I had planned to write this film up yesterday, but something came along and took the wind right out of my sails. But, I definitely don’t want to talk politics today, so let’s turn to another topic like, say . . . sex! Yuh, that’s the ticket! And what better film to serve as a springboard for a frank discussion of sex than Last Tango in Paris. This film gained a whole lot of notoriety when it was released in 1972, not only for the explicitness of its sexuality but for the utter lack of any companion notions of sentimentality or romance.

Historical Background: Bernardo Bertolucci was born in 1941 in Parma, Italy. His father was a poet and Bertolucci began studies in modern literature himself, at the University of Rome, but seized an opportunity to serve as assistant director for Pasolini’s debut film, Accattone! (1961). The next year, he directed his own debut film, The Grim Reaper, but it was his second film, Before the Revolution, that brought him to international attention. It introduced what were to become principal stylistic elements throughout Bertolucci’s career: a deft visual style and emphasis on romance and psychological crisis. His films usually have strong musical scores (often featuring the music of Verdi), careful attention to mise-en-scène, fluid camera movement, and quick, rhythmic editing. Bertolucci also had a fascination with the concept of psychological doubles, which he explored in such films as Partner (1968) and The Spider's Stratagem (1970). His 1971 film, The Conformist is considered Bertolucci’s best film by many critics and fans. That film included a scene in which the two lead female characters dance a tango together, a dance theme that was later reprised in Last Tango in Paris (1972). While Last Tango in Paris set new standards (or abolished old ones) with respect to explicitness of sexuality in art films, Luna (1979) abrogated another sexual taboo in depicting mother/son incest. Between those films, Bertolucci made his epic 1900 (1977), which dealt with social and class struggle in Italy’s Emilia region. Between 1989 and 1993, Bertolucci directed a trilogy of high budget art films of which only the first, The Last Emperor (1989), was well received. Both The Sheltering Sky (1990) and Little Buddha (1993) were disappointments, both critically and at the box-office. Bertolucci’s more recent works include Stealing Beauty (1996) and Beseiged (1998).

Last Tango in Paris had a lot of difficulty escaping the red pen of various censors. After the film's initial release, each of the principals involved with it were made subject to arrest had they stepped foot inside of Italy. It was banned in Portugal for a couple of years. In American, it began life with an “X” rating. Few of the mainstream theaters would show it and even many of the art houses avoided it. Some of its initial screenings were in porn theaters, which resulted in an odd mixing of clienteles. It was submitted for re-rating in 1997 and was rated “NC-17,” which provided little advantage. A cut version was also made and received an “R” rating. My DVD from MGM is the uncut, uncensored version.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SECTION INCLUDES SEXUALLY EXPLICIT LANGUAGE NECESSARY TO DISCUSSION OF THE FILMS CONTENT.

The Story: Paul (Marlon Brando) is a forty-five year-old American expatriate living in Paris, whose wife Rose has just committed a very bloody suicide with a razor. Paul, at a loss to understand his wife’s act (she left no suicide note), wanders in a daze down a Parisian street. A beautiful Parisian girl, Jeanne (Maria Schneider), of twenty walks past him, taking note of his apparent distress, but walking on. As it happens, both are hunting for new apartments and end up checking out the same open one. As the two look around the apartment, with each asking if the other is going to take it, Paul walks up to Jeanne, kisses her, and, very quickly, the two are having upright sex. They soon part ways.

The next day Jeanne returns to the apartment, ostensibly to check on whether it’s been taken, but seeing furniture being moved in, she nevertheless hangs around and, soon, encounters Paul. Soon, they have struck up a perverse kind of affair based on Paul’s odd rules of engagement: no names, no background information, no details about each other’s lives, and, a general exclusion of the outside world. They will focus only on one another and their relationship. Paul does relate a little of his childhood – a drunken, abusive father and a drunken mother who at least taught him a love for nature, and growing up as a farm boy. Jeanne, we learn, lives with her middle class mother. Her father was an army colonel and died in Algeria.

