Shadowing Practice: Bernardo Bertolucci interview (1994) - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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In 1973, Bernardo Bertolucci turned the cinematic world upside down with the premiere of Last Tango in Paris.
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The New Yorker's Pauline Kael said the then 32 -year -old director had, quote, quote, altered the face of an art form.
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But Bertolucci would spend the next 14 years largely unappreciated by the critics and audiences.
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Then, in 1987, he made the epic Last Emperor, which won nine Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
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Bertolucci next went to the Sahara to film The Sheltering Sky.
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Then, for his new $30 million epic Little Buddha, Bernardo Bertolucci spent over two years with Buddhist lamas filming in Nepal and Kathmandu.
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Today's New York Times calls Little Buddha A Dazzling Mixture of Buddhist Thought and Cinematic Fireworks.
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It opens today, and we're pleased to have the director here with us.
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Welcome.
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Do you see this as a kind of trilogy for you, as people are talking about some people looking for nice little ways to wrap it up,
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view this coming after The Emperor
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and Children's Sky as sort of the trilogy about your own journey into Eastern religions and into Asian thought?
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When I did The Last Temple, I didn't know that that was the first part of the trilogy.
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But, you know, it was the beginning of the 80s.
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I had a great trouble to do movies in Italy because even if it was a moment of great economic boom,
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in Italy there was such a smell of corruption and everything which goes with corruption,
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which is especially cynicism, which I didn't feel inspired so I said I want to go as far as possible.
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In fact, a year ago when this trial started in Italy called Clean Hand, you know, the judge in Milan,
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so I thought maybe I wasn't so wrong about the state of my country.
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So I went as far as possible.
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I went to China and it was the first experience in the East and every completely, how can I say, victim of a kind of oriental temptation.
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Well, tell me what you mean.
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That to be able to see China not yet involved with consumerism as it was in 84
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when I went for the first time.
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I think now it's completely different.
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Less consumerism?
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Oh, yes.
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You're talking about China or are you talking about Tibet or everywhere?
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I'm talking about China in 84.
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Now, today, there is an incredible boom also there.
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But that was the eternal China, the one I met.
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And then today, of course, I mean, Little Buddha is shot in Nepal and Bhutan.
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Anyway, I felt like going, looking for something different.
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And I found it, I think.
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But what did you find?
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Many things.
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It's difficult to resume and to synthesize the experience of discovering the East.
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For me, I mean, somebody else knows this, but for me it was a great discovery.
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For example, I think Little Buddha is a bit the synthesis of things that I understood and I learned, especially with the last temple in the Chinese experience.
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For example, how they refer to individuals.
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How we refer to individuals in the West and how they think the individual is in the East.
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here we have to come out from the masses we have to have a bigger name in the credits
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and all this
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and there is a kind of great I mean we are
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able to develop our egos like big monuments in the East
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in China especially I've seen people being very happy in a
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kind of collective harmony to make to give an example
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while I was visiting the Forbidden City at the beginning of
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the pre -production of the last emperor with the Chinese guys
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I was asking all the time who has done this who is the architect of this beautiful pavilion
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or the sculpture of this
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sculpture this turtle or this fresco the painters
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and with a smile the Chinese were saying Ming Dynasty 1230
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the 16th Qing Dynasty no names no names of artists it
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was a fantastic lesson in Buddhism they talk a lot about the ego And for Buddhists,
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the ego is one of the major enemies within us.
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Have you become Buddhist?
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Oh, no. I mean, I'm a...
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I know you have enormous curiosity about it, but you spent time with the Dalai Lama.
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Yeah, of course.
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I went to see the Dalai Lama at the beginning of this project, the very beginning.
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In preparing for this film.
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Yes.
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I wanted to tell him that there was the danger that a non -Buddhist like me...
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He was preparing a movie about Buddhism.
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And with this resistible Tibetan smile, the Dalai Lama said, go ahead.
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You will have all the needed detachment, being a non -Buddhist.
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By the way, detachment is a Buddhist quality.
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And then he said, why do you want to call it Little Buddha?
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And I said, because I would like to be able to do a movie that for the first time in my life, even children can see.
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and I thought that also grown -ups in the West, I think that we are children when we talk of Buddhism,
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we are so ignorant about this incredibly sophisticated philosophy.
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And he said something I really liked, he said, you know, I think there is a little Buddha in all of us, which is this idea of Buddhahood that the Buddhists have,
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that each one of us has the potential Buddhity inside, Buddhahood inside.
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I mean, but it's asleep.
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Tell me a little bit about the notion, is the story, tell us the story first, and then I want to...
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At the beginning there was an idea of doing a movie about the life of Buddha.
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Then I thought I'm more interested in seeing the confrontation between
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the thoughts of a man who lived 2 ,500 years ago with our reality, our present, our days.
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So I found this story of this...
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So you had two ideas you needed to marry, one contemporary...
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Yeah, the present and the past, and how Buddhism has a resonance in the present, today.
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So I have this old Tibetan Lama going to...
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Lama being teacher?
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I mean teacher, guru, yeah.
