Product: Last Tango in Paris (1973)
Rating: 5.0
The Performance
I have seen just about every single performance Marlon Brando has given on the silver screen. This is my favorite. I have heard all the critics talk about Brando's signiture rolls namely as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, and Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather as his top performances. Of coarse they are all amaming, I own all three films and have watched them many times, but somehow Last Tango gets left out. Not all the time but most of it. In Paul, under Berolucci's direction, I think Brando created his most amazing and difficult performance. Most people wouldn't agree, but people who have really studied the actor as I have might. This movie is not so much about the characters in it or the simple plot that it follows, it is about Brando himself. Perhaps no other actor in history has fascinated people with his amazing talent only to have to watch him throw it away on low bugget films and cameo performances for big bucks. !I believe this is Brando's greatest performance because it is Brando. Watch him, listen to him, Paul is Brando. I think the defining moment for me was when he says to Maria Schnieder "I been called by a thousand names, I would be better off being call by a grunt or a groan." Likewise at the end of the film after he has been shot Schneider says "he was a stranger, I didn't even know his name." To me this is how the world perceives Brando himself. What do we really know about him? Everything or nothing. Brando to the public is like Paul to Schneider's character, he is an enigma. And he will stay that way. Brando has given some of the finest performances ever printed on film, but they were performances all the same. In Last Tango in Paris Brando stripped the method act and gave us the man. It is truely an amazing thing to see. After this film Brando did not perform for three years, and when he did start acting again it was only for the pay. I think this is because in Last Tango B!rando layed it all out and that was it for him.