Both find this artificial narrowing of focus erotic and enticing. Their relationship takes on a kind of caveman/cavewoman character to it. With all of the social niceties dispensed with, Paul uses Jeanne essentially as a sex toy, simply specifying what he wants her to do to meet his needs. “Get the butter” is his opening greeting when she arrives on one occasion, which is prelude to anal intercourse. On another occasion, he sponges her down in the tub and then demands that she provide him with anal-digital stimulation. While Paul presents these demands in a manner that I would characterize as rude, inconsiderate, and misogynistic, there is no indication that she is being forced to participate against her will. She neither protests nor refuses to continue the relationship. Paul’s view of relationships is quite cynical. He tells Jeanne, “You won’t be free of being alone until death.”

In addition to the sexual interactions, there are a few other instances of ugliness in this relationship. Jeanne is quite upset, for example, when she discovers a dead rat on the bed of the apartment. Paul rather crudely taunts her about her revulsion by pretending that he plans to eat the rat, suggesting that it might go well with mayonnaise. He even adds that he will start with the head and save the asshole for Jeanne.

Although the core of this film is the relationship between Paul and Jeanne within the apartment, each has a significant subplot external to their relationship. Paul is still dealing with the aftermath of his wife’s suicide. Paul and his wife had owned and operated a sleazy hotel catering mainly to alcoholics, drug addicts, and prostitutes. In one scene, Paul has to deal with the maid who is cleaning up the blood splattered about during the suicide, now that the police have completed their investigation. In another scene, Paul deals with Rose’s mother (Maria Michi), who is a “good Catholic” and at a loss to understand her daughter’s suicide. She is distraught that her daughter was having an affair with a man living in the hotel. The mother wants a wake with a priest so that her daughter can receive absolution. Paul and Rose were both apparently non-believers and Paul doesn’t want priests involved. Paul seems to blame Rose’s mother for the suicide, apparently believing that Rose must have been conflicted between her need for sex and the sexual repression of her Catholic upbringing. Near the end of the film, there’s a magnificent scene in which Paul is alone with the body of his deceased wife, at the wake, and expresses his bitterness toward her in explicit terms in a lengthy soliloquy.

Jeanne’s subplot pertains to her devoted boyfriend, Tom (Jean-Pierre Léaud). Tom is a filmmaker and is shooting a documentary about Jeanne. He virtually worships the ground she walks on but his approach to Jeanne contrasts sharply with that of Paul. Tom is a bit wimpy and eccentric – not especially masculine in a conventional sense. He’s rather cerebral but unmanly. He wants to marry Jeanne but she seems uncertain about whether he is what she wants.

There are some dramatic developments near the end of the film which I’m going to refrain from articulating, so as to avoid spoilers for readers who might want to see the film. I’ll only add that the tango scene figures into this final portion of the film

Themes: When during their first encounter, Paul presses himself on Jeanne without invitation, Jeanne neither assents nor protests, so I suppose viewers can decide for themselves whether this particular sexual encounter constituted rape or not. I say not. Certainly, “no” means “no” and “yes" means "yes” but the lack of either a verbal or nonverbal “no” when the opportunity existed for such a “no” strikes me as implicit consent. I hope that viewpoint is not offensive to any readers. Later, Jeanne returns to the apartment and hangs around a bit despite seeing furniture being moved in, indicating that she is not adverse to a further encounter with Paul. Apparently, she found his straightforward, virile, but somewhat misogynistic approach perversely exciting and satisfying. I disagree with reviewers who call this relationship between Paul and Jeanne sadomasochistic. For all his insensitivity, Paul is not mainly deriving pleasure from inflicting pain on Jeanne. He is merely taking pleasure from her in whatever ways his momentary impulses dictate without regard to her needs, pleasure, or pain.

Human sexuality is one of the most complex phenomena in nature, in my opinion. Almost anything one might say about it as a generalization will be false for many individuals. One might say “women want this” or “women want that” and you’d find that the truth is that some women want “this” while others want “that”, many want a little of “this” and a little of “that”, but some want more “this” than “that” or vice versa. In my opinion, Last Tango in Paris is most fundamentally about what men and women want from one another in sexual relationships – the “this” and the “that” of it, which come down to giving pleasure or getting pleasure.