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Going to Seattle because he heard that maybe there is a boy who is the reincarnation of his old teacher,
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his own Lama, who died nine years ago, exactly when the little boy was born and and then
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so this little kid wants to know what's about what's all about
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and so the old lama tells the story of Siddhartha
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which is a young prince
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which will become Buddha as a fairy tale as a fable to the little boy
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and so you have this contrast between the present and the past and
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and the past part is this young prince in his summer
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palace somebody was never able to go out of his palace
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to walk out of his palace he's there in a kind of wonderful golden cage
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and one day will walk up he will wake up
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and he will walk out of the palace
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and we learn the meaning of words like suffering old age
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sickness death let me take a look here is this is
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a you may want to set this up the clip we'll
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see from little buddha is where buddha greets the city oh
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yeah this is what i was telling about the moment
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when he goes out of his golden cage all right out of his palace here it is rotate
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and how much how accurate is the story and with respect to buddha you know um the youth of buddha
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the young buddha prince siddhartha it's a legend
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and there is really no iconography about so in In some way we were lost,
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on the other way we were very free visually to invent.
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Speaking of visual, Vittorio Storaro was your cinematographer.
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Did he also do The Emperor?
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Yes, he's done all my movies since 1969.
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What does he bring to your film?
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What is the genius of a cameraman or a cinematographer because you paint on such a broad canvas in these films?
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You know, we grew up together in some way.
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I started very, very young, and Vittorio, in 1963 -4, when I did Before the Revolution, which is one of my first movies, I was, I don't know,
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23 years old, was the focus puller.
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Then in 69, he had become a director of photography, and we went through the years together.
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So there is a kind of communal growing up together.
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So what he brings?
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Let's say that he's like my own private painter who is able to give with his lightning the colors,
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the shadows, the light to my shots
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so it's really my conscious of colors my conscious of light
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and shadows and then and you know we know each other
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so well that now when we start to do a movie we discuss
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and I tell him how I think we should the perspective we should have on on the visual effects
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and then we are we know each other so
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that we can communicate just without speaking looking at each other
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and it's as you know it's an important collaboration and I think
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that cinema you know I come from poetry I was writing poetry
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which is the most loneliness of all languages cinema is really
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based on collaboration cinema is really based on the fact
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that the director is able to stimulate the creativity of his collaborators speaking of poetry your father's a great poet
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yeah did you go into film because you were looking for something to do that would not be in competition
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with your father yeah you caught me i mean i started to write poems
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when i was six seven when i started to write
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because it was in the family it wanted to be a point yeah
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and like i don't know in the family of a carpenter children worked wood and
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when i was 16 17 i started to think my god
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this is not mine this is not my language this is not my expression is my father
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and i've been given a 16 mil i was 16
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so 16 years old and i did i've done my little first 10 minutes
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film and i then i was sure i would have been a film director and
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a friend of my father was pierre parlo pasolini yeah
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and i remember that the in 1960 he did his first film he met me said
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that you want to do the movie why don't you come with me you will be my assistant
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and that was a fantastic experience to see pasolini who was a writer becoming a film director
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while i was already a cinephile i mean i was a movie girl he wasn't and
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so i saw pier paulo inventing cinema it's like seeing griffith
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i mean it's like seeing somebody who discovers yeah like like discovering cinema
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so Pierpaolo once said that let's put down the dolly track
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and that was the first dolly of history of cinema because it was done by somebody who didn't have a cinema
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experience and that was extraordinary who else has influenced you whose work as a filmmaker
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you know i am a not a very old man
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but i'm an ancient filmmaker because i started in 62 so it's more than 32 years.
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I really think that my great love in the 60s
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when cinema was something very special was Jean -Luc Godard and some of the French directors.
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Why those French directors?
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Because there was a mutation in cinema and they were the authors of this mutation.
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Cinema has changed there is a cinema before Godard
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and after Godard in some way and I was how was it different after Godard
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that all the way of rethinking cinema let's say in the 60s Godard
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and all is kind of say since we are in Buddhism
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I said devotees instead of followers I wouldn't say normally
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and we wanted to tell a story
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but we we also wanted to to analyze with our movie movies what cinema is
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so cinema was a story characters
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but also the conscious of conscience of cinema I remember saying
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that a Dolly track movement of a pan of 360 degrees was an affair de morale,
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something regarding morality and style was so important, style and politics.
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It was about 20 years ago, as I remember, 73 when Last Tango in Paris came out.
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Yeah, that was already after 10, 12 years I started.
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Did you have some sense when you rapped
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that you had something special there that would be heralded not just by Pauline Kael
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but others as some kind of landmark movie
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and landmark performance by Brando you know I think I'm the
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only the last one to know what I'm what I have done and
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because I work in a state kind of trance in some
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way I mean I need to go to the cutting room to start to understand what the movie is
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because and that's where it happens for you more than directing the shots
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but it happens to you when you put it together in the editing room? For you?
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I mean, directing is the letting out the beautiful chaos and the editing is to put order in the chaos.
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Yeah. And...
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So directing is creating chaos and editing is putting order into the chaos.
