Emperor Bernardo Bertolucci

mainland China, for its part, was in the midst of a new version of "socialist economic strategy" down the stairs the guidance of communistic Party leader Deng Xiaoping. Since his rise to line in 1980, his policy of "Four Modernizations" encouraged private enterprise, vocation with the economic everyy stronger nations of the West eagerly welcomed. Indeed, one of the first major(ip) companies to enter redness China was the soft drink hulk Coca-Cola - and Columbia Pictures, at the time Bertolucci first broached the idea of making a engage in China, was owned by the Coca-Cola conglomerate.

Still, one must ask, why would the Communist g everywherenment endure its first American motion picture venture - and in dealing with Columbia it was known that this would be a widely-seen film - why would they allow the subject matter to be Pu Yi, the last emperor? The answer lies partially in the filmmaker, the rosy-cheeked Chinese government and the subject himself.

Bernardo Bertolucci, noted above, admits to a left-winger orientation that has included open support for the Italian Communist Party in such films as 1900 and The Spider ploy; in conjunction with that sympathy, his anti-aristocracy perspective is equally established. Consequently, although the subject of his film, to be entitled The Last Emperor, would be Pu Yi, Party officials could timber reasonably assured that his treatment of the subject would not be

Finally, there is the subject himself. Pu Yi is a blip on the canvas of history: his specify was nil, his activities almost always dictated by others. Nevertheless, his life divides neatly into three parts - and each part holds symbolic importee for modern China. For the first part of his life, Pu Yi was the last emperor of China. Although he abdicated the throne at age 6 in 1912 (discounting a brief revival of the title for a some days when he was 11), until forced to leave in 1924 the deduction of his presence in the Forbidden City was apparent to all Chinese: there is still an emperor waiting to draw the Mandate of Heaven.

Thereafter, for the middle portion of his life, Pu Yi was the puppet of Japanese imperialism; a descendant of the Manchu Dynasty, he was made "Executive Officer," past re-coronated "Emperor" of the newly reconstituted Manchurian state, called Manchukuo by its Japanese overlords. As the final act of his life, Pu Yi was captured by the Soviets, turned over to the Red Chinese in 1949, and successfully "re-educated" to be a constructive process of the proletariat in 1959: he became a gardener in Peking, dying of cancer in 1967. evidently with government endorsement, he produced an autobiography, From Emperor to Citizen. Since this autobiography tracks the journey of Pu Yi from frustrated, exploitative aristocrat, through a life as " oppositeness of the state," and on to redemption as a useful member of the working class, this autobiography - which Bertolucci told Party officials would be his primary root - would most assuredly not make Communist China look bad. Or so the reasoning must flummox gone.

The Chinese government itself, meanwhile, was in the midst of an important renewal - and, despite the emphasis upon economics, the Communist leadership was also changing the ideology of the Party as well. Mao Tse-Tung had dominated the Red Chinese government until his death in the 1970s; however after his death, the "Cult of Mao"
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