The legendary director Robert De Niro was too scared to argue with: “It just didn’t work”
With decades of iconic performances under his belt, Robert De Niro has graced our screens over a wide span of genres and styles, working with legendary directors like Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone and Francis Ford Coppola.
The actor has an unflappable persona that makes his work feel effortless, taking on demanding roles in which he hardly seems to blink an eye, with extreme emotional transformations that most actors would only dare to attempt. However, despite this unwavering confidence and assertiveness, he has only worked with one director whom he felt intimidated by.
Bernardo Bertolucci was one of the most celebrated and controversial European directors, known for classics like The Dreamers and Last Tango in Paris, testing audiences with extreme subject matter and twisted eroticism. As one of the foremost Italian directors, it only seemed natural that Bertolucci would eventually collaborate with fellow Italian creative Robert De Niro, who finally worked together in 1976.
1900 is a sweeping tale about class struggle in 20th-century Italy, shown through the perspective of two friends with very different upbringings. The film was released during the same year as Taxi Driver, with De Niro exploding into stardom and becoming one of the most sought-after leading men.
Despite having worked with some of the most successful directors of all time, De Niro found himself feeling intimidated by Bertolucci, later saying, “I don’t get thrown by the directors that I’ve worked with. Rarely happens. And I’m certainly not a person that feels precious about myself — it’s just common sense. But when I was younger, I was a little more nervous about stuff. With Bernardo, sometimes he would be — I felt that he was European, they make certain demands”.
The blanket statement of ‘being European’ is used to explain away many idiosyncrasies and oddities, but in the case of working with Bertolucci, De Niro felt that this was a particularly accurate description. He explained that the later scenes were shot on the very first day, despite not agreeing with the logic behind this, explaining, “We shot the old stuff on the first day, and I realised there that that was a mistake — it just wouldn’t work, nobody was into it… if I had thought about it more, I would have said, ‘Can we not do this scene later, not the first day?’ I was sensible enough to know you don’t do things so out of order. But I went along with it, I remember that, and it just didn’t work”.
Some actors prefer shooting in chronological order, finding it easier to settle into the rhythms of the character when their story is laid out directly in front of them. However, this isn’t a privilege that’s always offered, and many films have begun their shoots by shooting the most complex or emotionally demanding scenes on the first day in order to get them out of the way, sometimes working backwards from the end of the film. It’s bizarre when you think about it, having to act out an emotional arc in reverse, but maybe it is the European way.
Robert de Niro has undoubtedly built up his resistance over the years and earned the ability to speak up about rogue shooting schedules, but as a young actor, it’s easy to understand why you would go with the flow and chalk it up to someone’s geographical peculiarities.
