Last Tango in Paris [Blu-ray] [1972] [US Import]

Please abandon any pre-conceptions you have about this film straight away, it will not be what you expect. I was extremely hesitant about purchasing this dvd, not least because of the back covers description which leads you to believe this is nothing more than a softcore porn trip. In fact this film is far from sexually explicit and now appears thoroughly undeserving of the controversy it caused. It is, however, a moody, atmospheric, brilliant piece of film making. I only brought this as i was a firm Brando believer, and his performance here is astounding, the best i have seen in any picture, and i have seen a lot. He oozes a gritty sensuality no other actor has ever approached, and the closing shot as he stands on the balcony is both heartbreaking and awe inspiring. In my opinion one of the most underrated movies ever.A masterpiece. Must buy.

On the cover of the paperback edition of my novel A Perfectly Natural Act there is the blurb: "As compelling as Last Tango in Paris!" (This is not a shameless plug since my novel is long out of print.) When your work is touted as being "like" some earlier, successful work, you can be sure what is really being said is your work is not all that good and needs some hype to move it off the shelves.

So it took me 33 years to finally get around to watching "Last Tango..." and that is all to the good because if I had watched it when I was young, the barbarous sexuality would have sorely distracted me. Well, Maria Schneider (Jeanne) would have. She is very sexy and is shown complete ("she comes complete"!) in a number of scenes. Her acting ability has been challenged by some, but I thought she did a nice job in a difficult role.

Problem was she was paired opposite Marlon Brando (Paul) who was busy giving one of his greatest performances. Brando said some time afterwards that he never wanted to do anything like this again. Presumably he was referring to the depressing nature of human sexuality portrayed in the film. This is ironic since most of the raunchy and degrading lines are spoken by Brando who improvised them himself! He later commented that some of the lines written by director Bernado Bertolucci were not to his liking. What I think happened is Bertolucci wanted to live out as a director one of his youthful fantasies (raw, anonymous sex with a young beauty) and Brando, with his ultra sophistication about such matters, played his part with a brutal satirical edge, perhaps making fun of Bertolucci's fantasy, turning it into an unpleasant, hard reality.

But the "reality" was a bit over the top for everybody. The infamous "Get the butter" scene, which was improvised by Brando and Bertolucci (to Schneider's dismay), made it clear that Paul considered Jeanne an animal that you used and nothing more. The dead rat scene and all the pig talk, ditto. Brando was also projecting his own feelings. He was 48-years-old when the film was released and was getting a paunch and losing his muscle tone. All the sex scenes but one are filmed with Brando clothed so as not to make the decline of his physical prowess obvious. He projected his own feelings about the decline of his body by referring derisively to his hemorrhoids, his prostate, and his paunch.

What Brando does so very well here is become that animalistic, but thinking brute who has his way with women because they cannot resist his alpha male prowess regardless of the gray in his hair. The early scene in the apartment when the nameless Brando just takes the nameless Schneider without so much as a spoken word or a caress might make women say "if only more men could be so commanding," and men say "I wish I had that kind of confidence." I am reminded Brando's Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) except that here little is left to the imagination. The Brando that was Kowalski at twenty-seven (with an I.Q. upgrade) could easily be the Brando that was Paul at forty-eight.

Almost all the discussion about this movie is about Brando, and that is certainly understandable since, despite all the ugliness of the film, it featured one of Brando's greatest performances. However, the movie was and is Bertolucci's. He wrote it and directed it. His original cut runs something like four hours. The version here rated NC-17 runs 136 minutes. The problem is that just about everything in the movie that does not included Brando is a bit of an anticlimax or an irrelevancy. Jean-Pierre Leaud (Tom) of Truffaut's The Four Hundred Blows (1959) fame plays a film maker and Jeanne's intended. He was possibly chosen for the film because his boyish style and demeanor would contrast so sharply with Brando's commanding style. Two lovers had Jeanne: one was easy and boring, the other was scary and exciting. But I think Bertolucci was also having some fun with the French cinema and especially with Francois Truffaut. Perhaps it is only a coincidence that a year later Truffaut would release Day for Night (1973) (La Nuit americaine) in which Truffaut plays a director directing Leaud in a kind of pleasing but lightweight film contrasting sharply with the dark psychosis of Last Tango.

