Last Tango in Paris

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Bernardo Bertolucci's controversial 1973 film stars Marlon Brando as an expatriate American in Paris reeling from his wife's suicide and entering into a nihilistic sexual relationship with a young woman (Maria Schneider). The film is still shocking, not simply because of its (sometime unconventional) sexual sequences, but because Brando's protagonist needs his liaison with Schneider's character to remain anonymous, an experience not to be shared but indulged on either end. Bertolucci is also operating on subtext here: in a way, Brando's nonengaging engagement is a metaphor for a certain attitude toward directing movies. Jean-Pierre Léaud costars, but the film is more than anything a vehicle for a great performance by Brando. --Tom Keogh

Description

Penetrate the moody, sensual world of Last Tango in Paris, and prepare yourself for "the most controversial film of its era" (Leonard Maltin). Nominated* for two Academy Awards(r)Director (Bernardo Bertolucci) and Actor (Marlon Brando)and exuding a sexual energy unlike any film before or after, this is the scintillating classic that shocked a nation...and "altered the face of an art form" (Pauline Kael). He (Brando) is a 45-year old American living in Paris, haunted by his wife's suicide. She (Maria Schneider, Jane Eyre) is a 20-year-old Parisian beauty engaged to a young filmmaker. Though nameless to each other, these tortured souls come together to satisfy their sexual cravings in an apartment as bare as their dark, tragic lives. Caught up in the frenzied beat of a carnal dance they cannot seem to stop, these unlikely lovers take their passion to erotic heightsand depthsbeyond anything they could ever have imagined.

Customer Reviews:

Love, Not Romance, Or Is It The Other Way Round?.......2007-07-22

One can certainly love this film for its superb acting. Certainly the cinematography couldn't be excelled. The Gato Barbieri musical soundtrack is great, if you like jazz, and the reproductions of the great paintings by Francis Bacon establish the mood of the piece as the opening credits roll. It's all very artful. The film's soul, however, is not upbeat, the ending is a downer, as we say, and the relationship is a joyful, but confining dead end. The American bohemian played by Brando is seeking to achieve a love that is pure and free, but in the end his lover cares very much about status and class and will not be possessed by a nobody. The film either speaks to you or it doesn't. I have felt moved and affected in one showing, and then turned off in another. The relationship of an large, sexually cruel man with a young 'chick' has far less appeal these days, so one may find the film dated for its sexual dynamic. It is not so much that such relationships no longer exist, but that one may no longer find them exhilarating. On the other hand, it is the director's masterpiece of personal connections and his only successful film of intimacy. His other great works tend to be epics, where the films encompass a grander scale.

Quite possibly the worst movie in cinematic history.......2007-07-13

Finally saw the much-vaunted Last Tango in Paris. On the DVD case, a reviewer squeals: "The most erotically powerful movie ever made!" Its clear to me that every single reviewer who gave a good review was paid off handsomely. To me, words like "vacant", "nihilistic", "empty", roar to mind. Quite possibly, the most over-damn-hyped, contentless, worthless film in cinematic history. I'm appalled beyond words.

Last Tango in Paris.......2007-07-04

Scandalous in 1972 and still unsettling today, Bertolucci's bizarre, fascinating psychodrama depicts sex not as a union of two human beings, but as a reflection of their alienation from each other. While the butter scene is justly famous, this isn't the only reason "Tango" stays with you. Just watch Brando closely: at certain moments you catch a glimpse of that fiery young man in the ripped tee-shirt, railing against the world's injustices, down but never out, and utterly, brilliantly alive.

"Listen, that's not a subway strap...that's me "c**k!".......2007-07-03

Aside from the infamous "butter" and the "pig f***" scene--which are disturbing and can't bring myself to watch!--I wasn't exactly too shocked at this movie at all. Now that sex/porn is pretty much in the open, you can't be. I love Marlon Brando, and as usual, his performance was an emotionally intense one. I didn't realize how comical and hilarious Mr. Brando was until watching this movie. Despite the gloom, and dark (or orange tone!) of the film, I managed a chuckle and a good laugh from his dialogue... I wish Maria Schneider's character was more developed in this film. It just seems "Paul" and her geeky boyfriend (and Bertolucci) used her as nothing but an object. I wanted to know more about her character and what the deal was with her deceased father and whether Paul putting on her father's uniform hat triggered some sort of rage within. Did he sexually abuse her? Was their relationship incestuous? Other questions plagued me. Was Paul his wife's murderer or the lover? There was just way too much blood splatter for it to have been suicide. Was his wife a former prostitute? The end sickened me because you want (I wanted) "Jeanne" and "Paul" to fall in love and live happily ever after...but in this demented, even morbid Bertolucci flick that wasn't gonna happen!
I was teary at the end because it was just so confusing and tragic...this poor man--despite his actions--finds love, refuge, and happiness and they're all literally shot down.

