The Dreamers is truly a film for cinephiles. Any film where an American, a twin brother and sister watch films at one of the best arthouses in the world and then go back to their apartment for sex is truly every film geeks dream. But though The Dreamers may sound seamy it is certainly one of the most beautiful and touching films you will see this year. This is no small part due to its auteur director, Bernardo Bertolucci. Bertolucci has likened films to way Akira Kurosawa did, as dreams. That is certainly the way this film is. Set during the 1968 Paris student riots the trio is played by Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel and Eva Green, quote film as any film student would, race through the Louvre as the characters in Godards Band of Outsiders, have tense political discussions naked in the bath this is.
Bertolucci has never been one to shy away from exposing both the inner and outer beauty and flaws of his characters. He is most famous for Maria Schneiders tense nude scenes with Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris, the spit he blew in the face of politicians with his film The Conformist in 1970 and the story of the final Emperor of China in the multiple Oscar winning The Last Emperor. He continues his work of delving into the human body and soul with the male and female full frontal scenes in The Dreamers that caused this film to be labeled with an NC-17.
The Dreamers opens this Friday in New York and LA.
Daniel Robert Epstein: In the movie the main characters constantly go to Cinematheque Francaise where they see films by masters of cinema. They could have very well been going to see your films. Did you see the irony there?
Bernardo Bertolucci: Yeah in fact I met [Henri] Langlois in 1965 or 66 and I saw this huge screen which occupied the whole room. I asked Langlois, why is it so big? He said it was because of those Fellini films because suddenly the shot go up, right, then down and we have to be ready so the screen is very big. He was really an extraordinary teacher like Socrates. In the sense that the movies he was showing were so important in the creation of the New Wave from Goddard, Truffaut, Rohmer and blah blah. To go there was really giving a shape to the love and passion for cinema. So thats why I started with the event because everything that happened afterward started with Langlois, started with cinema. But at the Cinematheque it was the first time that the police were so aggressive and violent with students, young people, intellectuals and film directors who were just showing their solidarity with Langlois. Then big riots for the first time went to Rome, Germany, Berkeley, Columbia University and at Kent some kids were killed. But for me all these events, which happened in a global way without internet, fax machines or anything it was just this fantastic magic element that spread. It all started at the Cinematheque and they all had this quality of cinema of dreams, cinema to me is like dreams.
DRE: What attracted you to this particular story?
BB: When I read it, I had a feeling when I saw Jean Cocteaus Les Enfants Terribles [released in 1950] this complicated relationship between the twins. Theres something Cocteau said With this [movie] I want to make lightness the gravity which I remembered during the shooting of this movie. I had to be light and at the same time intense. If I think of eroticism in Last Tango I see something dark, heavy and tragic because it was about very destructive characters. In The Dreamers I see something very light and very joyous.
DRE: Do you ever feel like youre the last of a dying breed making films that matter that as interesting intellectually as they are visually?
BB: I hope Im not the last one though it is a possibility.
DRE: Even if you dont like the movie it works on so many different levels.
BB: Yes but if I look at Wong Kar Wai, PT Anderson or [David] Lynch, I see the same kind of quality. There is no difference than say the New Wave. I always considered myself part of the New Wave even though I am Italian. Because when I started in 1962 Italian cinema was like the decaying of New Realism. New Realism had finished its great run in the late 40s and 50s and now Italy was being taken over by Italian comedy. In France you had this extraordinary movement that was like a big wave called the New Wave [laughs]. So I felt much closer to that. Maybe thats why I went to Paris to shoot The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris. Could it have been done in Vienna? I dont know.
DRE: How do you think the young people in The Dreamers reflect on the youth of today?
BB: I think that the three of them are absolutely kids of today. I didnt even want them to try and find out how kids walked or acted in 1968. They wanted to be themselves of today taken with me and the camera is a like a time machine to 1968.
DRE: In a way you are infusing kids of today with 1968.
BB: Doing a period movie is like doing an illustration of a period which will be according to the production and costume designer. What I wanted was more of an umbilical cord between now and 1968. For example the ending with the police charge has been manipulated digitally. It was originally shorter but made longer using different takes because in 2001 at the G8 meeting in Genoa, Italy there were a great number of protesters and the police were very aggressive. So I wanted to show an affinity for that. The fact is today kids know nothing about 1968. While I was casting, especially in Paris, I was trying to understand why the parents of the kids who were auditioning hadnt told their children anything about 1968. Then I understood because they think 1968 was a failure. Now I think they are completely wrong. Life after 1968 was completely different because the relationship between people had completely changed. I remember well, life before 1968; in every town you saw some authority everywhere. After 1968, for example, men and womens relationship started to change. It was 1968 that triggered the liberation. So its wrong to consider it a failure. I was thinking today the paradox was irresistible. So in the film Matthew, the young American, refused the violence, and the young French throws a Molotov cocktail toward the police. Today the young Americans have to go to fight the war and the French refuse to go to war. So it was absolutely the opposite of what was going on in 1968.
