One of world cinema's most celebrated director's Bernard Bertolucci passed away on Monday aged 77 due to cancer. For the past ten years or so he had been confined to a wheelchair after an unsuccessful surgery on his back which rendered him unable to walk.

Bertolucci who enjoyed cult status in his home Italy shot to fame in Hollywood with sexually charged 'Last Tango in Paris' (1972) starring Hollywood great Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. But his greatest work remains 'The Last Emperor' the biopic of China's last Imperial ruler Pu Yi, won nine Oscars and is considered among the best films ever made.

In 2016 Bernard Bertolucci was in the news for the wrong reasons as part of the #Me Too movement Maria Schneider alleged that the director and Marlon Brando did not inform her of an anal sex scene and went ahead with it without taking her full consent. She was nineteen years old at that time.