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And editing is finding the reason within the chaos and the reason why.
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And you don't see the order when you're making, when you're creating the chaos as out on the location?
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No. I mean...
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It's almost like you're creating the colors
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that you can later bring together you know there is always
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a kind of attempt to balance what is written on the script
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and what life gives me i remember meeting jean renoir in
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something like 10 20 years ago in 74 in hollywood he was eight years old he was an incredible
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mind about cinema because he was speaking uh like goddard so he he had our experience in the 30s Anyway, he told me something.
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He said, il faut toujours laisser la porte ouverte.
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You have always to leave the door open on the set.
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One door open, he said. Because.
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Somebody can come in.
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You weren't expecting.
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And that is life intruding to cinema, and this is very important.
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So to balance always the fiction and life, in fact, for example, the performance of Marlon in Last Dangle,
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it's very much behind the mask of Marlon, behind the kind of actor -studio mask that we have seen in all his movies.
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So I told him just two months ago, I met him again, and that I thought that there was a lot of himself and he smiled at me,
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you think that it was really me?
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But, I mean...
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And what did you say?
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You tell him you thought it was a lot of him?
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I thought it was, but I know that it was him if he was lying.
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Even if he was lying, it was.
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Yeah, it was, yeah.
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Yeah.
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How brilliant was his performance in your judgment in the last tango?
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Oh, I think that, first of all, I had the privilege of having Marlon in front of my camera different from,
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in general, his other movies, because he was like forgetting his mask, forgetting his usual Brando persona,
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and giving me something new.
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So I think that he was another great collaborator, you know.
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What's next for you now?
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I mean, do you, now that you've completed this trilogy.
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I think I want to go back to Italy.
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Even though the political tenor there is quite different from one that I would think that would appeal to you.
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I mean, Berlusconi is not your seemingly prime minister.
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No, you know, Italy for the first time has voted right wing.
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I've got 30 seconds, but go ahead.
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Right wing, yes.
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And we always said center, center, left in Italy.
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For the first time, there is a right wing.
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And I think that it's good to remind the Italians of what right wing means.
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It's like if the Italians have lost their historical memory.
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And to have a reminder, and I think I will do a third part of the movie called 1900, which was ending in 45, between 45 and today.
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Wow.
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All right.
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I'm pleased to meet you.
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Bernardo Bertolucci, Little Buddha, opens around the country.
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As we go out, we'll see a clip from that.
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I thank you again for coming here.
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Thank you, Tom.
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Look forward to seeing you again.
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And we thank you for joining us this evening.
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Notice this clip as we say good night and see you tomorrow night.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 236 sentences and 2793 words to shadow. The speech runs for 17:21. The speaker talks at a natural 161 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| cinema noun | /ˈsɪn.ə.mə/ | A movie theatre, a movie house. |
| chaos noun | /ˈkeɪˌɑs/ | The unordered state of matter in classical accounts of cosmogony. |
| palace noun | /ˈpælɪs/ | Official residence of a head of state or other dignitary, especially in a monarchical or imperial governmental system. |
| edit verb | /ˈɛdɪt/ | To change a text, or a document. |
| emperor noun | /ˈɛmp(ə)ɹə/ | The male monarch or ruler of an empire. |
| trilogy noun | /ˈtɹɪləd͡ʒi/ | A set of three connected works—usually dramas, literary pieces, films, or musical compositions—all related by theme, characters, or setting. |
| poetry noun | /ˈpoʊ.ə.tɹi/ | Literature composed in verse or language exhibiting conscious attention to patterns and rhythm. |
| discover verb | /dɪˈskʌvə/ | To find or learn something for the first time. |
| mask noun | /mæsk/ | A cover, or partial cover, for the face, used for disguise or protection. |
| clip noun | /klɪp/ | Something which clips or grasps; a device for attaching one object to another. |
| conscious adjective | /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/ | Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active. |
| tango noun | /ˈtæ̝ŋɡoʊ̯/ | A standard ballroom dance in 4/4 time; or a social dance, the Argentine tango. |
| dolly noun | /ˈdɑli/ | A doll. |
| refer verb | /ɹɪˈfɜː/ | To direct the attention of (someone toward something). |
| temple noun | /ˈtɛm.pl̩/ | A house of worship dedicated to a polytheistic faith. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| grow up verb | To mature and become an adult. | |
| bring together verb | To cause people to do something together; to bring about togetherness. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| let out verb | To release. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've seen · has done · i've been given |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is shot · was born · were lost |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | man who lived · Revolution, which is · somebody who discovers |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 30 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: synthesis /ˈsɪnθəsɪs/, rethink /ɹiːˈθɪŋk/, synthesize /ˈsɪnθəsaɪz/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, corruption /kəˈɹʌpʃən/, collaboration /kəˌlæbəˈɹeɪʃən/, mutation /mjuˈteɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: collaboration /kəˌlæbəˈɹeɪʃən/, photography /fəˈtɑ.ɡɹə.fi/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, extraordinary /ɪksˈtɹɔːrdɪn(ə)ɹi/, communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like cinema, chaos, palace.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.