Last Tango in Paris

I'm thinking of "Last Tango in Paris" today because Neznaia, a kind IMDb user, asked me to write about it and I promised I would. Now a dilemma. Shall I write as I remember the experience or shall I watch it again? Well I'm already here so I seem to have taken a decision. Butter, that was the key word that pushed crowds to line up outside the theaters all over the world. Over the years the film has been vilified as utter euro trash or acclaimed as one of the best films ever made. I think that the truth falls somewhere in the middle. Bertolucci was coming out of at least two certified masterpieces of political, social and cinematic achievement "Before the Revolution" and "The Conformist". Tango is something else altogether, cinema veritè photographed by Vittorio Storaro, a revolutionary artistic genius, Gato Barbieri's music and Marlon Brando giving himself totally in one of the most brilliant pieces of self indulgence ever put on film. Within the intellectual coldness of its intentions breaths a stunning melodrama of operatic proportions. As a side note let me tell you that legend has it that in the original script, the Maria Schnaider's character, was a boy. At the time an idea of the sort was too outrageous to even consider. Everybody was very sophisticated but not that sophisticated. Apparently the movie went on with a girl in the part but not even a coma was changed from the original. Now, look at the film again with that in mind and you will notice that everything, as if by magic, makes perfect sense. We are ask to justify Brando's first wild approach to Schnaider was an irrational reaction to the pain, the anger and confusion by his wife death. Well yes, but he is a man, she is a woman, they may be braking a few rules but the basics remain intact, unless, of course she wasn't a she. If they are a man and a girl above the age of consent why the charade of secrecy? Why she's never really dressed like a girl, always jackets and open neck shirts and why they never make love like a man and a woman, usually, do? A lot of fingers and butter and,talk. When they get to the tango scene Brando dances with a real woman while Maria Schnaider monkeys around them. And finally look at the end and tell me if doesn't make much more sense if she was a he. She could have explained everything, embarrassing perhaps I don't know, but perfectly normal. If she was a he, the son of a military man, the thing had an entirely different color. Impossible to admit or to explain for a boy. Their affair is not between two gay man but between two heterosexuals. That's the key, that's at the center of it all. A breaking of rules in the most intimate way. To go against what you have come to accept as your own nature. I may be wrong of course, but I don't think so. I will see it again as soon as I can and if I feel that this memory of the film is merely a product of what I may have been smoking at the time I will let you know. But, somehow, I don't think I will have to.

The film stunned me when I saw it in the cinema some 45 years ago and I'm not sure I have braved it since unless I watched some murky video. So much has happened in cinema since that first viewing that it is no longer quite so shocking but still packs a punch. Beautifully shot, there are lovely shots of Paris and the light upon the walls of the apartment but there is ugliness too and there is never a moment one can relax confident that all will be well. Brando is brilliant, if slightly awkward and Maria Schneider does well to keep up in English, French and broken English. As the two mismatched individuals merge together into some sort of passionate but loveless relationship we learn something of the background. Essentially, Brando is bereft following the suicide of his wife, right at the start and Schneider has a much more conventional, if barely believable one with an aspiring film maker. He is played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, he star of many New Wave films, particularly for Godard and Truffault and it would seem that Bertolucci is having a little fun here pitting the pretty boy of trendy 60s cinema against the old brawler Brando (I understand though that Leaud was so intimidated by the American giant that he could not work alongside him). I noticed this time that the soundtrack I have always loved seems to begin and finish rather abruptly at certain points of the film and it seems I may have found the reason. Apparently there is, or was, a four hour rough cut of the film and that it was this that Gato Barbieri studied in order to decide where the film required music. Seems reasonable, therefore, to suppose that when the film was cut by almost a half, the music may no longer slip so unobtrusively in and out.

Okay, so I am not supposed to say anything about other user's comments, but I should mention that reading those comments is what lead me to write this...I don't know if this is an enjoyable movie experience, but it is nonetheless a triumph of cinema.

This film has very little to do with sex. It also has very little to do with the tango, and we might want to add it has little to do with Paris. Someone once told me this movie is about an American businessman. Out of curiosity, are all American's traveling in Europe businessmen? I think not. First of all, he was a boxer, a bongo player, he married a wealthy woman, but nowhere did I see this man as working for some corporation. This man had little money, and he didn't need a 'serious' career.

This film is about abuse; a parable about the overly masculine father who sexually abuses his own son; a child abused by his alcoholic parents; a widower who is abused by his animalistic but deadly honest wife. This movie is about a religious zealot for a mother-in-law in constant denial who shows more interest in her daughter's corpse than in her life. This movie is about an idealistic no-longer teenager who perhaps finds true love the only time in her life, but pays a terrible price. It is as though she has bitten from the forbidden fruit and found that love is an illusion.

To say Brando is superb misses the point. I simply know no other actor that could have pulled this off. His facial expressions are uncanny. It is a most fitting bookend to Street Car Named Desire. One simply cannot deny the final elevator scene. But unlike Streetcar, Brando portrays a vivid understanding of the sensitivity towards women and towards human existence that few men are capable of grasping, and few women could probably appreciate. Brando is himself. But Brando is himself because he understands his character, not because he plays himself.

