His view of things has changed since he was in a wheelchair, said Bernardo Bertolucci. Now he is back on par with the children. "I do not have to pretend to find out how they see the world." As he spoke, he grinned mischievously. Then, almost elated, he rolled across the wide corridors of his London apartment. He wanted to show how agile he was.

That was in autumn 2013. Bertolucci's new movie "Me and You" came to German cinemas. The director, then 73, gave an interview in London and invited to his home. He had had back surgery about ten years earlier. She failed, from now on the director had to lead a life in a wheelchair. Actually, he thought to stop filmmaking and write poetry in the future, he said.

Then he came across Niccolò Ammanitis novel "Me and you", in which a 14-year-old secretly quarters in the basement of an apartment building. A chamber play, manageable, intimate. "I thought I should try that, I can fix that, I do not have to jump around and maybe I can understand a teenager better if I do not look down on him."

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On the death of Bernardo Bertolucci: overthrow and suppression

Bertolucci looked pleased as he talked for almost two hours about his life and movies. He became melancholy when he told how he had kissed the director Jean Renoir on the head and this smelled like his grandfather in the moment. He laughed loudly when he told how he had led Gérard Depardieu and Robert de Niro in his film "1900" (1976) to kick together stark naked in front of the camera. From time to time during the conversation Bertolucci's wife came in, the British director and scriptwriter Clare Peploe. She asked how he was doing and brought him cigarettes.

"My films have a lot to do with me," he said. "When I was shooting 'The Last Tango in Paris', I wanted to cross borders no matter how." And basically he still wants that. Some time ago he coined a new term: claustrophilia. Tightness should not be oppressive at all. Maybe true border crossings are possible anyway only in closed rooms.

Oriented to Sigmund Freud

Also "The Last Tango in Paris" (1972) was a chamber play. Bertolucci spoke of an American in his late thirties (Marlon Brando) and a half-old Frenchwoman (Maria Schneider) who start an affair in a vacant apartment. The sex scenes of the film caused a scandal, in Italy Brando and Bertolucci were convicted of "obscenity" to prison sentences on probation.

In one scene, Bertolucci shows Brando buttering Schneider's ass and hints that he penetrates her anal. Schneider later accused the director of abusing her. She had not been informed about the scene in advance. "I've never had the opportunity to ask her forgiveness," he said in London about the actress, who died in 2011, but sounded more dutiful than remorseful (read a text here on why repressive and progressive attitudes in "The Last Tango. .. "so close to each other.)

For Bertolucci, cinema was a voyeuristic art. Watching a movie is like watching your own parents having sex, was his dogma. A good movie shows the characters constantly in situations where nobody, "neither you nor me," would like to be watched by other people. The sharpest lenses available to him, according to Bertolucci, came from Sigmund Freud.

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The director's work is extremely influenced by psychoanalysis. Almost manically, he told of incestuous relationships, of sons who love their mothers and kill their fathers. For a quarter of a century, Bertolucci went to the analysis. At the "Last Tango", he even wanted to include his analyst in the opening credits that the screenplay was written "in large parts on the couch".

Originally he was born in Parma, Linker, son of a teacher and a writer. He grew up among peasants, but much more wanted to be part of the working class than the upper bourgeoisie. He was proud to tell in London how he was chatting away millions of dollars from an American movie studio to create a cinematic monument to Communism in "1900".

But presumably he was always too focused on his own obsessions to be a director of social utopias. His characters prefer to retire from the street and they can often be understood well. Bertolucci asks what we would do with our lives if we could avoid all authority. It shows what happens when people take all liberties.

That even goes down in the cellar, even in a wheelchair, he asserted and looked pretty convincing. "I did not go to Lourdes," he said goodbye. "But you see a happy man in front of you, shooting a film is simply pure luck for me, it does not matter that I'm in a wheelchair."