Last Tango in Paris, Part 1

Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando in 'Last Tango in Paris'.





About 45 years ago, the film critic Pauline Kael made the bold statement that a landmark in the history of cinema emerged. The unusual suspects included a young Italian filmmaker, a middle-age American actor who has just delivered one of the most iconic characters in the history of cinema (and made others a few offers they couldn’t refuse), and a French actress who just reached 20. This international wonder was recognized by many awards, and yet generated enough controversies for which active discussions regarding it have continued to this day. The film is of course Bernardo Bertolucci’s ‘Last Tango in Paris’!

The contemplation of life.

Before we indulge ourselves in this modern classic, I would like to offer a bit of a warning. This film is extremely sexually explicit, and while my discussion will be more about psychology – because I feel it was Bertolucci’s focus after all – there are certain points that we may encounter sexual content, and I hope that will not be offensive to certain readers. The first part will be about background and style, the second part will be about content.

Bernardo Bertolucci

‘The Last Tango in Paris’ can be considered a milestone in the world cinema of the 1970s. It starred the one-and-only Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, and was directed by a young Bernardo Bertolucci, just after he made another modern classic, ‘The Conformist’. Bertolucci has always been a filmmaker I admire and have an intense fascination in. Ever since I watched his epic ‘Last Emperor of China’ (1987) in my teenage years, I have already found his films visually stunning, mainly due to the contribution from his director of photography, Vittorio Storaro. Bertolucci has always been a very daring and ambitious filmmaker, and his films have often courted controversy, mainly due to the sexual content. While Bertolucci’s films are often politically-driven, there is also a psychological edge in many of them. To be frank, I am more into the psychological aspect, and I guess that’s the reason why ‘Last Tango’ is my favourite Bertolucci film. I have to admit I have a continuing fascination with this film. Though I have watched it more than 20 times, I cannot stop going back to it again and again. The Technicolor feel, the painterly composition, the naked emotion, and Brando’s brilliant performance – all can turn into an obsession. So be warned – ‘Last Tango’ can be the sort of film you fall in love with!  

Bertolucci directing Brando and Schneider.

Marlon Brando was one of the actors I admire the most in the history of cinema, and therefore it shouldn’t be surprising that his performance here is among one of my favourite, alongside with ‘Godfather’. One cannot stop falling in love with Brando’s talent, if you really love cinema, because his style was just so unique. Brando could be considered as one of the key actors who involved in method acting. The way he mumbled through his lines, and his monologues, especially in his films from the 1970s, offered a hypnotic effect. I can say I have fallen in love with Brando’s monologues – I just want to hear him talking on and on and on.

Bertolucci and Storaro's painterly composition.



While ‘Last Tango in Paris’ has won a lot of awards, it was an extremely controversial film even in its era, which was a time when filmmakers were willing to explore all sorts of ideas and style. The NC-17 film is sexually explicit, and it has unfortunately courted courtesy last year because of the infamous butter scene that implied an anal rape. As there are so many contradictory versions of the story, and also two of the protagonists – Brando and Schneider – have already passed away, there is thus no way to have a fair assessment of what was really going on. What can be established is that there has been some horrible misunderstanding between the filmmaker and the actors, and Schneider did not quite see what was coming for her character. Thus, what the audience watched on the screen was her genuine distress, and I think it would make the audience feel unsettled if they were aware of that fact. Maybe Bertolucci wanted to push for a more authentic performance here, but he probably would be better off if he explained clearly to the actors given the controversial nature of the sequence. So, it is fair to say everyone had some responsibility here, because they should all ask for clarifications if things might go wrong, and this should serve as a cautionary tale for later filmmakers.   

Light, shadow, body, psyche.

Is ‘Last Tango in Paris’ pornographic, as some detractors may suggest? I disagree. It is fair to say the film has a strong sexual element, yet the intention is not to make the audience feel ‘dirty’ about sex. If Bertolucci’s intention was to make ‘Last Tango’ a pornographic film, then he would have failed miserably, because it was clearly not his intention (and he would also not need all the efforts to write all those beautiful dialogues and figure out the painterly compositions). The audience will not feel horny or sensationalized by sex from this NC-17 film, rather, they will likely feel emotional and garner sympathy to the two major characters. To me, ‘Last Tango in Paris’ is not merely about sex. It is about relationships. It is about feelings. It is about how things can go horribly wrong if you do not understand others, or have a wrong expectation from others due to the lack of a proper and sincere communication. The tragic consequence of the film is due to character flaws and the failure to express feelings that can strengthen relationships. Sex, after all, is merely a vehicle to tell the story and express the theme.

