Marx and Freud have dominated Bernardo Bertolucci's career, for better and worse. Better: Before the Revolution and Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man. Worse: 1900 and Luna. The twin deities apparently persuaded Bertolucci to choose his latest subject. The story of the Chinese emperor Pu Yi could hardly have swept Bertolucci off his feet as a drama. It's not a drama at all—Pu Yi was a victim, nothing more. But presumably the director saw a Freudian catalyst in the beginning of The Last Emperor and saw one face of Marxism in its conclusion, and these may have fixed him on the subject.

If the term “pathetic” can be applied to any emperor in world history, Pu Yi is the man. In 1908, at the age of three, he was taken from his high-born mother (who later killed herself) by his grandmother, the Dowager Empress, and brought to live in the Forbidden City, the huge imperial residence in Peking (as it then was). Within a few days the males between him and the throne died, and the child was named emperor. In 1912 a republic was declared, and the seven-year-old emperor abdicated. The child, now even more of a nominal ruler, wandered like a prisoner at large within the Forbidden City.

Marriage and concubines came along in time, as did expulsion from the palace and eventual residence in Manchuria, Pu Yi's place of origin. In 1931 the Japanese invaded Manchuria and established the empire of Manchukuo with Pu Yi as their puppet emperor—a front through whom they could rule. Pu Yi tried to establish parity with the Japanese and got into trouble. After the Second World War he and his wife wanted to flee to Japan but were intercepted by Soviet paratroopers and were turned over to the Chinese revolutionaries. Pu Yi then served ten years in a Chinese political prison at hard labor. When he was released, he worked as a gardener until his death in 1967.

The Freudian touches are of course the insecurities brought about by separation from his mother and by his loneliness as a child. We are even treated to some glimpses of his toilet training. His imprisonment at the end, during which he was not physically ill-treated, was seen by his Communist jailers as re-education so that, in time, he could take a useful place in society.

The sole personally initiated action in this long chronicle is his puny, quickly squelched rebellion against the Japanese. Everything else is reaction. Pu Yi's story isn't even poignant. Who can be moved by his story, who can think it sad? Edmond Rostand found some smidgen of poignancy in L'Aiglon, the story of Napoleon's son, who spent his short life trying to regain his father's throne, but even that story is now of diminished interest. Pu Yi is simply an eccentricity of history, worth a paragraph in the Reader's Digest, not a nearly three-hour film.

Apparently Bertolucci made it chiefly because he was empowered to make it. We're told that he approached the Chinese government with two projects to be done in China, Malraux's Man's Fate (once planned by Fred Zinnemann) and this story. The Chinese would not sanction the Malraux, so Bertolucci went ahead with this film rather than waste the chance to shoot in China. The questionable motive led to questionable filmmaking. The Last Emperor is slightly sophisticated De Mille, laden with sumptuous costumes and tours of the Forbidden City and mobs of people. Bertolucci had the use of extras on a scale far beyond the budget limits of Western filmmaking; it's a long time since I've seen such crowds on the screen, so many long lines of uniformed guards standing at attention. The Forbidden City is a prime travelogue subject, but neither the panoramas nor the choreographed crowds constitute a film.

The screenplay by the director and Mark Peploe tries to liven things up by cutting back and forth in time. The film begins in the Red Chinese prison, then goes to the three-year-old child and to other time planes, returning to the prison after flashbacks until it reaches “the present” and moves forward from the prison to the finish. This flitting doesn't help. When the puppet emperor's tennis game is interrupted by armed guards, there's no terror; when, in a dinner jacket, he sings “Am I Blue” at a lavish party, there's no humor; when, at the last, the bent old gardener buys a tourist's ticket of admission to his former palace, there's no pang. Even the very last bit, a guide taking American tourists through the throne room, is muffed, a toothless bite.

John Lone, the Chinese-American actor who was strange and forceful in Iceman, behaves credibly as (the adult) Pu Yi but has little chance to do anything other than behave credibly. Most of the roles are played by English-speaking Chinese actors, some of whom are effective. The only recognizable actor is Peter O'Toole, as the emperor's British tutor. O'Toole, looking much more than 20 years older than he looked in 1967, tries to give the role flavor by over-articulating—enouncing “Scotland” as “Scot-land,” for instance.

Bertolucci, hot or cold, extravagant or focused, was always visible in his films. Here he is invisible, swamped by pedestrian procedure. A controversial director has reached bottom—he has made a consistently boring film.