Stunning performance by Brando.......2007-06-11

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 of 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 Dominique 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.

Charlie Rose with Doug Jehl; Drew Barrymore; Bernardo Bertolucci (February 10, 2004)

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Charlie Rose with Doug Jehl; Drew Barrymore; Bernardo Bertolucci (February 10, 2004)

Manufacturer: Charlie Rose, Inc.
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Doug Jehl, New York Times correspondent from Washington, discusses Baghdad terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi and a recently discovered document containing a plea to terrorists, asking them to join the fight against coalition forces in Iraq. Then, actress Drew Barrymore talks about her new film with Adam Sandler, 50 First Dates. Finally, filmmaker and director Bernardo Bertolucci talks about his new film, The Dreamers.

I Am Curious Yellow/Blue [Non-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]

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I Am Curious Yellow/Blue [Non-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]
Director: Vilgot Sjoman
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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I AM CURIOUS YELLOW and it's follow-up, I AM CURIOUS BLUE, are two companion-piece, groundbreaking naturalistic films from Swedish director Vilgot Sjoman. They portray the story of Lena, a radicalised young woman exploring social issues and her own sexuality in 1960s Sweden. The explicit sexual content caused great controversy on its release in 1967.

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Love, Not Romance, Or Is It The Other Way Round?
Quite possibly the worst movie in cinematic history
Last Tango in Paris
"Listen, that's not a subway strap...that's me "c**k!"
Stunning performance by Brando

Last Tango in Paris [Region 2]
Starring: Marlon Brando , Maria Schneider , Maria Michi , Giovanna Galletti , and Gitt Magrini
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

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ASIN: B00004RJG3

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Customer Reviews:

Love, Not Romance, Or Is It The Other Way Round?.......2007-07-22

Quite possibly the worst movie in cinematic history.......2007-07-13

Last Tango in Paris.......2007-07-04

"Listen, that's not a subway strap...that's me "c**k!".......2007-07-03

Stunning performance by Brando.......2007-06-11

Average customer rating:

Love, Not Romance, Or Is It The Other Way Round?
Quite possibly the worst movie in cinematic history
Last Tango in Paris
"Listen, that's not a subway strap...that's me "c**k!"
Stunning performance by Brando

Last Tango in Paris [Region 2]
Starring: Marlon Brando , Maria Schneider , Maria Michi , Giovanna Galletti , and Gitt Magrini
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( L ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

ASIN: B00004TYX7

Amazon.com essential video

Customer Reviews:

Love, Not Romance, Or Is It The Other Way Round?.......2007-07-22

Quite possibly the worst movie in cinematic history.......2007-07-13

Last Tango in Paris.......2007-07-04

"Listen, that's not a subway strap...that's me "c**k!".......2007-07-03

Stunning performance by Brando.......2007-06-11

Average customer rating:

Love, Not Romance, Or Is It The Other Way Round?
Quite possibly the worst movie in cinematic history
Last Tango in Paris
"Listen, that's not a subway strap...that's me "c**k!"
Stunning performance by Brando

Last Tango in Paris [Region 2]
Starring: Marlon Brando , Maria Schneider , Maria Michi , Giovanna Galletti , and Gitt Magrini
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( L ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

ASIN: B00004XOCW

Amazon.com essential video

Customer Reviews:

Love, Not Romance, Or Is It The Other Way Round?.......2007-07-22

Quite possibly the worst movie in cinematic history.......2007-07-13

Last Tango in Paris.......2007-07-04

"Listen, that's not a subway strap...that's me "c**k!".......2007-07-03

Stunning performance by Brando.......2007-06-11

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