IT’S MAGIC TIME : Calendar goes to the movies--around the world : A FORBIDDEN COLLABORATION

Outside the Gate of Divine Prowess of the Forbidden City in Peking, a young militia girl in a white jacket and khaki skirt raised a loud-hailer to her lips.

But instead of addressing the crowd, she depressed a key and a piece of recorded music was played. The song: “Scotland the Brave.”

It was not intended as a tribute to Peter O’Toole, an Irishman who’s portraying a Scot, Sir Reginald Johnston, one of the leading characters in “The Last Emperor.”

It was just another incongruity during the making of this movie, a film about modern China made by Westerners, and the first time a movie crew has been allowed to work in the Forbidden City itself.

“The Last Emperor” is being shot for $23 million in English with an Italian and British crew, British producer Jeremy Thomas (who raised the money privately from one Dutch and two British banks and 50% from the Hemdale Film Corp.), Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci (who has an English wife and is one-quarter Irish), and, as extras, 2,000 soldiers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

At lunch, instead of chop suey--which no self-respecting restaurant in China would offer anyway--everyone sits down to a meal of pasta and Parmesan cheese: 2,000 kilos of the stuff all brought together with 22,000 kilos of Italian bottled mineral water.

(Marco Polo introduced noodles to Italy from China in the 13th Century; the compliment was being returned by the Italians in the 20th Century.)

What the Chinese customs officials thought of it all when it arrived in three container ships with film equipment, generators and 23 vintage cars, it is hard to say. The Chinese, being exquisitely polite, were saying little.

O’Toole has his own theory: “They don’t have any real curiosity about us--none at all. I don’t think they really see us--and if they do we are objects of some amusement. Old China hands say it is a salutary experience--and it is.”

The last emperor of China was Pu Yi, who was placed on the Dragon Throne as the Son of Heaven and the Lord of Ten Thousand Years, at the age of 3. But his reign was short: China became a republic and Pu Yi was a star without a part. When the Japanese invaded Manchuria and created a separate state there, he agreed to become their puppet emperor and ruled again until the end of World War II, when the Soviets took him prisoner. They finally handed him over to the Chinese when the communists took power in 1949.

For 10 years he was re-educated in a Chinese prison and then set free and pardoned. He was now citizen Pu Yi; in 1960 he returned to Peking and started to work as a gardener in the botanical gardens, getting around the capital on a bicycle or a bus like everyone else. He died in 1967 at age 62.

His tutor during his early years was Reginald Johnston, a Scot knight who knew as much about Confucius as anyone at the royal court. Johnston wore a top hat and formal morning suit with tails, and on occasion a kilt of green and yellow tartan.

“It is really the reverse of the American dream,” said O’Toole. “Pu Yi went from riches to rags. Whether he was really happier when he became a gardener dusting the peonies and for the first time in his life was really a free man, no one knows. I certainly don’t. In life, Johnston educated the emperor and the communists de-educated him, although they did teach him when he was in prison how to tie his own shoelaces for the first time in his life.”

It was Johnston--known as RJ--who advised the emperor to become a Japanese puppet and a collaborator. “He was, in fact, a junkie for power--he had become addicted to it with thousands bowing in front of him every day of his life,” said Bertolucci. “The very omnipotence of his position had always kept him from growing up.”

It was this story, which ends in modern Peking today, that Thomas and Bertolucci took to the Chinese authorities two years ago to seek agreement that it could be filmed entirely on location in China.

They went back and forth six times in two years--some visits lasting as long as three months--showing the script and discussing how it would be treated.

“When the government became interested, nothing was imposed on us at all,” said Thomas. “They only checked certain details for accuracy: this date was wrong, that gate of the Forbidden City would be used, not another. As the meetings went on, the banquets became more elaborate and the Chinese officials fewer in number but more important.

“Finally it was agreed that we could use non-Chinese Chinese actors like John Lone and Joan Chen and bring in all our equipment including the pasta and the mineral water. They provide the studios, up to 2,000 men of the People’s Liberation Army and in return they get the right to show the film in China itself.”

The financing came from non-American sources. None of the major studios would put up the money. “There was interest in Hollywood but not for the size of film we wanted to make or at that budget,” said Thomas. “They were prepared to go up to $11 million only because they were frightened of shooting entirely in China: It was a long way to go and difficult to monitor and control at that distance. And neither Bernardo nor I were known as epic film makers on this scale.”

In the courtyard of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, 2,000 soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army sat on the ground. Sometimes holding sun shades, they waited to be organized--in a mixture of Chinese and Italian--to play the parts of eunuchs being expelled from the Forbidden City on the advice of Johnston.

