Product: Last Tango in Paris (1973)
Rating: 5.0
Brando and Bertolucci
Paris is dirty, or at least the parts of it visited by Bertolucci's camera. The beginning of the film follows the separate paths of the two main actors(Brando, Schneider) through the streets of Paris. We've yet to meet them or learn anything about them but we can't wait til they finally do cross paths in an old run down apartment where most of the movie will take place. The cinematic style is unmistakably European and at a time when European cinema was at its very highest point. For a short time in the late sixties and early seventies film was considered on almost equal footing with literature. In fact the cinema seemed to be the perfect medium to transmit what the novel had become...experimental, non-linear, post-structural. If culture was entering into a post-verbal phase cinema seemed the obvious medium for high culture to express itself in. Antonioni's Blow-Up(based on the Cortazar story) and Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris are the most convincing examples of cinema having achieved this equal footing with literature. It didn't last long but for a few years foreign cinema produced one masterpiece after another. European cinema was at its height in 1972 and so was Marlon Brando. Bertolucci was a new director and Brando already a star but it never seems either is interfering with the others talents. They encourage and compliment each other perfectly. Brando is allowed to improvise all he wants it appears but Bertolucci is free to turn the sound down or up, or move the camera closer or further away to get just the effect he wants. They both come out looking great. It is as powerful an acting performance as exists anywhere(no other movie feels as real as this one), and it is a very pleasingly constructed piece of modern cinema. Two virtuosos practicing their craft.The story is a depressing one but its the moments when Brando departs from the script that one feels the freedom that a live performance when everything is really clicking and happening can give one. And its the perfect script for allowing such moments of departures because the character in the story needs desperately to feel free or liberated again from the confines of what life/culture has become. In their rented room Brando and Scheider explore a reality of their own making. Their room becomes a playground where no stultifying bourgeois rules exist. Ultimately the game does not shut out real life and that is the tragedy of the Brando character. As real life creeps in to their play world the game winds down and appropriately the final scenes show the characters not in their room but in public, once again in the streets where the film began. The younger Schneider just sought a momentary diversion in the affair whereas the older Brando relied on it for his very sustenance and once the game ends there is nothing else for him. Without a playmate to keep him playful he is simply desperate. Everything about this film is perfect, including the music. A long film at 128 minutes but one that impresses you again every time you see it. No other movie has the power this one has. Brando's most interesting character, and Bertolucci's most interesting/accomplished piece of film.