By GABRIEL SHANKS

When one meets Bernardo Bertolucci -- the fiery, passionate force behind the sexual politics of Last Tango in Paris, the expansive histories of The Last Emperor, and the emotional turmoil of The Conformist -- it is easy to imagine one is meeting more than a mere mortal. Even among the pantheon of great living directors like Coppola and Godard, the Italian-born master still has an aura of near-mythic proportions.

As it always is with titans, though, the in-the-flesh truth of Bertolucci is decidedly less Herculean...if nonetheless impressive. After forty years of creating seminal works of art for the cinema, Bertolucci in person strikes one as nothing so much as the ideal grandfather you always wanted: charming, smart, witty, with a self-deprecating humor that is both endearing and inspiring. His latest picture, THE DREAMERS, is his third set in Paris, and the latest to deal with erotic obsessions and awakenings as cathartic, life-changing experiences. It is his first, however, to parallel those themes with a far more personal passion...the love of cinema. The Dreamers take places against the culturally volatile backdrop of 1968, and in particular, on the steps of the Cinematheque Francaise, where a generation of young cinephiles first discovered the great classics of film history and the legends-to-be of the French New Wave. (Read the review.)

Quiet and reserved after a heavy promotional tour, Bertolucci's eyes light up with passion when discussing the Cinematheque and his own experiences as a young filmmaker in Paris in the 60's. "I was being shown at the Cinematheque, and I met Langlois -- it was '65 or '66 -- and I saw this huge screen which occupied the whole wall of the room. And I said to Langlois, 'Why is it so big?' And he said, 'because you don't know...suddenly the shot can expand, can go up and right and left and down, and we have to be ready. The screen has to be very big.'"

This reminiscence engenders the first of Bertolucci's gentle, whispery chuckles, and the smile is one of genuine appreciation for Langlois' indelible contribution to film history. "He was a really extraordinary teacher, in the sense that he was teaching without teaching. The movies he was showing were so important in the creation of the New Wave. Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette...to go there was really giving shape to the love and passion of cinema."

The 1968 protests that followed the government's closing of the Cinematheque Francaise were, in Bertolucci's estimation, a catalyst for a generational revolution that reached well beyond Paris. "That's why I started [The Dreamers] with that event, like in Gilbert's book. Many historians forget, it started with Langlois, it started with cinema...at the Cinematheque it was the first time that the police were so aggressive and violent with students, young people, intellectuals, film directors who were just showing their solidarity with Langlois. Then it happened in Rome, in Germany, at Berkeley, Columbia University...Kent, I remember one or two kids were killed at Kent University. For me, all these events -- which happened in a kind of global way, without internet, without fax machines -- were started in some way with the [protests at the] Cinematheque, with cinema.

"Today, kids know nothing about 1968. Especially in Paris," laments Bertolucci, who spent a large portion of his life in the city. "I was trying to understand -- the ones who were on the barricades, who were in the streets of Paris -- why didn't they ever tell anything to their children? And then I understood that it was because they thought that '68 was a failure. I think they're completely wrong. It was a failure in the sense that it didn't create a dictatorship of proletarians -- thank God. But life after '68 was completely different, the relationship between people had completely changed. Men and women and relationships started to change. I think it triggered the women's liberation movement. So it's odd to consider '68 a failure."

For Bertolucci, the events of 1968 share a cultural connection to contemporary times. Sometimes, these connections are graphically evident. "For example, the ending [of the film]...these police charge. It has been manipulated digitally, it was shorter and I made it longer using different takes. Because I remembered, in 2001 in Genoa, the G8 meeting. There were a great number of young people gathered together there, and the police were very aggressive. I wanted to show that [what happened] then is like today...making a kind of affinity." This sense of bridged time between 1968 and 2003 was so important to the director that he instructed his young cast to, in fact, bridge time themselves. "I think that the three of them are absolutely kids of today. I didn't want them to try to find how kids were standing, any posture, or the way of walking in '68. I wanted them to be themselves, of today, taken with me -- the camera is like a time machine -- to '68....What I told them was: you are going to sleep in 1968, and not wake up tomorrow, but in the future." Bertolucci wanted his young trio of performers to experience "this sense of [the possibilities] of the future that is not here today. There was this incredible sense of future that meant hope."

So what brought Bertolucci to The Dreamers? Again, it was connections to cinema. "When I read Gilbert Adair's book The Holy Innocents [which was the basis for the screenplay, also written by Adair] my wife Claire gave it to me. I was fascinated. I said, 'this is Cocteau's Les Infants Terribles, written in 1929, moved to 1968.' The combination is great."