DRE: Do you think freedom of expression had grown since you made Last Tango in Paris in 1972?
BB: In 1972, Last Tango in Paris was able to open because I cut five symbolic seconds. For The Dreamers we had a deal to deliver an R-rated movie so in the end I had to accept that. I had to suffer a bit and go to the cutting room and do some trims. Then looking at the film altered I found it was, if anything, more obscene than the original. I dont consider the naked body obscene so when you go and cover the naked body then it becomes titillating and obscene.
DRE: Even though you are Bernardo Bertolucci, were any of the actors reticent to do the nude scenes?
BB: No because it was clear from the beginning. I remember telling them, there are two important things, one I want you to remember you are going to sleep in 1968 knowing that we would wake, not tomorrow, but in the future. It was an incredible sense of future which means hope to change and better the world. The second thing I told them is that within two weeks you have to move into the apartment and be naked and be as if you were not naked. After the first or second day the crew wasnt even looking at them.
DRE: Could you talk about the casting of Michael Pitt?
BB: The casting of Michael Pitt took place at two different times. First I saw him in New York because I went to LA and New York looking for a young American actor. In general at that age, 20 to 21, there arent many very well known actors. I saw him and I liked him but then in London I saw another actor named Jake Gyllenhaal. I liked him very much and I decided to go with him. But immediately I knew it would be a nightmare because [Jake Gyllenhaal] was terrified by nudity. I dont blame him because I am exactly like him, I could never do it. Then when I understood it was impossible with him I wanted again to see the boy with the big lips, Michael Pitt. We looked at him in the movie Bully and the movie by Barbet [Schroeder director of Murder by Numbers]. Immediately I went back to that idea of Michael. I found that his lips and mouth, a bit too sexy, maybe even feminine. This is why, when we were shooting, I added a line when the three of them are in the bathroom, theyre still getting to know one another and the girl tries to put lipstick on Michaels lips, making fun of him saying, Oh, you look wonderful with lipstick. It was a kind of in-joke.
DRE: After all these years do you take more pleasure in filming a female or a male body?
BB: I never thought about it. There isnt much difference. Of course when I shoot a boy there is always a kind of narcissism because you identify with him. Thats the only difference.
DRE: Its been said that you want to continue the story you started with the film 1900 [released in 1976]. Where do you see those characters now and what's the latest on that project?
BB: I tried to do it, but it was impossible and so I didn't go very much into the project. It was impossible because Italy is so different now from the political and ideological atmosphere when we made the movie in 1975. You can see the difference. So I could have done it, but it would have been a complete forgery, a fake because 1900 was born in a country with extraordinary political passion.
DRE: Is there another era you'd like to explore?
BB: At the moment, no. I don't know what I want to do tomorrow. Right now Im busy promoting The Dreamers but the day after tomorrow I don't know. I don't have plans for the future.
DRE: So no film lined up?
BB: I had one, but then I decided to dump it. So now I'm waiting not to choose, but to be chosen.
DRE: Were you worried about how the rating of NC-17 might limit the release of this film?
BB: At the beginning I thought Fox Searchlight did not want to go out with an NC-17 because of those limitations. But then they explained that NC-17 is not like having an X. Apart from very few places, no exhibitors have problems with NC-17. Grown-ups have the right to see movies for grown-ups. Very recently I'd heard that the movie couldn't be shown in this country in its entirety. It sounded too strange for the only country in the world to cut the movie is the United States and probably Iran. Then I was happy because I think it is a good precedent for other companies. They'll now be encouraged to release movies that maybe wouldn't be released here. I think in the end there was more than just respect for my work. The media would have been attacking them because the United States would be the only country where people could not see this film.
DRE: How did you find Louis Garrel who played, Theo, the brother?
BB: He's an actor I found on the first day at the first session of casting in Paris. He entered the room and I immediately knew. He looked a bit like you'd see in certain neoclassical paintings. Then I discovered that he is the son of a colleague, [film director] Philippe Garrel. That's how I found him.
DRE: How did you tell the brother and sister to play their parts?
