Italian film director Bernardo Bertolucci dies aged 77

Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director famous for movies such as “Last Tango in Paris” and “The Last Emperor”, has died at 77, Italian media reported on Monday.

Bertolucci had been ill and died at his home in Rome, media reports said.

Considered as one of the giants of Italian and world cinema, he won an honorary Palme d’Or for his life’s work at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Bertolucci was the only Italian ever to win the Oscar for best film, snapping up the award in 1988 for “The Last Emperor”.

The biographical masterpiece about the last Chinese emperor won a total of nine Oscars, all of those for which it was nominated.

But he acquired notoriety for his 1972 erotic drama “Last Tango In Paris” starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider which featured a controversial rape scene.

Born in Parma, northeastern Italy, in 1941, Bertolucci made films that were often highly politicised, dealing with workers’ struggles in “1900” or the fate of left-wingers in fascist Italy in “The Conformist”.