Most people have elements of ambivalence in their sexual desires. Most people, for example, have sexual fantasies, some of which they would actually like to have happen in real live (if the opportunity presented itself) and others of which they would be scared to death to have happen in real life. There are far more people who have fantasies of being raped, for example, than who actually want to be raped. There are also more people who fantasize about committing rape than who commit rape – thank goodness. The biological and psychological aspects of our sexual urges go so far back in evolutionary history that some of those urges don’t comport with our conscious minds and/or the realities of modern human existence. We struggle, collectively, to integrate basic sexual urges with our ideas of appropriate social behavior.

The societies in America and much of Western Europe are gradually moving in the direction of more equality between men and women but some aspects of heterosexuality are inherently unequal. Men and women both have to struggle with how to relate to the opposite sex consistent with changing relationship dynamics. Both genders sometimes experience ambivalence in what they want. Moreover, what’s expected differs from one culture to another and from one social class to another. A woman might find herself more attracted to men who are virile, strong, assertive and manly; another woman might be turned off by such qualities and prefer a man who is sensitive to her needs and who enjoys an essential equality of assertiveness. Some women will be ambivalent, having conflicting desires, sometimes fantasizing about being “swept off their feet” by a man in the throes of passion but other times wishing for an equal or subordinate partner. All of these same points could be made in reverse for men. A man might be turned on by the notion of a “dominatrix” but in another moment by the idea of having a female “sex-slave.” I’m reasonably open-minded about what does and does not constitute healthy sexuality. Consent, legal age, and privacy are the core necessities. Beyond that, it all comes down to personal taste.

Jeanne was fundamentally conflicted about whether she wanted to marry Tom. There’s even one scene when he asks her to marry him and she waffles back and forth between “yes” and “no” for an answer. If she marries Tom, she will be in the dominant position in the relationship. He is very attentive to her, virtually worships her, and can be expected to cater to her needs. He will consider himself fortunate to have married her and will likely work hard to hold onto her. While that has its appeal, what she will not have is a virile, masculine kind of guy. Paul represented the opposite extreme and thus an opportunity for Jeanne to explore whether that virility factor was important enough to justify turning Tom down. The relationship between Paul and Jeanne was based exclusively on his sexual needs, not hers. Paul says at one point that Jeanne will never get better sex than what she gets in their apartment (from him), but that is the kind of male bravado that is particularly prevalent in males burdened by excess machismo. Never once in their sexual interactions did Paul concern himself with ensuring Jeanne’s pleasure, though she may have (and in at least the first instance did) derive pleasure from the sheer excitement of the aggressiveness of the sexual interaction. Near the end of the film, Paul argues that he and Jeanne should continue their relationship because “he loves her” and that’s all that matters. What he means, basically, is that his desire for her sexually is both the necessary and sufficient reason for them to be together. Her wants have no place in his equation.

Thus, Last Tango in Paris contrasts two opposite, both lopsided kinds of male-female relationship. With Tom, Jeanne can expect a man who is attentive to her needs but one from whom she will derive less satisfaction in satisfying his needs. With Paul, she feels the immediacy of his intense need for her but would get precious little attention to her own needs. Some people need to be the one in a relationship that is needed by the other. Some people need to be the one whose needs are catered to. My personal view is that the healthiest and most satisfying relationships are those in which each partner from time to time assumes each of the two basic roles in a couple: pleasure-giver and pleasure-recipient. Yet, despite that feeling right as theory, some people are so disinterested in one or the other of the two roles that they really prefer an imbalanced relationship in one direction or the other. Often they can find a partner with the opposite set of needs.

