The Last Emperor suicide, but is quickly revived and told he must stand trial. 42 years earlier, in 1908, a toddler Puyi is summoned to the Forbidden City by the dying Empress Dowager Cixi. After telling him that the previous emperor had died earlier that day, with her last words, Cixi tells Puyi that he will be the next emperor. After his coronation, Puyi, frightened by his new surroundings, repeatedly expresses his wish to go home, which is denied. Despite having scores of palace eunuchs and maids to wait on him, his only real friend is his wet nurse, Ar Mo, who accompanied
The Last Emperor of the Sun teaches us something about the inside of one director's brain. The Last Emperor incidentally and secondarily does that too; but it also teaches us something about the lives of a billion people with whom we share this planet—and better yet, makes us want to learn still more about them." At the 60th Academy Awards, the film won all nine Oscars for which it was nominated: In Japan, the Shochiku Fuji Company edited out a thirty-second sequence from "The Last Emperor" depicting the Rape of Nanjing before distributing it to Japanese theatres, without Bertolucci's consent. The Rape of