BB: I know that in the screenplay, as in the book by Gilbert Adair, there's a homosexual relationship between Theo and Matthew the American kid. But I thought there was already so much material in the film that to add that would have been too much. I've been told so many times that my movies are redundant or too full. During the shoot we decided to cut Louis Garrels part down. So it remains a projection of something that could have been there. The relationship between him and Matthew is now more subtle.
DRE: Was there ever incest between the brother and the sister?
BB: No, no, no. How can somebody call it incest, the relationship between two creatures that were together in the womb for nine months? They are twins. They grew together in the first months and then the first years. They're reflected in each other, seeing themselves all the time and then you see that the girl was a virgin. So it's not incest. It's more about twins and it's even more interesting that Eva Green has a twin sister so she knew what the experience is like.
DRE: How is this film personal for you?
BB: It is like all my movies, just a piece of my life. Maybe I have a very vivid memory of those days. I was attracted by the violent coups and on the other hand, I was very much against violence. In fact, Im a completely nonviolent person in the sense of physical violence. Thats why I decided to go to the apartment in The Dreamers. To be there was like going into memory and trying to recreate that moment which was magic.
DRE: You mentioned you watched Michael Pitt in Bully. What did you think of that film?
BB: I thought Bully was extremely strong and an interesting film about kids in this country. Another beautiful example is Gus Van Sants Elephant. It strikes me and it shocks me. These kids have this violent aggression and you do not understand the immediate reason. Apparently, there is not a reason. That creates suspicion. When I was talking with the ratings commission I asked them why they're always so strict with sexuality and so liberal with violence. They told me there are the parents associations in America who are partners with the ratings commission. Those parents think that children will emulate movies with sex and with violence they don't. But think of Columbine and there are so many more examples in this country. Schools have metal detectors when the kids enter, it's so strange.
DRE: How do you reflect on working with a man like Marlon Brando?
BB: I think I fell completely in love with him, because I felt that it was a challenge to have Marlon be different from the Marlon that I had seen in all of his famous movies. I remember that I told him, I would like to take away the mask, the persona that you show in all your movies. I want you as you are when were talking amongst ourselves. He gave me one of his smiles. He was extraordinarily easy to work with. I was told It will be a nightmare and that hes impossible. He was the opposite. Since I did Last Tango in Paris I never found somebody so modest, easy and ready to do everything. So it really depends on the relationship between two people. Part of the challenge was to take Marlon, or to let Marlon take me, into the depth of his tormented nature. He gave me things that probably afterward he wasnt sure it was right to give. He gave me the flesh without the skin and he gave me the violence of that character. We are still on very good terms and we speak once or twice a year. Long, long conversations.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Bertolucci has never been one to shy away from exposing both the inner and outer beauty and flaws of his characters. He is most famous for Maria Schneiders tense nude scenes with Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris, the spit he blew in the face of politicians with his film The Conformist in 1970 and the story of the final Emperor of China in the multiple Oscar winning The Last Emperor. He continues his work of delving into the human body and soul with the male and female full frontal scenes in The Dreamers that caused this film to be labeled with an NC-17.
The Dreamers opens this Friday in New York and LA.
Daniel Robert Epstein: In the movie the main characters constantly go to Cinematheque Francaise where they see films by masters of cinema. They could have very well been going to see your films. Did you see the irony there?
Bernardo Bertolucci: Yeah in fact I met [Henri] Langlois in 1965 or 66 and I saw this huge screen which occupied the whole room. I asked Langlois, why is it so big? He said it was because of those Fellini films because suddenly the shot go up, right, then down and we have to be ready so the screen is very big. He was really an extraordinary teacher like Socrates. In the sense that the movies he was showing were so important in the creation of the New Wave from Goddard, Truffaut, Rohmer and blah blah. To go there was really giving a shape to the love and passion for cinema. So thats why I started with the event because everything that happened afterward started with Langlois, started with cinema. But at the Cinematheque it was the first time that the police were so aggressive and violent with students, young people, intellectuals and film directors who were just showing their solidarity with Langlois. Then big riots for the first time went to Rome, Germany, Berkeley, Columbia University and at Kent some kids were killed. But for me all these events, which happened in a global way without internet, fax machines or anything it was just this fantastic magic element that spread. It all started at the Cinematheque and they all had this quality of cinema of dreams, cinema to me is like dreams.
DRE: What attracted you to this particular story?
BB: When I read it, I had a feeling when I saw Jean Cocteaus Les Enfants Terribles [released in 1950] this complicated relationship between the twins. Theres something Cocteau said With this [movie] I want to make lightness the gravity which I remembered during the shooting of this movie. I had to be light and at the same time intense. If I think of eroticism in Last Tango I see something dark, heavy and tragic because it was about very destructive characters. In The Dreamers I see something very light and very joyous.
