User reviews

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/

Bernardo Bertoluci's "Last Tango in Paris" is a beautiful art-house movie that features one of Marlon Brando's finest performances. He plays Paul, an enigmatic American drawn to France after the recent suicide of his wife. While there, he encounters Jeanne, whom he soon begins to have an affair with. However, they do not reveal anything about themselves and the relationship is based solely on sex.

Jeanne is engaged to Tom, a film director making a documentary of sorts about her. She questions her own love for Tom as she finds herself more and more drawn to Paul.

"Last Tango in Paris" or "Ultimo tango a Parigi" was released in 1972 to much hoopla. Critics loved it but the American censors despised it and it somehow gained a reputation of being a "smut film." It's actually a deep and provocative statement about two people from different backgrounds who fall in love despite trying not to. Their anonymity with each other only makes it all the more difficult.

Brando delivers a stunning performance and Maria Schneider is quite convincing in what must have been a very demanding role.

This isn't a flawless film but it is very good and offers more than just the average "t&a" the genre has come to be known for.

"Last Tango in Paris" has been copied a few times over the years - most noticeably with films such as "9 1/2 Weeks" and "Intimacy." However, this is still one of the best "erotic" dramas out there.

This film is very nearly a masterpiece of cinema - the central flaw being the disparity between the intensity & truth depicted in the Brando/Schneider relationship and the nonsense that is parallelled in the Schneider/Leaud scenes. Now I realise that that is Bertolucci's intention (the serious as compared to the frivolous), but the latter relationship really is poorly evoked; thereby making half the film utterly unbelievable - which is a great shame because this really is a fascinating and brave piece of film-making. To lose most of the scenes involving Leaud's amateur film-maker would, I think, benefit the film hugely.

I'd also like to make couple of points relating to some of the other comments here. Firstly, the sex scenes weren't real. This is covered in Brando's autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me - apparently Bertolucci suggested the actors having 'real' sex, but all the scenes were "ersatz (simulated) sex", according to Brando. As for the comment that we don't actually see much - okay, it's not exactly pornographic but we certainly see enough of Schneider, with her magnificent bosom and splendid pubic-bush. Secondly, one of the reviewers makes the valid point about why viewers often consider Brando is playing an American 'businessman', but then misses the point where the character's back-story is referred to: the boxing career that didn't amount to much (think of Terry Malloy in 'On the Waterfront'); the references to him being a former revolutionary (ie: Zapata) and to working as a Japanese diplomat (see Brando's character Sakini in 'The Teahouse of the August Moon'); and moving to live in Tahiti (which Brando famously did whilst making 'Mutiny on the Bounty'). These references (along other autobiographical elements referred to within the film) blur the lines between what's true about us and what's isn't which, I suppose,is what the film is ultimately about.

One other aspect of the film which I think deserves mentioning is the opening title sequence. The film opens with images from a couple of Francis Bacon portraits - and appropriately so. If ever a film was able to capture the caged nature of the human condition (a key theme in Bacon's oeuvre), then 'Last Tango in Paris' is it.

And Brando in the leading role? Absolutely sensational. No other Hollywood actor could have produced such a brutally honest portrayal (one or two European actors might have managed it), but when watching this particular performance, we realise we are watching a very talent special indeed.

Marlon Brando plays Paul, an American whose wife has committed suicide.Maria Schneider plays a French girl called Jeanne.They both want an apartment and they meet in an empty room.Without a word they have sex.That begins a relationship that is based on sex.The man doesn't want to know anything about the woman, not even her name and he doesn't want to reveal his.Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris(1972) is a movie that caused a lot of controversy back then.Maria Schneider's full frontal nudity was one reason for the controversy.Schneider is brilliant in this film.She works great with Marlon Brando, the big Hollywood star.This is a brave film but never pornographic.There is one scene that caused big controversy, I'm talking about the anal intercourse where butter is used as a lubricant.It's not a pornographic scene and we don't see any pleasure there but rather pain that it causes to the woman.Last Tango in Paris is not the most pleasant movie experience but it's something you will remember.

