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BookmarkDirected by Bernardo Bertolucci – Starring John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O’Toole
Live/Artisan – Rated PG13 – 218 min – Biopic [feature] – Region: 1 (USA & territories, Canada)/2 (Europe, Japan, Middle East, Egypt, South Africa, Greenland)/3 (Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia)/4 (Mexico, South America, Australia, New Zealand)/5 (Russia, Eastern Europe, India, most of Africa)/6 (China)
In this unprecedented Sino-Western co-production, Bernardo Bertolucci turned the strange life of final Chinese crown ruler Pu Yi into a sumptuous epic. Shooting on location in China in the first Western production allowed to film in Beijing’s Forbidden City, Bertolucci spent million on lavish sets and costumes, as well as a cast of thousands, for a story spanning six decades, from Pu Yi’s 1908 coronation to his 1960s life as a poor civilian. The story is structured through flashback memories as Pu Yi comes to grips with existence as a villain and commoner under Communism, and Vittorio Storaro’s exquisite cinematography subtly underscores the emperor’s rise and fall by shifting from a palette rich in reds, oranges, and yellows for Pu Yi’s imperial years to somber blues and grays for his exile and imprisonment. Despite critical complaints that the story was lacking in emotional involvement, many viewers agreed that Bertolucci had created another visual marvel. Nominated for nine Oscars, The Last Emperor scored an unexpected sweep, winning all nine, including Best Picture and Best Director. An hour of footage cut from the release version was restored in the 1998 theatrical reissue reedited by Bertolucci.Everything that was good about the 163-minute theatrical release of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor in 1987 is even better in this new 218-minute director’s cut. By contrast, much that was peculiarly distant and lifeless the first time around isn’t really better or worse in this edition. Conclusion: the net gains are considerable if you invest time to appreciate Bertolucci’s full feeling for the odd story of Pu Yi, China’s final monarch. You remember the saga: taken from his mother at the age of three, Pu Yi is brought into the enclosed walls of the Forbidden City to replace the real emperor. There he becomes a pampered prisoner and hollow symbol of an older monarchy that has since given way to a ruthless, 20th century republic. With his pining loyalists beheaded or kept at bay by armed soldiers outside the City’s walls, Pu Yi is tutored by an English gentleman (Peter O’Toole) and wed to a kindred spirit (Joan Chen). Eventually cast from his gated paradise, Pu Yi (wonderfully portrayed in adulthood by John Lone) becomes, by turns, a playboy, a dupe to the Japanese, and a victim of China’s cultural reforms and re-education programs. This longer cut largely top-loads the film with greater reason to feel compassion for the emperor, with his often wordless sense-adventure in the mysteries that could only be known to one little boy plunged into indecipherable alien decorum, robbed of self-determination and common sense by his infinite privilege. Added scenes (including some in the political rehabilitation camp where Pu Yi is held for a decade) fill out not so much added facts as density of experience. This improved The Last Emperor is richer in soul and a pronounced sense of Bertolucci actually directing this film in the most personal and profound sense. –Tom Keogh
Rating: 
(out of 101 reviews)
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Review by Cainz for The Last Emperor – Director’s Cut
Rating:
I’ll make this review short and sweet. First off, the movie itself is derserving of all its Oscar wins. The acting is superb, the cinematography is breathtaking, and the story is significant if not moving. If you are a movie lover you will certainly appreciate the beauty and power of this film. So why only 3 stars? I simply can’t give the DVD more than 3 stars, becuase quite frankly, this movie deserves a better film transfer and better audio on DVD. The picture is sub-par when you compare it to almost all the new DVD releases today, and the sound is a little better, but not by much. Perhaps the studio should revisit this title and clean it up with a loaded new special edition release with a squeaky clean anamorphic picture transfer with DD 5.1 and DTS sound to boast. This DVD’s director’s cut is also much longer than the original, which in my opinion, doesn’t hurt the film at all, but it doesn’t improve the film drastically either. So base your buying decision on the following fact: this is a masterpiece movie on a sub-par DVD transfer. To me, the movie was a must have DVD, which was worth the purchase price alone. Afterall, it is still better than VHS.
