Years of preparation went into The Last Emperor, a film Bernardo Bertolucci made largely on location in Peking’s Forbidden City and elsewhere in China, with the collaboration of the government. It is about the life of Pu Yi, the last Chinese emperor, who, after a turbulent life of great ups and downs, ended up as an obscure “rehabilitated” convict tending his garden. Voltaire could not have asked for more. We, however, can.
Not visually, to be sure. Shot by the astounding perfectionist Vittorio Storaro, The Last Emperor is the last thing the art of cinematography, epic division, can offer the eye by way of a Lucullan feast without turning into a surfeit. No one in the audience, during the film’s almost three hours, had to rush off to the vomitorium. Of course,
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