This is a train wreck movie. It's about forces moving all over the place with no commitment and no love. Is it lust or is it physical release. Where is Brando in all this. There is a Camus like existential element at work all the way through here. Brando's character is so full of anger and pain that he gets his release in a sexual encounter (or a series if you will), based on anonymity and violence. He can't love again. There is a gray color to everything. Brando uses that incredible face of his to express his hurt. Every ounce of energy that an actor can put into a role is left in this one. Like many great films, there are no pat answers as the credits come up. The slice of life we have seen is sickening to us and we feel a little unclean. The fatalistic essence of having nothing to lose is as loud as the screams we hear, echoing the European train engines. I think that this was the first film I saw where I thought I was looking at a portrait. Some friends talked me into going to it because they had heard about "those scenes." I soon realized that there was so much more to this film than the sexually explicitness. I saw it again several years later. It has not tamed down in that time.

What can I say... This movie is almost a surrealistic expirence. It takes you to another place. Makes you feel and think. Sad and nhilistic I suppose, nothing uplifting here. But also feels raw and true to what life can be, which can give you more than a movie that's only trying to make you feel good, just beacuse it's actually more real, simple as that.

It's about these damaged lonley souls that finds each other. They want love, I think that is what they both truly want even if they perhaps don't even know it. And they just can't truly find it. They're lost. Sad, poetic and romantic, this movie, or piece of art, is. And that the film is filmed with such a low budget, almost amateurish, feel, only ads to the rawness and strange surialism. It's just different from everything you see today. And that is one of the unique charms this movie carries for all time.

But you do really feel bad for Jeanne, so young, such an unhealthy relationship. And relationships likes this do happen, young naive girl, still full of life but also curious to gain more expirences from life, to know more while still a bit lost and confused, a girl like that meets an older, seemingly wiser and more confident man then the boys she is used too, dark and mysterious. They are drawn to each other for different reasons, and doomed to never be happy, beacuse it's wrong.

Marlon Brando portrays something all men have in them, this lonley inner persona, that is hurt and angry about all the cow dung of the world and have lost hope, but still longs for the pure innocent beauty of a young girl, with the desire to do dirty things to her, to own her. He is the sad pathetic self loathing, self obsessed, "monster," that all men have within them to some degree. It's life. It's sad. This film is art, to speak of these deep things.

Why is this so good? Just beacuse it does something that many films can't do. In a sublime way, everything in this movie speaks of life in a very deep and inderect way, that you only feel but hardly can't explain. The film doesn't tell you what you're suppose to feel. It just makes you feel something, in an almost abstract way but also still true.

And it's just sooo French. Almost like an cliché but in a good way.

This film brings back some good memories for me. The sex scenes may be a little much but the carnal desire of the sexual revolution between Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider are nothing short of amazing! What happened to Maria Schneider? She steals the show as a young actress struggling with her boyfriend, her career, and Brando. Definetly not a film for children due to graphic sex and the sexual and emotional battles need to be dealt with extreme painstakingly care.

10/10

1972 130 mins. Rated: NC-17/X. CC.

This is one of the movies I loved the best. Not to comment the great performance by Brando, I was stunned by the deep pessimistic but greatly realistic power of Bertolucci's weltanschaaung. No place for love nor hope within the relation between man and woman, sex is the only common and finally vane physical and affective link. Scaring but attractive, terrible and fascinating as a night storm in the ocean, you feel a sense of loneliness and hopelessness so deep and real, that you can touch it. All played with just THREE characters! Matchless.

