Product: Last Tango in Paris (1973)
Rating: 4.0
A Great Performance, A Flawed Film
It's been said, by a reviewer whose name escapes me at the moment, that this is the last film where Marlon Brando looked good. Truth is, it's also probably the last film where Brando demonstrated why he was considered one of America's best actors. It's most definitely a flawed film. The scenes where Brando does not appear are pretentious and fairly boring. I tend to agree with the assessment of Ingmar Bergman, who opined that the storyline of this film actually would have made more sense if the 2 main characters had been played as gay men. Perhaps. Maria Schneider is very sexy, but she's just not a really good actress. And yet, when Brando is on screen, he's absolutely dynamic, enthralling, electric. Never before, and probably never again, will you witness a performance so raw, so unadorned, so revealing. Forget the sexual scenes that earned the film its notoriety. Check out Brando's soliloquy beside his suicidal wife's coffin. Or his ironic blend of tenderness and misogyny in his scenes with Schneider. Or when he weeps for...what? the impossibility of his romance with Schneider? His lost, blighted past? Or his silent, agonized finale when he sees for the final time the magnificent skyline of Paris. It's easy to become jaded by the films of today, watching as modern Hollywood's so-called stars perfunctorily perform their bland roles by rote, gearing their performances to the lowest common denominator possible. Watching Brando in his blistering and towering performance here reminds one of why acting can be considered an awe-inspring art form and why it was that I used to love going to the movies.