Review by Nix Pix for The Last Emperor – Director’s Cut
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“The Last Emperor” is the Academy Award winning movie about China’s last imperial ruler, Pu Yi (John Lone). Taken from his mother at the age of three and raised to believe in his own divinity as absolute monarch, Pu Yi?s marriage to Wan Jung (Joan Chen) is marred by her opium addiction and the tragic death of their only child and heir to the throne. Peter O?Toole appears as Reginald Johnston, English tutor to his majesty in the ways of diplomacy and the outside world. The film presents China?s Forbidden City as allegory for the pampered but caged existence of wealth and the destructive nature of absolute power. Eventually forced to flee his gated paradise, Pu Yi succumbs to the decadence of becoming a playboy, a stooge of the Japanese, and a victim of China’s cultural reforms and re-education programs. The film is a poignant, heart-breaking, tragic and sweeping saga that won, among its other award, the Oscar for best cinematography. But you’d ever guess it by looking at this DVD transfer. The 2:35:1 image has not been anamorphically enhanced and exhibits just about every digital anomaly that one can find on a poorly mastered DVD. There’s edge enhancement, aliasing, fine detail shimmering, color smearing, tiling, color distortion, loss of fine details, extremely low contrast levels, disturbing halos and fading of the film?s negative. There are chips, scratches, tears and camera negative jitter. The audio is a rather dismal 2.0 mix. After viewing this travesty it is my sincere hope that whoever was responsible for mastering this DVD will never get the opportunity to be near such equipment again. There are no extras and no reason why anyone should invest in this DVD.
BOTTOM LINE: JUST DO NOT BUY THIS MOVIE! There’s nothing to recommend the print used or the mastering employed to bring it to the small screen. If there was room to rate this disc as ‘zero’ stars I would have done just that. Unfortunately, ‘one’ is the lowest I could go.
Review by for The Last Emperor – Director’s Cut
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I was very much looking forward to see the director’s cut of “The Last Emperor”. Unfortunately the quality of the DVD is so bad that it’s not worth watching. After 15 minutes I shut it off because I could not stand it anymore. Hopefully someone will make a decent transfer of this movie to DVD, otherwise keep your fingers off if you own a projector or a decent widescreen TV.
Review by Aron Hsiao for The Last Emperor – Director’s Cut
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Ask any director in a world not yet blessed with The Last Emperor whether it might be possible to create a film that documents, with reasonable depth and historical accuracy, the modernization of China–from imperial days through the Cultural Revolution–and that does so while managing also to capture the immeasurable gravity, ethos, and pathos of the twentieth century and all its billions, and you’d be told in so many words that such a task was absolutely, without a doubt, impossible, no matter the allotted length.
But Bertolucci does it here in a single DVD’s length, without offending the historian’s peculiar sensibilities, abusing the casual filmgoer’s expectations, or descending into vulgar and sledgehammer-like metaphor and simile for the sake of efficiency. This film draws one’s attention to the matter at hand, not to itself, its director, or any present flaws (to my eye, there are few or none).
Indeed, The Last Emperor may be one of the small handful of Perfect Films yet created in the history of film, able and willing to showcase all that is good and all that is necessary about the arts and their ability to drive our own will to identification.
I won’t bother with plot or synopses here. Suffice it to say that this film is the twentieth century encapsulated, in every best and worst way that one might imagine, somehow made at once informative and accessible. It is the sort of film from which no-one can turn, both pedagogical and affecting, the sort of film that makes grown men cry and cynics pray, even if they’re not sure to whom their prayer is addressed.
As a final aside: though there are many poor reviews of the DVD media here, the situation is somewhat more mixed than many of them let on. The DVD is indeed of a poorer resolution than most anamorphic widescreen DVDs. However, viewers who don’t happen to own 16:9 HDTV sets won’t be able to see the difference, since the resolution of the film on this DVD still exceeds what a “standard” television set can display.
Review by Dennis Forcier for The Last Emperor – Director’s Cut
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This is a WONDERFUL movie. One of my favorites. But this is a TERRIBLE DVD. There are no special features, although there is a text box on the back of the box supposedly enumerating the “Special Features” (including the “4:3 Widescreen” format).The “widescreen” format is simply a scam! The original (2.35?) aspect ratio of the film has been reduced to 4:3 pan and scan, then “enlarged” for 16:9 by cutting off the top and bottom! The resolution is AWFUL. Worse than over-the-air analog broadcasts.I was so horrified at the quality of the picture I can’t speak to the value of the additional footage, or even to the sound quality. I was simply unable to watch such awful treatment of a great cinematographer’s work.