I decided to finally see this movie after learning of Maria Schneider's death this week. Marlon Brando is about as sexy as anyone can be and this is an old movie! Maria Schneider is awesome as she plays many levels of Jeanne being physically and psychologically seduced by the quirky character, Marlon Brando. The camera keeps jumping from present, past and insinuations of very past of Brando's character, Paul. What a movie! a must see! Secrets are revealed as the movie slowly creeps on. The scenes are dark and drab with no glory of anything luxurious of Paris life. As the movie flashes from past and present, the untold story unfolds. In the middle of this is Jeanne's quirky boyfriend/fiancé trying to make a fantasy movie/documentary of their life layered on top of the other life she is experiencing with Brando. Amazing how the puzzle pieces slowly snap together, and you, the viewer, finally see the entire picture for what its all about. Amazing.... great film even today almost 40 years later.

This movie has only one misfortune: it was made in early seventies. So that time's highlights (sexual emancipation) had taken over the rest in making it: Due to powerful and daring (for that time) scenes, the script is neglected. Young fiancé director's character, and the scenes with the girl and him are completely silly. Weak dialogs, slightly incoherent story, but very well compensated with great Brando's acting and powerful photography, and succeeds in communicating emotional message (the same message as the one in "Three Colors: Blue") to the viewer. Great ending. Great music. A must-see for any European movies fan. Makes you forgive for the script: 9/10

You can call it an amazing movie just for the great locations (the protagonists' empty room, the streets of Paris, the yard of Maria Schneider father's home, the club of the Last Tango) with the Vittorio Storaro's stunning photography. But if you think that this film also features what I consider the best Marlon Brando's interpretation ever, there you get the masterwork. I think everyone must watch it at least twice to fully understand the depth of the story and every single aspect of the characters, especially Brando's Paul. I don't give it a 10/10 only because I've seen some better movies than this.

Bertolucci's tale about sexuality as our basal, instinctive and potentially uncontrollable drive is first and foremost an excursion in debasement for an explosive and unprecedentedly personal Marlon Brando and the equally brave and incredibly impressionable Maria Schneider. Within a simple narrative about an ageing widower and a young searcher, both obstinate and rebellious, Bertolucci created a harrowing and emotionally draining study of indecency and self-abasement. With the rare combination of being crude in essence and intellectual in form, the film creates an overt, animalistic sexual realm and atmosphere that, up until 1972, had been completely unheard of. The director's cultivation of anti-purpose (which is not to be confused with purposelessness) gives the film a nihilistic quality, as if Bertolucci does all he can to push us viewers away, much in the same way that Brando's character pushes Jeanne away. If he succeeds, you may come away saner and happier, but hardly richer, because rarely has a film offered so much room for psychological interpretation as Last Tango in Paris does concerning its two protagonists. We're effectively brought into these two characters' mindsets and mental states with brain and gut - one of them destructive, one disillusioned, both unhappy - and the small glimpses of warmth they experience or exhibit are worth their weight in gold; these glimpses almost scream out their need to be savoured. And if Paul and Jeanne fail to do so, Bertolucci's hope is that we might - thereby realising how precious they are in an otherwise cold and godforsaken world.

The performances are beyond comparison to most any other forms of acting, and should be viewed sociologically rather than technically, almost as an expression of authenticism caught on film, bordering on being a precursor to reality television. Brando completely improvised all his lines and invested more in his character than arguably anyone has done before or since. He expresses himself like an artist, not an actor, and his work here is arguably the most personal and disclosing in film history. Even the stories he tells from his childhood are practically identical to stories he told in his autobiography some twenty years later. And Schneider, who started this project as a young, talented actress, let herself be played, almost bullied, by Brando and Bertolucci, but she never lost her integrity, never failed to exhibit an amazing strength of character. She's naked and exposed, but never broken, and her expressive performance almost gets stronger the more she's used and abused. Her ambivalence towards her relationship with the Brando character is enhanced by the confusion Brando creates. There's no doubt in my mind that her acting is partly authentic; she was drawn to the enigmatic Brando as much as she was appalled by his character, his intensity, and Bertolucci's script.

Last Tango in Paris can be read as a comment about society, humanity and the times in which it was created. Or it can be seen as a chamber piece between two wounded, destructive souls in desperate search for their true selves. Either way it is an opinionated and unrelenting film that should be viewed with a critical but open eye. Both Schneider and Brando had incredibly ambivalent feelings about it for the rest of their lives. This is one of those films that leave a lasting impression - or mark, rather - on everyone who is touched by it.

