphor for freedom or metamorphosis. Personally I sight the cricket as a symbol of renewal or rebirth. (Every year the cricket dies in autumn only to be reborn once again in spring.) That penultimate scene where Pu Yi disappears into the mists of history and the cricket slowly emerges from its wooden box is for me one of the most poetic in cinema history - it marks a recent beginning, a rebirth for both Pu Yi and for his country. The final scene itself is savory in its mix of cheery sarcasm and sadness. As the loud jarring notes of “Yankee Doodle” resound in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, we see in terror as hordes of chattering tourists advance pouring in. And the bitter reality dawns on us - 2,100 years of Imperial Glory have been reduced to nothing more than a tourist attraction.
Of the extras, only 3 are mark fresh. On Disc 1 is “Making The Last Emperor” a unusual 45min documentary with interviews of the technical crew that swept the Oscars. One moving titbit was that the replica of the Empress Dowager’s Golden Robes weighed in at an wonderful 50lbs because it was made out of gold-plated aluminium. The used lady playing the Empress Dowager spent 1 week in hospital recuperating from exhaustion after the filming. The second fresh documentary is a 25min interview with composer David Byrne on both his and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s collaborative efforts in producing the radiant net. Ironically the most eastern sounding pieces were written by Byrne while Sakamoto wrote most of the more western sounding music. The documentary “Beyond the Forbidden City” hosted by Professor Ian Buruma, is a 45min, “Cliffs Notes” version of China’s tumultuous years, from the reign of the Empress Dowager CiXi (Tsu-Hsi) who selected Pu Yi as her heir, to the slay of Imperial Rule, the Japanese invasion, the Chinese Civil War, Mao Tse Tung’s disastrous Tremendous Leap Forward (where 30-million Chinese died at the hands of their gain government), culminating in the madness of Mao’s lunatic Cultural Revolution, during which Pu Yi himself passed away - or as the Empress Dowager would have place it “The Emperor is on High. He is riding the Dragon now.”
Criterion’s region comes with a sumptuous 98-page booklet printed on thick glossy paper and filled with graceful photos and articles. Everything is packed into a 4-way gatefold package and slipcase coloured in red and gold.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s name is synonomous with his three greatest films: Last Tango in Paris (1972), 1900 (1976), and The Last Emperor (1987) . These three films narrate the defining characteristics of all of Bertolucci’s work: sex (Last Tango), politics (1900; The Last Emperor), and cinephilia. Filmed in the Forbidden City of Beijing, The Last Emperor is an Academy Award-winning record that tells the life account of of Aisin-Gioro Puyi, the last Emperor of China, from his 1950 re-entry as a prisoner and war criminal into the People’s Republic of China, to the mid-1960s beginning of the Cultural Revolution, at which time Puyi revisits the Forbidden City as an ordinary tourist. (The film’s final scene depicting a cramped boy sneaking past a velvet rope to climb onto the Dragon Throne ranks among the most memorable scenes in film history.) Over the course of the 218-minute film, there are a series of flashbacks to Puyi’s early life and flash-forwards to his prison life. Bertolucci uses the life of Puyi as a mirror to contemplate China’s passage from feudalism through revolution to a residence of relative peace. As an sage hero, Puyi never rises to the worthy stature of Lawrence of Arabia or Gandhi. In fact, Puyi is depicted as a powerless anti-hero.
In his astonising film, Bertolucci recreates the Qing dynasty with an artist’s watch for detail. The film’s international cast includes John Lone (as Puyi), with Joan Chen, Peter O’Toole (as Reginald Johnston), Ruocheng Ying, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Maggie Han, Ric Young, Vivian Wu, and Chen Kaige. 19,000 extras were employed over the course of the film. It was the first feature film to be authorized by the government of China to be filmed in the Forbidden City.
The Criterion four-disc status includes: a newly restored high-definition digital transfer, audio commentary by director Bernardo Bertolucci, producer Jeremy Thomas, composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, and screenwriter Trace Peploe, “The Italian Traveler,” a documentary by Fernand Mozskowicz, exploring Bertolucci’s straggle from Parma to China, “The Making of “The Last Emperor,” a fresh documentary featuring Storaro, editor Gabriella Cristiana, costume designer James Acheson, and art director Gianni Silvestre, “Postcards from China,” video images taken by Bertolucci while on preproduction, The Unhurried Show: Face to Face, a 30-minute BBC interview with Bertolucci from 1989, recent video interviews with composers David Byrne and Sakamoto, the theatrical trailer, and a booklet featuring essays by David Thomson and excerpts from script supervisor Fabien Gerard’s journals from the production.
G. Merritt
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