Then, there’s also the issue of why Rose committed suicide. And the related issue, why was she having an affair? Although Paul places the blame for her suicide on her Catholic upbringing and sexual guilt, there’s another possibility. Paul pays a visit to the man, Marcel (Massimo Girotti), with whom Rose was having her affair and wonders, as he walks out, what she ever saw in him. Marcel is older than Paul and not nearly as handsome or virile. He’s rather ordinary looking and unappealing. I can’t imagine, however, that Paul’s mode of interacting with Jeanne sexually was much different than how he interacted with Rose. One doesn’t invent a whole new style all at once for a new lover. Marcel was probably a good deal more attentive to Rose’s sexual needs than was Paul. Discovering the contrast, Rose may have come to feel that Paul didn’t truly love her. One problem with lopsided “love” relationships, where one person does all of the giving and the other all of the taking, is that after a while the person who does all the giving may begin to feel like they’re being used.

Production Values: Dealing with such potentially grotesque subject matter, the cinematography provided by Vittorio Storaro was critical to this film’s success by ensuring a pleasing look to the sexual scenes. Storaro used a soft focus and natural lighting to preclude these scenes from coming across as mere pornography. The musical score was quite effective as well. The mise-en-scène included some lovely Italian paintings.

Brando’s performance in Last Tango in Paris is the highlight of the film. He was still young enough and shapely enough to make it work and there may be no other actor who could have succeeded in this role. Brando combines an outwardly strong façade with inner explosiveness and vulnerability like no other male actor. Many critics consider this Brando’s best performance of his career. Brando himself wrote “Last Tango left me depleted and exhausted. Some of the pain I was experiencing was my very own.” That is often how great performances transpire. Brando manages to convey all of that depth of emotion mainly through facial expression and gestures.

Maria Schneider’s role was not nearly as demanding, since it called for her to play the sex object in both her relationships – with Paul and with Tom. The first used her as a sex object and the second adored her as an ornament, but either way, she was reduced to an object. So, her main job was to look gorgeous and desirable. With plenty of frontal and backside nudity, she doesn’t disappoint.

Bottom-Line: In the course of writing reviews for Epinions, I’ve also read a whole lot of reviews written by others, either for newspapers, Epinions, the Internet Movie Database, or other internet sites. I’ve found many of those reviews well-written, informative, or entertaining. One aspect I sometimes find annoying, however, is that American writers tend too often to approach movie reviews like an attorney given a case to prosecute or defend. Reviewers too often seem to want to make either the best case for or the best case against a movie, even for movies that are neither masterpieces nor travesties. This movie in particular has attracted what I consider to be exaggerated claims in both directions. The history of extreme opinions about the film began even before its release in America, when the influential critic Pauline Kael jumped on its bandwagon: “This must be the most powerfully erotic movie ever made, and it may turn out to be the most liberating movie ever made, and so it’s probably only natural that an audience, anticipating a voluptuous feast from the man who made The Conformist, and confronted with this unexpected sexuality, and the new realism it requires of the actors, should go into shock. Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face of an art form.” She went on the compare the film to the premiere of Stravinsky’s magnificent Le Sacre du Printemps in 1913 that precipitated a riot. Kael overestimated, in my opinion, the erotic value of the film, its artistic merit, and its ultimate influence. On the other hand, the critic who calls this film “the finest example of self-indulgent, pretentious art-house trash” that “aspires to be shocking and intellectual” but which is “devoid of substance, wholly unbelievable and mind-numbingly boring” is equally far off the deep end in the other direction. He adds, “this film doesn’t say anything and doesn’t go anywhere. Anyone who says otherwise is apparently capable of inferring emotional and intellectual meaning where there is none.”

The reality is that this film is neither a masterpiece nor devoid of substance. It is provocative, it was daring for the time in which it was made, it sparked intense controversy and encouraged other filmmakers to take risks, and Brando gives an exceptional performance. Keep in mind that this is no conventional romance. I can’t say that I can recommend this for young couples to watch together. It would seem to me to have more potential for distressing a romantic relationship than invigorating it. As a general viewing experience, however, it is a very good film, though less than the masterpiece that Kael dubbed it. It is in French and English with optional English subtitles. The running time if 129 minutes.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age