Paul and Jeanne's brief encounter in the streets of Paris.

After watching 2 paintings by the 20^th century artist Francis Bacon, Bertolucci invited us to the story of Paul (Marlon Brando) and Jeanne (Maria Schneider). Paul was a middle-age American who was mourning over her wife’s recent suicide. Wandering aimlessly around the streets of Paris, he first encountered Jeanne, a young French girl. Fate had it (or Bertolucci playing God?!) that the two met again when they both wanted to let an apartment. Out of impulse they first made love there. Since then, they established a relationship based on sex and love-making, yet there was a rule not to be broken – it had to be anonymous, and they could not tell each other their names and their outside lives. In fact, Jeanne had a boyfriend in her normal life, meaning that she was sort of living a diurnal existence here. While Paul was struggling to make sense of his life and regrets, Jeanne had second thoughts and confusions about her relationship with Paul. Is the relationship worth sustaining, and what would eventually come out of that in the end?

The inevitable union of 2 tortured souls?

 

Now you owe me Bacon

 

While ‘Last Tango in Paris’ was a psychologically- and emotionally-rich film, it also had an unique style, which was brilliantly devised by Bertolucci and the director of photography, Vittorio Storaro. While I feel that the Bertolucci-Storaro style is more obvious in another film, ‘The Conformist’, which I will talk about soon, there are still some aspects in ‘Last Tango’ that is worth looking at.  

Bertolucci has cited the influence of Francis Bacon to the style in ‘Last Tango in Paris’, as far as asking Brando and Storaro and others to observe Bacon’s paintings and tried to imitate the style from them. Bacon had a unique style to his painting, and one could feel that his painitings on human characters were often very abstract, rather than relying on the foundation of realism. In the opening titles of the film, Bertolucci showed 2 paintings from Bacon, one male and one female. Not only the grotesque effect was evident, the paintings also showed ambivalence. While the characters in the painting appeared to be in relaxing position, their facial expressions were distorted and ambiguous, far from suggesting they were enjoying themselves. It thus appeared if they were ‘placed’ into such a position deliberately rather than following their natural composure and feeling comfortable. Indeed, Bertolucci advised Brando to imitate the gesture and composure from these Bacon paintings (you can say it as a sort of method acting), and Brando has committed to this approach and has all sort of different composures in the interior scenes. In the final moment of the opening credits, Bertolucci deliberately placed the 2 paintings aside once more, as if to symbolize the inevitable cross of path of the male (Paul) and female (Jeanne). Call it fate or whatever, that was when the two tortured and confused souls finally encountered each other amidst the streets of Paris.

Brando, a phone, and a lamp - then we have a performance.

When one watches a film by Bertolucci, the significant contributions from Vittorio Storaro, who is Bertolucci’s long-term collaborator on cinematography. Though I will talk in detail about Storaro’s general style in the article for ‘The Conformist’, I will pick up a few points which are relevant to ‘Last Tango’ here. Drawing inspirations from Bacon, many scenes in the film had a painterly feel, and to be sure, if one pauses the film every now and then, the shot may appear as if they are paintings from an artist. The beautiful compositions, the brown hues, with the balanced and often stylized use of light and shadow, Bertolucci and Storaro created images as if they were painting on celluloid. It was quite clear that there was a contrasting atmosphere when one compared the scenes outside the apartment (i.e. Jeanne’s normal life), and those inside the apartment (i.e. Jeanne and Paul). While the outdoor scenes were naturalistic, the indoor scenes were painterly and stylized in terms of lighting and composition. In many of those scenes you can almost always see light mingling around with shadow! I am not sure if an analogy to Freud’s ideas are totally relevant here, yet I feel that the intimate scenes inside the apartment are very similar to the unconscious side of our minds, and the place is where the more carnal desires lurk around. While the indoor scenes can be seen as limited, often only involving Paul and Jeanne, they are among the most atmospheric and emotional moments of this film, and Bertolucci’s mastery for the story should be recognized. I remember reading a negative review of Bertolucci’s flawed classic ‘1900’ from Roger Ebert, and in there Ebert pointed out that Bertolucci’s greatest moment was when he was directing 2 characters in a room. I think at least Ebert could appreciate the strength of Bertolucci’s work (also think about the ‘Plato’ scene in ‘The Conformist’). To sustain the fascination and attention from the audience in such a minimalist mise-en-scene requires a lot of talent and creativity from the filmmaker. Bertolucci should be proud of that!

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Film Analysis