The Last Emperor is an Academy Award-winning feature film about Pu Yi, the last emperor of China. Written by Mark Peploe and co-written and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, The Last Emperor received nine Oscars and was voted Best Picture in 1987. The film opens in 1950 with Pu Yi's re-entry into the just-proclaimed People's Republic of China. He is a prisoner and war criminal, captured when the Soviet Union entered the Pacific War in 1945. Pu Yi attempts suicide which only renders him unconscious, and in a flashback, he relives his first entry into the Forbidden City. Pu Yi's remarkable story is told through a series of chronological flashbacks beginning with his early life and upbringing in the Forbidden City, his brother's childish challenge to his status of Emperor and his arranged marriage. In the flash-forward to his prison life, Pu Yi is interrogated and shown newsreels of Japanese war crimes in Manchuria and the defeat of Japan, and he realizes his need to assume responsibility for his complicity in Japanese atrocities. The film stars John Lone as Pu Yi and also features Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole and Ric Young.
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