DRE: Do you ever feel like youre the last of a dying breed making films that matter that as interesting intellectually as they are visually?
BB: I hope Im not the last one though it is a possibility.
DRE: Even if you dont like the movie it works on so many different levels.
BB: Yes but if I look at Wong Kar Wai, PT Anderson or [David] Lynch, I see the same kind of quality. There is no difference than say the New Wave. I always considered myself part of the New Wave even though I am Italian. Because when I started in 1962 Italian cinema was like the decaying of New Realism. New Realism had finished its great run in the late 40s and 50s and now Italy was being taken over by Italian comedy. In France you had this extraordinary movement that was like a big wave called the New Wave [laughs]. So I felt much closer to that. Maybe thats why I went to Paris to shoot The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris. Could it have been done in Vienna? I dont know.
DRE: How do you think the young people in The Dreamers reflect on the youth of today?
BB: I think that the three of them are absolutely kids of today. I didnt even want them to try and find out how kids walked or acted in 1968. They wanted to be themselves of today taken with me and the camera is a like a time machine to 1968.
DRE: In a way you are infusing kids of today with 1968.
BB: Doing a period movie is like doing an illustration of a period which will be according to the production and costume designer. What I wanted was more of an umbilical cord between now and 1968. For example the ending with the police charge has been manipulated digitally. It was originally shorter but made longer using different takes because in 2001 at the G8 meeting in Genoa, Italy there were a great number of protesters and the police were very aggressive. So I wanted to show an affinity for that. The fact is today kids know nothing about 1968. While I was casting, especially in Paris, I was trying to understand why the parents of the kids who were auditioning hadnt told their children anything about 1968. Then I understood because they think 1968 was a failure. Now I think they are completely wrong. Life after 1968 was completely different because the relationship between people had completely changed. I remember well, life before 1968; in every town you saw some authority everywhere. After 1968, for example, men and womens relationship started to change. It was 1968 that triggered the liberation. So its wrong to consider it a failure. I was thinking today the paradox was irresistible. So in the film Matthew, the young American, refused the violence, and the young French throws a Molotov cocktail toward the police. Today the young Americans have to go to fight the war and the French refuse to go to war. So it was absolutely the opposite of what was going on in 1968.
DRE: Do you think freedom of expression had grown since you made Last Tango in Paris in 1972?
BB: In 1972, Last Tango in Paris was able to open because I cut five symbolic seconds. For The Dreamers we had a deal to deliver an R-rated movie so in the end I had to accept that. I had to suffer a bit and go to the cutting room and do some trims. Then looking at the film altered I found it was, if anything, more obscene than the original. I dont consider the naked body obscene so when you go and cover the naked body then it becomes titillating and obscene.
DRE: Even though you are Bernardo Bertolucci, were any of the actors reticent to do the nude scenes?
BB: No because it was clear from the beginning. I remember telling them, there are two important things, one I want you to remember you are going to sleep in 1968 knowing that we would wake, not tomorrow, but in the future. It was an incredible sense of future which means hope to change and better the world. The second thing I told them is that within two weeks you have to move into the apartment and be naked and be as if you were not naked. After the first or second day the crew wasnt even looking at them.
DRE: Could you talk about the casting of Michael Pitt?
BB: The casting of Michael Pitt took place at two different times. First I saw him in New York because I went to LA and New York looking for a young American actor. In general at that age, 20 to 21, there arent many very well known actors. I saw him and I liked him but then in London I saw another actor named Jake Gyllenhaal. I liked him very much and I decided to go with him. But immediately I knew it would be a nightmare because [Jake Gyllenhaal] was terrified by nudity. I dont blame him because I am exactly like him, I could never do it. Then when I understood it was impossible with him I wanted again to see the boy with the big lips, Michael Pitt. We looked at him in the movie Bully and the movie by Barbet [Schroeder director of Murder by Numbers]. Immediately I went back to that idea of Michael. I found that his lips and mouth, a bit too sexy, maybe even feminine. This is why, when we were shooting, I added a line when the three of them are in the bathroom, theyre still getting to know one another and the girl tries to put lipstick on Michaels lips, making fun of him saying, Oh, you look wonderful with lipstick. It was a kind of in-joke.
DRE: After all these years do you take more pleasure in filming a female or a male body?
BB: I never thought about it. There isnt much difference. Of course when I shoot a boy there is always a kind of narcissism because you identify with him. Thats the only difference.
