Product: Last Tango in Paris (1973)
Rating: 5.0
Pauline Kael was right ...
This is a great film. I'm not sure it "altered the face of an art form," as Kael said, but that's because only the rarest artists can carry off such an unblinking look inside a soul. Marlon Brando is such an artist, and even he only tried it once.I've been watching a lot of Brando movies since he died, and he is never less than mesmerizing -- even when he is infuriating. (See "The Missouri Breaks," say, or "Mutiny on the Bounty.") His performance in "Last Tango" is the best he ever gave, and one of the finest ever committed to film by any actor.The movie is not all Brando, of course. Bertolucci conceived the whole thing, had a hand in the dialogue, and somehow got his actors to go places they were probably reluctant to go. I mention the dialogue, because it must have imprinted itself in my memory: I had not seen the movie since I went to see it (and immediately see it again) in a threatre when it was released, but I remembered long patches of words, particularly the soliloquies, almost as if I had memorized them. I had forgotten how good Maria Schneider is, and how callow Jean-Pierre Leaud is made to seem. I did not remember the Francis Bacon paintings at the start, with the titles. (I wonder, in fact, if they were not used in the U.S. version that I saw originally.) I remembered the wailing saxophone of Gato Barbieri -- but forgot that the soundtrack is actually by Oliver Nelson. I also forgot that Vittorio Storaro shot the film, for the most part in a cold, washed-out light that is untypical of him.All that said, however, it is primarily Brando, and about the last time we got to see him working with a great director and invested in his own performance. It is instructive to watch "Last Tango" back-to-back with "The Godfather." Both movies were released the same year (1972), and must have been filmed within a short time of each other; but I can imagine someone unfamiliar with Marlon Brando watching the two performances and not realizing the same actor gave them both. In the role of Vito Corleone, he is all craft and externals. As Paul in "Last Tango," he seems emotionally naked, pulling the character from within. It is as brave a performance as you'll ever see.