I never watched this film when it came out, but even after 45-years I can vividly recall all of the sexual hoopla and controversy it stirred up, often to a fever pitch. So this year, in 2017, I finally decided to watch it, and although the sex scenes were lusty, today they probably wouldn't have even raised an eyebrow. That's how far we've come, or digressed, depending on your point of view. In any event, I feel extremely sorry for the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" that the young Maria Schneider must have suffered as a result of a scene that wasn't even scripted, that Brando suddenly made her perform on the spur of the moment. The film was even better because Brando explored hidden depths that even this superb thespian had never explored, a gift to all who love and admire his innate gifts. This was a superbly crafted film, and again, should be viewed in the context of that greatness, not based or condemned on the sole basis of a single scene, regardless of how disturbing or graphic. This was one truly memorable movie, and will certainly stand the test of time.

This movie is one of a kind, but I don't think it's for everybody. I've never seen anything like it until then, and I was blown away in more ways than one. It's really hard to watch, though, so I think you'd have to be mature enough because I watched it when I was about nineteen and still couldn't understand it. Not just the message of the movie, but the meaning of each scene. It was really hard for me to comprehend then, and still is now. Now that I reminisce about it, and put the pieces of the puzzle back together, it makes more sense, but I still feel as if I'm missing something. I gave it a 9/10 because of the movie's quality and Brando's presence. There was something odd about it, as if he wasn't really acting this time around, as if he was simply being there. It was different, to say the least. Unlike any movie you'll ever see.

If your looking for the controversial X rated movie of the 1970s, you'll be disappointed. There is nothing controversial about this movie to today's viewer, back in the 70s yes, but now.... Marlon Brando gives a performance that I think is better then either his in the godfather or Apocalypse now, which is saying a lot. Maria Schneider holds her own against Brando, but her character cannot compete with the sorrow he holds. Brilliant direction. 9/10

Like the song New York state of mind - so no pun intended may not apply in this case (for those who have read more of my reviews ... just go with the flow). But this is not about me. This is about one of the best actors of his generation (for some even the best) ... and for a movie that is a bit infamous ... I had never seen it before but apparently there were rumors about a sex scene in this ... and how real it was.

Just because actors are nude .. it does not mean that they actually are doing what you think (they pretend) are doing ... but I reckon I can see what they mean when they claim that. The scene in question ... well there are quite a few scenes that are sexual in nature. Actually I am surprised one specific scene did not create an uproar. Not back then - but in the new climate we are in. I reckon it is because most people who would (rightfully) feel offended by it, have not watched it.

I may be wrong about that of course, because the movie is aimed at an intelligent audience. And I am not looking to win votes here. Because while this is considered a classic, it also is pace wise quite difficult to watch. Relationships are hard - even (or more so?) in the city of love ... Paris that is.

And there is also a lot of french talk here .. also brushes with death, a lot of talking, fighting (verbally) and more things that may feel redundant ... or not exciting at least. But if you like your drama to deal with humans and emotions ... as erratic as they can be and seem ... well you could do worse than this movie for sure.

Cinematography, set design and editing work really well together ... but again, you have to be in the mood (for love? And all the feelings in between and outside of it)

This movie was controversial then, and if I showed it to some people nowadays it'd be controversial now. Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris is essentially his dream of going to Paris and meeting a random woman who'd he'd have sex with and never know her name.

This movie is beautiful to look at and watch. Marlon Brando's acting was outstanding and same with Maria Schneider. The plot drags at moments and most of the development between me comes toward the end with its epic conclusion. They're so much influence you feel from French new wave films, but it lacks some of their clarity. The Film is graphic with its sexual content but it does not take away from the artfulness of the movie.

Overall, it's a nice movie with outstanding acting from Brando and beautiful look to it but it suffers from some slow pacing. Overall Good film if you can appreciate the beauty of it. 7/10