I don't think I could sit through the four hour version but it might be a good learning experience for young film makers. At any rate, perhaps some of the seeming illogic of the film might become reasonable, including the all too easy and not entirely explicable ending. I rate this film very highly because it was innovative (rather shocking for its time), with a fine jazz score, but mostly because of Brando's stellar performance and the sensual beauty of a 20-year-old Maria Schneider. By the way, the film is in French and English with subtitles. Brando's French is amusing, and whoever dubbed Schneider's English has a cute and witty voice.

Another excellent (and very beautiful) film by Bertolucci is The Conformist (1970) starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, and Dominque Sanda. Interestingly enough Sanda was originally picked for Last Tango, as was Trintignant, and she would have given some needed depth to Jeanne's character, but she declined I guess because of all the nudity. Ironically a few years later Schneider was tabbed to play the lead in Luis Brunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) but dropped out during the filming reportedly because of a nude scene! Maybe she was afraid of becoming typecast.

I guess the bottom line on Last Tango is that it is an uncomfortable film illuminated by a veracious Parisian feel and a truly stunning performance by one of the greatest actors to ever grace the silver screen.

It was, in short, a film about sex and the way that human beings use sex as a refuge, a release, and a weapon... The frank dialog, the nudity, and the simulated sex were not gratuitously employed but were integral to the theme of the film, and if the picture was not totally successful, it was certainly unforgettable...

Marlon Brando appears as a middle-aged American--but not the kind of American in Paris glorified by either George Gershwin or Ernest Hemingway... This is a man tormented by inner conflict... Brando's Paul between self-hatred over his wife's suicide and his feelings for Maria Schneider's Jeanne, she between her adoring documentary filmmaker fiancé (based wittily on Godard) and the taboo-breaking Paul...

The stark, empty flat that is the lovers' retreat from conventional society, and the cold, windy pavement where Paul screams his loathing for the world against the din of a passing train--connects us with the mood of the film...

Eager to escape the oppressive walls of his dark life, Paul embarks on a very complete sexual experience with a willing young woman in which there is no history spoken, no promises of future liaisons, no ties of any kind with the outside...

The two lovers know nothing of each other, not even their names... Their affair is purely physical, and the barren apartment becomes, as Bertolucci intended, a world of debauchery on which is explored a catalog of behavior that seems more childish than kinky...

Jeanne is a child-woman... She asks what she should call Paul, and they proceed to give themselves names brought only out of grunts, growls and screeches... Paul's cruelty is not justified and perhaps this is what attracts the modish girl... Some scenes emotionally are so provocative that you experience a wide range of feelings... Paul never asks Jeanne a direct question, but is constantly framing her for his next experiment, besides he assaults her, humiliates her and pushes her over the edge... There is one great moment for the heroine when she refuses Paul's power play and is equally unimpressed by his new declarations of love... She insists: 'It's over!'

The film is beautifully shot... The cinematography is unique, somber, shadowy and painterly... It presents despair, and the music reinforce the despairing mood... The movie is also intensely erotic, intensely realistic, immensely disturbing... The extreme frankness makes faintly uncomfortable viewing, not only because of its sexual material but because of its exploration of our inner nature with true perspective... Hopefully, younger viewers can turn their minds back to a time when sex was mysterious and beautiful; dangerous and daring; not just easy and transitory... Sex nearly always implies intimacy, but doesn't always provide it...

'Last Tango in Paris' is one of the great explorations of cinema's visual possibilities... Bertolucci camera's movements throughout the film characterize the rights steps of the tango which the two main characters execute at the climax of the film... We feel swept away by the beauty of the tango despite the tragic quality of the acts and events it escorts... T