![]() It is of course the color of good fortune to the Chinese and BB captures it beautifully in this visual masterpiece whose thousands of other colors dazzle the constant watching eye. It seems to permeate the very film stock upon which the picture is shot. It is lacquered thick on the massive doors that hold the child-emperor, Pu Yi (John Lone) a veritable prisoner in his own kingdom. He must have because that color is so prominently displayed splashed heavily upon the walls of the immense buildings within the Forbidden City. I’m guessing Italian director, Bernardo Bertolucci can really tolerate the color red. “Alizarin crimson for those happy little banners!” Little thought would have been given to the quaint divertissement of watching movies. This in itself is innocuous enough but to realize that the picture was released on October 23, 1987, and the horrific stock market crash known as “Black Monday” occurred four days previous on the nineteenth probably had a little to do with the fact that as the economic world crashed to its knees, those of us laboring within the industry were running around like headless poultry trying to make sense out of it in the weeks after the disaster. I remember I was living in northern California at the time and worked at a mutual funds company. As I sat through the 219 minutes of the life of Emperor Pu Yi I had to ask myself, how in the world could a motion picture this big slip under my radar? I vaguely recall reports at the time of a Western movie given first-time access to be filmed in Beijing’s Forbidden City, but that was about all that got through. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Indeed, I’d heard so little about it in the ensuing twenty-four years since its inception that it arrived on my TV monitor the other night as something of a shock to me. The bio-pic, The Last Emperor was an award-winner I’d never seen up to this point in my life. A huge film lost in the aftermath of economic turmoil. ![]()
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