The Last Emperor (Criterion Collection) PG-13

The Last Emperor (Criterion Collection)
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Format:  DVD
item number:  GV45
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DVD Details

  • Rated: PG-13
  • Run Time: 2 hours, 44 minutes
  • Video: Color
  • Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
  • Released: November 18, 2008
  • Originally Released: 1987
  • Label: Criterion Collection

Performers, Cast and Crew:

Starring
Performer: , , , , &
Directed by
Music by &
Screenwriting by

Major Awards:

Academy Awards 1987 - Best Adapted Screenplay: Bernardo Bertolucci & Mark Peploe
Academy Awards 1987 - Best Art Direction - Set Decoration: Not Applicable
Academy Awards 1987 - Best Cinematography: Vittorio Storaro
Academy Awards 1987 - Best Costume Design: James Acheson
Academy Awards 1987 - Best Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Academy Awards 1987 - Best Film Editing: Not Applicable
Academy Awards 1987 - Best Original Score: Cong Su, David Byrne & Ryuichi Sakamoto
Academy Awards 1987 - Best Picture: Not Applicable
Academy Awards 1987 - Best Sound: Not Applicable

Entertainment Reviews:

Certified Fresh91%

TOMATOMETER
Total Count: 66

Upright88%

AUDIENCE SCORE
User Ratings: 39,827
It is the grandeur of the boy king and his unreal opulent world that is best remembered, splendid and isolated, and at last, because of its loneliness, sad. Full Review
United Press International
Aug 23, 2016
[T]here's no faulting the use of genuine locations, the magnificent costumes of Vittorio Storaro's breathtaking cinematography.
Total Film
Apr 1, 2004
There's probably a truly great movie in the story of Pu Yi, but The Last Emperor is not that movie. Still, what director Bernardo Bertolucci (Last Tango in Paris) has accomplished here is both ambitious and impressive. Full Review
Orlando Sentinel
Jan 7, 2014
Rating: 3/4 -- It is a hesitant, conservative approach that yields great elegance and a rhythm that carries the viewer along. Yet the film is haunted by a sense of opportunities not taken, of an artist deliberately reining in his artistry. Full Review
Chicago Tribune
Jan 7, 2014
Rating: 3.5/4 -- As a resplendently gorgeous historical pageant of China in the 20th century, The Last Emperor is, visually at least, the most beautiful movie in years. But as an involving human drama about Pu Yi... it doggedly refuses to come to much dramatic life. Full Review
Newhouse News Service
Nov 15, 2019
The Last Emperor is a spectacular film photographed in brilliant color. It is also a moral drama with controversial political overtones of great ambiguity. Full Review
The New York Review of Books
Aug 13, 2018
...If you want a staggering and certainly singular movie experience, THE LAST EMPEROR will do very nicely...
Los Angeles Times
Nov 29, 1987

Product Description:

Although it is 160 minutes long and shot with breathtaking scope and sumptuousness, Bernardo Bertolucci's film is a story about claustrophobia. Pu Yi, the Manchurian emperor of China who ascended the throne in 1908 at the age of three, is a prisoner in the palace he rules over. Outside, real power changes hands with each coup d'etat. Pu Yi grows to manhood, is tutored by a Westerner (Peter O'Toole), and marries a gorgeous princess (Joan Chen). However, the adult Pu Yi (John Lone) is destined for a communist reeducation camp when the war is over. From start to finish, Pu Yi is a passive antihero who can never come to grips with the idea that the absolute power conferred on him as a child was only a mirage. The mistakes Pu Yi made trying to realize that power, especially collaborating with the Japanese during the war, provide Bertolucci with the chance to explore his familiar theme of collaboration and its moral consequences (as he did in THE CONFORMIST and 1900). In the end, Pu Yi seems to have reached a kind of peace, and the terrible waste of a special man's life disappears into a drab, grey-clad Beijing.

Description by Image Entertainment / Criterion Collection:

Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor won nine Academy Awards®, unexpectedly sweeping every category in which it was nominated-quite a feat for a challenging, multilayered epic directed by an Italian and starring an international cast. Yet the power and scope of the film was, and remains, undeniable-the life of Emperor Pu Yi, who took the throne at age three, in 1908, before witnessing decades of cultural and political upheaval, within and without the walls of the Forbidden City. Recreating Ching-dynasty China with astonishing detail and unparalleled craftsmanship by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, The Last Emperor is also an intimate character study of one man reconciling personal responsibility and political legacy.

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Product Info

  • UPC: 715515034425
  • Shipping Weight: 0.25/lbs (approx)
  • International Shipping: 1 item

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