His journey through the casting process was not quite as immediate, however. Casting Michael Pitt as Matthew, the lonely American student at the center of The Dreamers, was especially tough. "First I saw Michael Pitt in New York, and I liked him. But then in London I saw another actor, Jake Gyllenhaal, who I also liked very much. And I decided to go with [Gyllenhaal], but I understood immediately that it would have been a nightmare. The kid was terrified by nudity, and I don't blame him because I am exactly like him. I could never do that. When I understood it was impossible with him, I looked again at Michael Pitt in a movie called Bully, and that was it."

Casting Louis Garrel as the mysterious Theo, however, was over in a matter of seconds. "He is the first actor I found, on the first day of the first session of casting in Paris. He entered and was it immediately. And then I discovered that he was the son of a colleague, Philippe Garrel, a director typical of '68 directors. He looked a bit like certain Neoclassic paintings." The storyline, once Garrel and Pitt came aboard, changed significantly. Theoretically a menage a trois, Bertolucci made the difficult choice to remove the homosexual side of the love triangle. "In the [original draft of the] screenplay, as in the book, there is a homosexual relationship between Theo, the brother, and Matthew, the American. But I thought there was already so much material in the film, that to add that would have been too much. I've been told so many times that my movies are redundant, or too full, so I said, okay, okay." However, he thinks the subtext of the homoerotic themes is still prevalent in the final cut. "Louis Garrel read the screenplay when this [was still in it], so that even during the shoot when we decided to cut this part, it remained like the projection of something more subtle, something [that] could have been."

Even without overt homosexuality, The Dreamers still managed to garner an NC-17 rating, often considered the kiss of death for American films. Bertolucci and his U.S. distributor, Fox Searchlight Pictures, had few problems with the film's frequent nudity and adult sexuality. For The Dreamers, "we had a deal for the delivery of an 'R' rated movie. So in the end, I had to accept that, had to suffer a bit, and had to go to the cutting room and do some trims. And then, looking at the film altered, I found it was, if anything, more obscene than the original. Because I don't think the naked body is something obscene. When you go and you cover some part of the naked body, then you become titillating, and maybe obscene.

Bertolucci's history as one of cinema's great provocateurs actually helped in this situation. "There was more than a respect for my work [at Fox Searchlight]. The idea was that it would have been really bad, that the media would attack them, because this would be the only country where you could not see this film as it is." There's a larger meaning for him, however, in this experience. "Grown-ups have the right to see movies for grown-ups. When I heard that the movie would be shown in this country in its integrity, I was very, very pleased. It sounded too strange that the only country in the world where the movie was to be cut was the United States...and probably Iran. I think this is a good precedent for other companies, maybe now encouraged to release movies that maybe wouldn't open here, movies for a grown-up audience."

While many Americans may perceive Bertolucci's ideas of propriety as distinctly European, the lauded director thinks now may be the time for a re-evaluation of America's attitudes where film is involved. "When I was talking with the [MPAA] rating commission, I asked: why are you always so strict with sexuality and so liberal with violence? And then told me it was generally the parents' associations, who are part of the rating commission. They think that, with sex, their children have a spirit of emulation...and with violence they don't." Bertolucci's eyes gleam with passion once again, but of a different kind -- astounded disbelief. "Think of Columbine! There are so many examples in this country, schools with metal detectors when the kids enter. It's so strange.

"Kids in this country -- like, for example, in the beautiful Elephant by Gus Van Sant -- what strikes me and shocks me is...how do these kids have this violent aggression, and [we] do not understand what the immediate reason is? Apparently, there is not a reason at all. It creates suspicion that the reason is more wide and mysterious."

Can cinema actually address these grave social concerns in meaningful ways -- as the great classics shown in 1968 at the Cinematheque Francaise did, more than a generation ago? "Cinema to me is very close to dreams," says Bertolucci. He sees a new, talented vanguard that equals the great directors of the 1960's. "If I look at Wong-Kar Wai, or P.T. Anderson, or Lynch, I see the same kind of quality. There is no difference between them and, let's say, the New Wave. I consider myself part of the New Wave, even if I was Italian. Because Italian cinema when I started in '62 was like...the decaying of neo-realism. Neo-realism had finished its great energy of the late '40's and '50's, and it was becoming commedia italiana, Italian comedy. So from France you had this extraordinary movement, like...a big wave." He chuckles. "As it was called."

And with one more whispered chuckle and a fire in his eye, the dreamer behind The Dreamers looked upward, lost in memory, and smiled.