SOURCE: Bertolucci, Bernardo, and David Gritten. “Bertolucci's Next: The Opposite of X.” Los Angeles Times (16 May 1999): 17.

In the following interview, Bertolucci discusses his motivation for making Besieged.

Bernardo Bertolucci's new film [Besieged] is an intimate chamber piece, featuring a man and a woman alone in an otherwise empty house. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

So it should. Bertolucci's biggest moment of fame (infamy, some would say) came in 1972 with the release of his steamy, controversial film Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. Its explicit sexual content caused an international scandal; even non-moviegoers knew how a simple pat of butter was employed in its story.

In America, Last Tango was awarded an X rating, and Bertolucci was nominated for a directing Oscar for the film; in his native Italy, it was branded pornography, he was tried for blasphemy (receiving a suspended sentence) and his right to...