The soldiers wore long black robes and two-thirds of their heads were shaved with long queues or ponytails down the backs of their necks. The soldiers hated having their heads shaved.

They were persuaded by their officers that it was necessary for the film--”and to show friendship with the English and the Italians.”

As an added inducement, every time their heads had to be shaved, their pay went up by $3.50 a day--from the basic rate of $6 a day.

The rates had been arranged not directly with the army, but through the Peking film studio where the film company is based.

And working in the Peking studio was a revelation, too. Whole streets with houses had been built on the back lot--solidly of brick and concrete. Brick is cheaper than plaster board in China--and at the backs of the houses, away from the cameras, clothes were hanging out to dry on a line.

That’s because inside the houses on the set, when filming was over for the day, whole families were living. “From grandmothers to children and sometimes chickens in the back,” said Thomas. “There are 1,200 people working in the studio and most of them sleep there, too.

“I don’t know what they will learn from us--bad habits, possibly. But we have to learn to be different working with them.

“They can take sometimes a year to make a movie: We need to work faster and the very urgency of our approach if we are not careful, can be taken for aggression by the Chinese. When we want to move fast, we tend to shout but not because we are angry--and many times this can be misunderstood.”

Bertolucci, who is a quiet, calm man on the set, confirmed the point: “If the Japanese are macho, the Chinese have a more passive nature. In Europe and America, we live on the spine--they have more softness. So I can’t go straight to the heart of any problem as I would in the West. You always have to take the problem from behind and talk about other things first. If you shout and scream, they get scared and nothing happens.”

There is a scene in the movie when the last emperor and his wife are shown in bed. And in Chinese films, a man and a woman are rarely shown holding hands, let alone kissing. That could have caused further misunderstandings.

Bertolucci said, “When the Chinese read that scene in the script, they said it was OK. And while not disapproving they added, ‘Unfortunately you will not find any Chinese actor who will agree to do it.’

“I told them I would be using Chinese-American actors--John Lone and Joan Chen. In any case, I didn’t want to do anything graphic--no ‘Last Tango in Paris’ (Bertolucci’s film with Marlon Brando). I wanted to be erotic but in a very Chinese way, which is much more interesting in any case.

“Instead of showing everything, you hide it--and that can still be incredibly wrong. With total permissiveness in the West, the greatest excitement now is not being naked, but being covered.

“What I would like in this film is for the audience to walk with me into a new world with different values and different behavior. I want to communicate my sense of surprise and amazement. Then I shall be happy.”

The Forbidden City, with its six palaces and 999 1/2 rooms (odd numbers are lucky numbers) and halls covering 250 acres, is amazing enough. Gold is the predominant color (yellow is good; green is bad) with bright blues and vermilion red walls.

When O’Toole, riding on a golden palanquin, was carried 10 feet in the air into a square the first day, he suddenly saw what the Imperial Palace really was.

“It is a sea of yellow triangular and rectangular loops--to keep out evil spirits,” he said. “It is intended to be seen from the height of a palanquin--an imperial height.

“Those extra feet in the air make all the difference--the Forbidden City is really a maze intended to be seen by lordlings and not earthlings.

“It is blindingly beautiful and awesome and although we have begun to get used to it, at first it was uncanny because it was so frail and delicate with a complete lack of brutality in the style of architecture.”

On his first day on set in the courtyard of the Palace of Eternal Spring, O’Toole caught the eye of one of the Chinese actors, Chian Sih Jeng, who plays the Lord Chamberlain. “I could tell he was an actor by the look in his eyes,” said O’Toole, who introduced himself to Chiang, an actor for 30 years. “And I told him how very frightened I was on my first day on the film.”

“But you are so experienced,” said Chiang. “Surely you are no longer afraid?”

“I am experienced in being afraid,” said O’Toole. “The feeling never goes.”

By the time “Last Emperor” has finished shooting, by Christmas, O’Toole will have spent five months in China--getting around Peking like everyone else--on a bike (there are no private cars).

“I think the experience will help me as a man and therefore perhaps as an actor,” he said. “What I shall take away with me is my ignorance--my understanding of how little I know.

“I am learning every day and that helps to illuminate the ignorance and not be defeated by it. A little learning is a dangerous thing, we are told, but we should also live dangerously.

“So I shall continue to live dangerously because I have just a fingernail’s knowledge of this country and its people. And it is better to have a glimmer of light than total blackness.

“What is important in everything is a sense of adventure. If I lost that sense of adventure, I’d turn it in and just dust the peonies as the emperor finally does in his garden.”