Dir. Bernardo Bertollucci, France/Italy, 1972, 129 mins, some subtitles
Cast: Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider
Review by Justin Camilleri
On its original release, Last Tango in Paris shattered all social and sexual conventions. Director Bernardo Bertollucci took a great risk with his provocative subject matter without which, arguably, such films as Adrian Lyne's visual 9 ½ weeks, Mike Leigh’s Naked or Patrice Chereau’s Intimacy would not have been made.
The story is a dark tale of a middle–aged American man, Paul (Brando), and a young Parisian girl, Jeanne (Schneider), who meet in Paris and embark on an intense physical relationship which soon becomes a vigorous descent into a private hell filled with sexual menace. This is not for the faint hearted. The whole film is filled with an aura of gloom, such as the scene in which Brando returns to the seedy hotel in which his adulterous wife has committed suicide. With the camera closing up on Brando we feel Paul’s inherent confusion and despair.
Interestingly, from a modern viewpoint where society is seemingly obsessed with reality tv shows and celebrity magazines, the film seems to ask the question 'have we come so far yet sunk so low as to be more interested in how pretty a person looks in front of the camera than as to what that person is about? This is reflected in the scenes of Maria Schneider going to meet her fiancé, a film maker who is more interested in making a film about her, then actually getting to know her or what she is up to when he is not around. The film also makes the point that, in the media obsessed world we live in, the simple but profound fact is that as innocent as we may appear we all harbour dark secrets.
This, for all intents and purposes, is Marlon Brando’s show, which is a powerful and mesmeric tour de force performance by an actor who convinced a cynical audience and could still hold their attention by projecting through his character’s facial expressions all the torment and anguish suffered from his wife’s infidelities and inexplicable suicide.
Forget the much hyped and parodied 'Butter Sequence', what remains ingrained in our psyche is the confession scene where through ad lib improvisation, Brando curses and cries over the body of his dead wife. The actor's extraordinary pain and passion are also reflected in Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography of sombre colours, and the film’s harsh and shocking ending is inevitable. Brando was quoted as saying at the time about the film: “For the first time, I have felt the violation of my innermost self” because despite being a grimly and fascinating film there are no bright or uplifting moments to lighten its darkness. I tend to agree.
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