Roger Ebert was notably enthusiastic in his praise of the film , awarding it 4 stars out of 4 ; he wrote that " Bertolucci is able to make Pu Yi 's imprisonment seem all the more ironic because this entire film was shot on location inside the People 's Republic of China , and he was even given permission to film inside the Forbidden City - a vast , medieval complex covering some 250 acres and containing 9,999 rooms ( only heaven , the Chinese believed , had 10,000 rooms ) . It probably is unforgivably bourgeois to admire a film because of its locations , but in the case of " The Last Emperor " the narrative can not be separated from the awesome presence of the Forbidden City , and from Bertolucci 's astonishing use of locations , authentic costumes and thousands of extras to create the everyday reality of this strange little boy . " Jonathan Rosenbaum , comparing '' The Last Emperor '' favourably to Steven Spielberg 's '' Empire of the Sun '' , claimed that " a t best , apart from a few snapshots , Empire of the Sun teaches us something about the inside of one director 's brain . The Last Emperor incidentally and secondarily does that too ; but it also teaches us something about the lives of a billion people with whom we share this planet — and better yet , makes us want to learn still more about them . " At the 60th Academy Awards , the film won all nine Oscars for which it was nominated : In Japan , the Shochiku Fuji Company edited out a thirty-second sequence from '' The Last Emperor '' depicting the Rape of Nanjing before distributing it to Japanese theatres , without Bertolucci 's consent . The Rape of Nanjing — in which hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians were brutalized and massacred by the Imperial Japanese Army — is an event disputed by some Japanese , and a diplomatic stumbling block with China . Bertolucci was furious at Shochiku Fuji 's interference with his film , calling it " revolting " . The company quickly restored the scene , blaming " confusion and misunderstanding " for the edit while opining that the Rape sequence was " too sensational " for Japanese audiences
60th Academy Awards
60th Academy Awards
The Last Emperor