DRE: Its been said that you want to continue the story you started with the film 1900 [released in 1976]. Where do you see those characters now and what's the latest on that project?
BB: I tried to do it, but it was impossible and so I didn't go very much into the project. It was impossible because Italy is so different now from the political and ideological atmosphere when we made the movie in 1975. You can see the difference. So I could have done it, but it would have been a complete forgery, a fake because 1900 was born in a country with extraordinary political passion.
DRE: Is there another era you'd like to explore?
BB: At the moment, no. I don't know what I want to do tomorrow. Right now Im busy promoting The Dreamers but the day after tomorrow I don't know. I don't have plans for the future.
DRE: So no film lined up?
BB: I had one, but then I decided to dump it. So now I'm waiting not to choose, but to be chosen.
DRE: Were you worried about how the rating of NC-17 might limit the release of this film?
BB: At the beginning I thought Fox Searchlight did not want to go out with an NC-17 because of those limitations. But then they explained that NC-17 is not like having an X. Apart from very few places, no exhibitors have problems with NC-17. Grown-ups have the right to see movies for grown-ups. Very recently I'd heard that the movie couldn't be shown in this country in its entirety. It sounded too strange for the only country in the world to cut the movie is the United States and probably Iran. Then I was happy because I think it is a good precedent for other companies. They'll now be encouraged to release movies that maybe wouldn't be released here. I think in the end there was more than just respect for my work. The media would have been attacking them because the United States would be the only country where people could not see this film.
DRE: How did you find Louis Garrel who played, Theo, the brother?
BB: He's an actor I found on the first day at the first session of casting in Paris. He entered the room and I immediately knew. He looked a bit like you'd see in certain neoclassical paintings. Then I discovered that he is the son of a colleague, [film director] Philippe Garrel. That's how I found him.
DRE: How did you tell the brother and sister to play their parts?
BB: I know that in the screenplay, as in the book by Gilbert Adair, there's a homosexual relationship between Theo and Matthew the American kid. But I thought there was already so much material in the film that to add that would have been too much. I've been told so many times that my movies are redundant or too full. During the shoot we decided to cut Louis Garrels part down. So it remains a projection of something that could have been there. The relationship between him and Matthew is now more subtle.
DRE: Was there ever incest between the brother and the sister?
BB: No, no, no. How can somebody call it incest, the relationship between two creatures that were together in the womb for nine months? They are twins. They grew together in the first months and then the first years. They're reflected in each other, seeing themselves all the time and then you see that the girl was a virgin. So it's not incest. It's more about twins and it's even more interesting that Eva Green has a twin sister so she knew what the experience is like.
DRE: How is this film personal for you?
BB: It is like all my movies, just a piece of my life. Maybe I have a very vivid memory of those days. I was attracted by the violent coups and on the other hand, I was very much against violence. In fact, Im a completely nonviolent person in the sense of physical violence. Thats why I decided to go to the apartment in The Dreamers. To be there was like going into memory and trying to recreate that moment which was magic.
DRE: You mentioned you watched Michael Pitt in Bully. What did you think of that film?
BB: I thought Bully was extremely strong and an interesting film about kids in this country. Another beautiful example is Gus Van Sants Elephant. It strikes me and it shocks me. These kids have this violent aggression and you do not understand the immediate reason. Apparently, there is not a reason. That creates suspicion. When I was talking with the ratings commission I asked them why they're always so strict with sexuality and so liberal with violence. They told me there are the parents associations in America who are partners with the ratings commission. Those parents think that children will emulate movies with sex and with violence they don't. But think of Columbine and there are so many more examples in this country. Schools have metal detectors when the kids enter, it's so strange.
DRE: How do you reflect on working with a man like Marlon Brando?
BB: I think I fell completely in love with him, because I felt that it was a challenge to have Marlon be different from the Marlon that I had seen in all of his famous movies. I remember that I told him, I would like to take away the mask, the persona that you show in all your movies. I want you as you are when were talking amongst ourselves. He gave me one of his smiles. He was extraordinarily easy to work with. I was told It will be a nightmare and that hes impossible. He was the opposite. Since I did Last Tango in Paris I never found somebody so modest, easy and ready to do everything. So it really depends on the relationship between two people. Part of the challenge was to take Marlon, or to let Marlon take me, into the depth of his tormented nature. He gave me things that probably afterward he wasnt sure it was right to give. He gave me the flesh without the skin and he gave me the violence of that character. We are still on very good terms and we speak once or twice a year. Long, long conversations.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
[Edited on Feb 08, 2004 by messyboy]
[Edited on Jul 24, 2004 by AndersWolleck]