This movie is an existential parody of the nature of society. It is a bitter reflection of human frailty and vanity. It is a tragedy of a man who has actually found a way to transcend his own suffering, who has somehow managed to cut through the illusions that all of us carry day-to-day. But with that knowledge, he finds himself utterly alone (as so many users here seem testament.)

Brando is a middle-aged American whose wife has committed suicide; Schneider is a young European beauty seeking a sense of personal identity. The two meet by chance in an empty apartment--and immediately embark upon an anonymous affair in which Brando seeks to both purge and renew himself through Schneider.

Both stars offer intense performances, and director Bertolucci invests the film with numerous poetic and symbolic flourishes. The cinematography is elegant; the score is quite interesting. But when everything is said and done, LAST TANGO IN Paris is extremely thin stuff that relies on sexual shock to generate tension--and what was once shocking is now passe. At the time TANGO was made, it was unthinkable that a major Hollywood star would appear in such a film... Yet by today's standards, the nudity involved is quite mild, the sex scenes are surprisingly discreet, and the script is oddly naive. It all seems very tame.

Moreover, the film's subplots slow the action to a crawl and the film as a whole has a self-conscious, faintly pretentious tone. Brando and Schneider, both separately and together, offer quite a few impressive moments, but you have to wade through a lot to get to them. Is it worth it? Difficult to say. Although I don't regret having watched the film, I flatly state that I would not bother to watch it again. My recommendation: see it before you buy it, because one viewing may be quite enough.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris simultaneously mocks and mourns the human yearning for love and companionship. The movie is a requiem for unrequited love, and a testament to the proclivity of humans to surrogate love with lust when trapped in a maelstrom of despondence, chagrin, and compunction. Bertolucci's purpose is not to glorify carnality as a virtue or to scorn it as a vice, but is to use it as an instrument to authenticate the veritable existence of a dark, ugly, and bestial side of humanity, which is so often suppressed and hypocritically denied in similar works on the subject. Bertolucci's penchant for art is limitless and he uses it to full effect in order to give the movie an aesthetic feel while simultaneously catering to the movie's explorative, earthy, and unconventionally bold motifs. Bertolucci uses his characters uncannily as a medium to foray into unexplored realms of human psyche while unflinchingly projecting them as objects of desire, disgust and depravity. Bertolucci pushes Brando and Schneider to a limit where they are not only forced to compromise their egos but also relinquish their pride, and I say that not as an offence but as an appreciation for his talent as a movie-maker. Renowned film critic Pauline Kael bestowed the film with the most ecstatic endorsement of her career, writing, "Tango has altered the face of an art form. This is a movie people will be arguing about for as long as there are movies." American director Robert Altman expressed unqualified praise: "I walked out of the screening and said to myself, 'How dare I make another film?' My personal and artistic life will never be the same." Eminent critic Roger Ebert has added the film to his "Great Movies" collection.

The movie presents an episode in the lives of two loners residing in Paris: Paul, a recently widowed, middle-aged American businessman, and Jeanne, a young, voluptuous, soon-to-be-married Parisian girl. The two accidentally meet up in an empty apartment available for rent, and a steamy affair ensues between the two on strictly anonymous basis. Paul is very discreet about his identity and whereabouts and even cajoles Jeanne to religiously follow the protocol. Paul sees Jeanne as a carnal surrogate for his deceased wife, while Jeanne finds in Paul a lover which her fiancé could never become. The two continue to meet and serve each other at regular intervals while also going about their regular business. Their sexually charged up affair, despite a disconnect at the emotional level, satiates them both beyond expectations, and resonates to the viewer an ineffable sense of frenzy and euphoria that holds him in a vice-like grip for the entire length of the movie. The dramatically botched, anti-climactic ending of the movie, which has been snubbed by critics, still manages to testify the axiomatic consistency of change in packing a punch stronger than the modern-day gimmicks.

Marlon Brando gives an inciteful, poignant, tour de force performance as the reclusive widower. Many people called Brando a chameleon, but I would call him a chameleon who hated his camouflage; a prodigy who detested his talent; a narcissist who abhorred himself for being a mortal. Brando as Paul is a cross between a sadist and a masochist. He uses every ounce of his talent to conjure up his menacing alter-ego. Driven by guilt and chagrin, Paul's sociopathic self is a nightmare for those around him. Roger Ebert wrote about Brando's performance: "It's a movie that exists so resolutely on the level of emotion, indeed, that possibly only Marlon Brando, of all living actors, could have played its lead. Who else can act so brutally and imply such vulnerability and need?" The scene in which Paul confronts the dead body of his wife, who has committed suicide, is probably the most powerful scene ever filmed in cinema. It not only depicts the complexities associated with Paul's character but also highlights the dichotomy he suffered owing to his dual emotions of rage and grief.

Maria Schneider is innocent, charming, voluptuous and pitiful in her portrayal of Jeanne, a Parisian girl whose life is devoid of true love. Schneider, being fully aware of her limitations as an actor, incredibly manages to give a performance that is singular and effective enough not to be adumbrated by Brando's sublime, over-the-top portrayal.

The cinematography of the movie is vivid, elaborative, and expressive and is well complemented by the movie's sensuously evocative background score.

PS. Last Tango in Paris is a profoundly disturbing case-study of human emotions and is a must for cineastes worldwide, but can only be savoured by eschewing bigotry, prejudice, and conservatism. 9/10

http://www.apotpourriofvestiges.com/