9 / 10
Official trailer
The Last Emperor is Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 Italian-Chinese-British biographical drama depicting the life of Puyi, the last emperor of China.
The film traces Puyi from his ascension to the throne at age two in 1908 through his decade-long reign as Manchurian puppet emperor under Japanese occupation, his later imprisonment by Chinese Communists, and his eventual rehabilitation as ordinary Beijing gardener before his death in 1967. John Lone plays the adult Puyi. Joan Chen plays his wife Empress Wanrong. Peter O’Toole plays his Scottish tutor Reginald Johnston.
Ying Ruocheng plays the prison governor who supervises Puyi’s reeducation. Victor Wong plays Chen Pao Shen. Vivian Wu plays Puyi’s secondary consort Wenxiu. Bertolucci, Mark Peploe, and Enzo Ungari wrote the screenplay. Yanco Films and TAO Film produced the film on a budget of approximately 23.8 million dollars, and it grossed approximately 44 million dollars worldwide. The work won all nine Academy Awards for which it was nominated, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The Forbidden City is the star of this film for me, and it’s gorgeous in a way that still stuns me. Seeing real throne rooms stand in for themselves gives the story a weight no set could. My one reservation is the reeducation stretch, which goes down a little too smoothly, and that’s the only thing keeping it from a 10.
The film is the first Western production granted access to film inside the Forbidden City and one of the classic biographical epics. Bertolucci’s access to Chinese locations and personnel resulted from extensive negotiations with the Chinese government during the late 1980s reform period under Deng Xiaoping. The production employed approximately 19,000 extras for particular sequences. The Beijing Film Studio provided crew and equipment. The Chinese government read the screenplay before production and required certain changes but allowed heavy creative independence.
The result is a film that combines Western directorial sensibility with Chinese locations, performers, and historical material in ways previous productions hadn’t achieved. The work won every Academy Award for which it was nominated, becoming one of the few films to achieve perfect Oscar performance.
The Forbidden City Access
Bertolucci was the first Western filmmaker granted permission to shoot inside the Forbidden City.
The complex of palaces had been closed to most public access for decades, and no major foreign production had ever used it as a functional film location. The negotiations required Bertolucci to convince Chinese officials that the film would treat Puyi sympathetically and not insult Chinese sovereignty. The Chinese reading of the screenplay produced specific changes including the removal of scenes that depicted certain political content unfavorably.
The access produced distinct visual material no previous production could have generated.
The throne room scenes occur in the actual throne room. The coronation sequences use the actual coronation locations. The real architecture produces dramatic weight that studio reconstruction couldn’t match. The compromise required to obtain access has been criticized as creative concession to political authority. It also produced material that no alternative production approach could have generated.
I’d make the same bargain Bertolucci made. Whatever he gave up in the script, he got a real palace on screen in return, and I wouldn’t trade those throne room scenes for any set ever built.
For Writers
Access to source materials may require concessions that production planning didn’t anticipate. Similar logic applies to creative work. The cost of unique access is sometimes significant compromise that the resulting work must justify.
John Lone as Puyi
John Lone plays the adult Puyi from approximately age fifteen through his death at sixty. The character must persuade as Manchu prince, puppet emperor, Japanese collaborator, Communist prisoner, and rehabilitated gardener across the runtime. Lone delivers all five tones without inconsistency. The performance sustains the film through identity transitions that conventional acting would have struggled to manage.
Lone was Chinese-American and played Puyi in English, a choice driven by international financing that needed English dialogue for global distribution.
It produces some awkward moments when Puyi speaks English with Chinese characters who would historically have spoken Chinese among themselves. The film treats the language as convention, and I stop noticing within minutes because Lone is that good. His performance is the heart of this film for me.
For Writers
Casting requirements can produce conventions audiences accept when performances succeed. The same applies to fiction. Implausible elements survive when other elements compensate sufficiently.
The Reeducation
In the film, Puyi goes through a decade-long imprisonment and reeducation under Chinese Communist authority.
The prison governor played by Ying Ruocheng treats Puyi as a man requiring rehabilitation instead of as enemy of state requiring punishment. The film depicts the reeducation process with considerable sympathy. Puyi gradually accepts his historical position, learns ordinary skills including gardening, and eventually becomes a contented worker. The treatment has been criticized as politically convenient to the Chinese government’s preferred historical narrative.
The reeducation, the film argues, produced a man capable of ordinary contentment after a lifetime bent out of shape by the throne. Puyi finds a peace tending chrysanthemums he never found on the throne. Critics are divided over whether that’s morally serious or politically compromised, and I think it’s both. I trust the prison years least. They feel smoothed over, and I’d have liked one scene showing what the process cost him.
For Writers
Politically complex material can produce divided reception that all positions can defend. The same applies to creative work. Material that audiences disagree about is sometimes operating effectively instead of failing.
Craft Note
Bernardo Bertolucci had directed The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972), and 1900 (1976) before The Last Emperor. His Italian-Marxist background influenced his approach to political and historical material throughout his career. The Last Emperor represented the apex of his international success. His later directors including The Sheltering Sky (1990) and Little Buddha (1993) extended the Asian-set epic mode he developed in The Last Emperor. Bertolucci died in 2018 having produced a highly distinctive directorial body of work in European cinema.
Is The Last Emperor as good as people say?
The Last Emperor is a 9 for me, and the palace earns most of it. Filming inside the Forbidden City gives it a weight no studio could fake, and John Lone carries Puyi through five lives without a false step. It misses a 10 because the reeducation chapters feel too tidy for what they depict, and the film seems content to let the politics blur. Watch it on the biggest screen you can find, for the throne rooms alone.
