FLORENCE – Mark Peploe, the Oscar-winning screenwriter renowned for his collaborations with european film giants such as Michelangelo Antonioni and Bernardo Bertolucci, has passed away at the age of 82. According to his family, Peploe died in Florence, Italy, following a prolonged illness.

Peploe’s career was largely defined by the screenplays he crafted for prominent European directors, particularly those associated with the Italian new Wave, including Antonioni and Bertolucci. The 1975 film The Passenger, directed by Antonioni and starring Jack nicholson, has garnered acclaim as a cinematic masterpiece, despite its complex release history. Peploe afterward established a fruitful partnership with Bertolucci, culminating in an Oscar win in 1988 for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Last Emperor.

Tributes to a “Renaissance Man”

“Mark was a Renaissance man, a brilliant writer of screenplays, and also an artist… He was a very impressive person.”

Jeremy Thomas, producer of The Last Emperor, shared his sentiments with the Guardian, describing Peploe as a “Renaissance man” and “a brilliant writer of screenplays.” Thomas emphasized Peploe’s “particular gift of a cultivation of the past which informed him as a writer,” noting that “Mark was never without a notebook and a copy of the International Herald Tribune.”

Born in Nairobi in 1943 into a family deeply rooted in the arts, Peploe’s lineage included his grandfather, the celebrated Scottish colourist SJ Peploe, and his great-grandfather, German sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand. His mother, Clotilde, was a painter, and his father, Willy, was an art dealer. After residing in Florence, the family relocated to England where Peploe attended Oxford University. He then worked for Canadian producer Allan King on documentaries featuring figures like writer Norman Mailer,op-art pioneer Victor Vasarely,and Never on Sunday star Melina Mercouri.

Peploe transitioned to screenwriting out of “frustration” with documentary filmmaking. “I thought that if you wrote the script, you would be able to control the movie more than I did. It was an illusion, but I thought so at the time!” he once said. He contributed to the script for Jacques Demy’s 1972 musical The Pied Piper, starring Donovan and diana Dors. His story The Passenger, initially titled Fatal Exit, was chosen by Antonioni as the third installment in his trilogy of English-language films, following Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point.

After co-writing the script for The Passenger with film theorist Peter Wollen, Peploe initially intended to direct the film.however, producer Carlo Ponti offered the project to Antonioni after his earlier film, Technically sweet, faced budgetary constraints. The Passenger, starring Nicholson as a TV reporter who assumes the identity of a deceased man, alongside Maria Schneider and Jenny Runacre, is famous for its seven-minute tracking shot in the final scene. Following a dispute with MGM, Nicholson acquired the film rights, leading to its re-release in the mid-2000s to renewed acclaim.

Directorial Aspirations and Later Work

Peploe’s sister, Clare, was also a filmmaker, and they collaborated on the script for her directorial debut, High season, in 1987. That same year marked the release of The last Emperor, a project Peploe undertook with Bertolucci, who had married Clare in 1979. Produced by Thomas, the film received nine Oscars in 1988 for its portrayal of Chinese emperor Puyi, who was deposed in 1912 but resided in Beijing’s Forbidden City until 1924. Peploe continued to collaborate with Bertolucci on The Sheltering Sky (1990), an adaptation of Paul Bowles’ novel, and Little Buddha (1994), starring Keanu Reeves as Prince siddhartha.

Peploe realized his directorial ambitions with the 1991 psychological horror film Afraid of the Dark, starring James Fox and Fanny Ardant, which has as gained a cult following. He also directed an adaptation of Joseph conrad’s story Victory, released in 1996, starring Willem Dafoe and Irène Jacob.

Peploe is survived by his partner, art historian Alina Payne. He was previously married to costume designer Louise Stjernsward, with whom he had a daughter, Lola, and was later in a long-term relationship with Gina Marcou.