MOSCOW, November 26. /TASS/. Renowned Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, who died at the age of 77 in Rome on Monday, raised Italy’s film industry to new heights. His contribution to global cinematography is enduring and immense, film critic Andrei Plakhov told TASS.

"Bertolucci is the successor to great Italian directors such as Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni, Rossellini. He began to make films in a very productive period for the Italian cinema and raised it to new heights, reflecting the 1960s era and defining that epoch in one of his first movies titled "Before the Revolution." Although that protest era hit its peak in 1968, Bertolucci continued to glorify the protest and revolutionary situation until the mid-1970s," the critic said.

The films he made after that reflected his disillusionment with the ideals of the revolution.

"He made many films, which became part of the Italian cinema such as "La Luna" and "Last Tango in Paris." At the same time, his movies were very radical and in fact quite ahead of their time, so they were breakthroughs. Breaking the prohibitions and barriers of censorship they extended cinema’s capabilities in exploring human nature, personality, and sexuality," Plakhov said.

According to the critic, "The Conformist," a film based on the novel of Alberto Moravia, is Bertolucci’s most important and powerful motion picture.

"In that film, he lanced the sore subconscious of totalitarian society. This film is also extremely important for the people of the USSR, where it was released in an abridged and censored version. Despite that fact, the film became very important for that generation, even several generations of our compatriots because it was the first time that they saw such a deep analysis of the mechanism of a totalitarian society, and ways of manipulating the human mind," the critic said.

Later, Bertolucci made several films that made him world famous. These are the Oscar-winning "Last Emperor," "Little Buddha" and some others. These films were made in English.

"The Dreamers" became the director’s last movie that was buzzing at the center of public attention. Bertoucci turned to the 1968 epoch, recollections of his youth, Plakhov said.

However, these later films lack the creative, artistic power one can find in Bertolucci’s earlier works, he noted.

"This was due to the fact that he had been ill for quite a long while, he survived a stroke and actually was bound to a wheelchair. Anyway, his contribution to global cinema is enduring and immense. If we can speak about the attempts of the Italian cinema today to reach its previous heights, Bernardo Bertolucci is definitely is one of the examples they should be striving for," the critic concluded.