Last Tango in Paris

Rating:
Summary: The Performance
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: You'll never look at a stick of butter the same again
Review: A very complex movie to understand, you'll have to watch it several times to appreciate the finer points. First off, the Parisian background throughout the movie is spectacular. We are treated to one of the greatest cities in the world during the early 70's. This film stirred up alot of controversy because of the sexual content, but as usual the prudish always object the most strongly. Brando's performance is fantastic. He captures your interest and concentration the whole movie. The raw emotions portrayed run the complete spectrum too, to which he performed extremely well. One of the movies annoying aspects is Maria's boyfriend/fiance who is running around filming the most silly things constantly with religious fervor. Maria Schneider exhibited the youthful freshness, energy, and sexuality to portray her character well. This is not a movie for everyone. It requires an open mind and a deep thinking approach to appreciate it.

Rating:
Summary: Unbelievably Stupid
Review: How on earth this film ever generated the amount and degree of attention it did is one of most astonishing curiosities in movie history. Virtually every aspect of the film is risible. In fact, you can probably enjoy it purely for its innumerable unintentioned laughs. Marlon Brando gives what can only be described as one of the messiest and shameful performances that any formerly great actor could conceive (worse even than Vito Corleone or Kurtz). And clever Bertolucci shovels on enough pretentious artiness and pseudo-eroticism to steam up an academic's glasses. Everyone else will merely catch themselves yawning most of the time.

Rating:
Summary: LAST TANGO IN PARIS: A REVIEW. BY JASON RHODES.
Review: Last Tango in Paris must, be considered, the 'FlagShip Movie'in its genre of Arthouse & international. Marlin Brando takes thelead part, and the command he exhibits over this difficult role, in conveying the depth, and complexity of his character in the film, (Paul), together with the empathy that must be required to fully portray, and give life to, the isolation, and at times despair, with which his character is consumed; allows us, as an audience, to become almost completely immersed, in the poignancy that is so much a part of this film.

To many, Last Tango in Paris, has become thought of as a classic, unsurpassed in its ability to move its audience. The plot centres almost exclusively, around the development, and inevitable break, in the relationship between Paul, an estranged, American Ex-Serviceman, living abroad in France, and his Much younger Parisian lover, played by Maria Schneider.

There are very few other characters in this film, and although the overall atmosphere is quite surreal; the detail, and paradoxically, the realism, that this allows, puts the films Direction, in a class of its own; briliant in its individuality.

This is a must for anybody who takes Film seriously, and indeed, all those who enjoy Cinema, at its absolute best.

Rating:
Summary: "Last Tango" is remarkable--for having achieved so little
Review: Few films are as remarkable as "Last Tango In Paris" (1972) for having achieved so little with the immense possibilities of its concept, director, production crew and cast, or its romantic location--Paris.

Pauline Kael surely blushes at the pull quote attributed to her on the DVD case, "The most powerfully erotic movie ever made!". To be sure, we see that the gamin young Maria Schneider is a fine figure of a woman, but her character, Jeanne, portrays the kind of femininity mythologised in machismo--a preparedness, even a desire, to be sexually humiliated, unmitigated even by the emphatic terms on which the relationship ends. The word "love" is used, here and there, in extraordinarily barren circumstances. Paul (Marlon Brando's character) mumbles through the film with a degree of self-absorption approaching autism. There are widely separated good scenes, such as the tango competition. The dialogue hardly ever gets better than Paul saying, "I have a prostate like an Idaho potato, but I'm still a good stick man".

The claim of the film to have been "the most controversial film of its era" (fewer blushes, perhaps, for Leonard Maltin) rests not so much on its explicitness, but its emotional shallowness combined with uses of butter which could never be embraced by the dairy industry.

So why see this film at all? Perhaps, to see how even a great chef, with excellent ingredients, may sometimes produce a flopped souffle. To consider the question, "What is (not) erotica?". To study the career of Marlon Brando. Also, perhaps, to examine our own emotional development and to feel good comparatively about ourselves. Almost anyone will have deeper understanding and experience of love, or obsession, between men and women than is displayed here.

For classy erotica, look elsewhere. Many better and more erotic and romantic films are based on similar themes of troubled characters in cross-cultural sexual obsession--such as Wayne Wang's "Chinese Box" (1997). As for making good use of Paris, check out Stanley Donen's "Charade" (1963), with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, which is erotic by suggestion, as well as having a sparkling and funny script, and enjoyable over-acting.

Director Bernardo Bertolucci is far better than "Last Tango". So, even he has made a far better film about cross-cultural sexual obsession. He returns to the theme in his 1999 film, "Besieged". This makes wonderful use of one of the most photogenic and stagelike settings in Rome, the Spanish Steps and the Piazza di Spagna. "Besieged" also has more humanity, more complex characterisation, and builds suggestive, musical and explicit eroticism between the characters of Thandie Newton and David Thewlis. In many ways, it seems Bertolucci's atonement for the failings of "Last Tango".

(This review refers to the widescreen MGM year 2000 DVD reissue of "Last Tango In Paris".)

Rating:
Summary: NO ( WO - ) MAN'S LAND
Review: I'm a big Marlon Brando fan and I consider his performance in THE LAST TANGO IN PARIS as outstanding but... I don't like this movie. Not at all. Why ? The cinematography is professional, with a Vittorio Storaro who declines the whole yellow-brown palette in order to make us feel the decay of the characters. Maybe it's Maria Schneider, one of the worst actress I've had the opportunity to admire. Maybe it's the screenplay, so perfect.

THE LAST TANGO IN PARIS was a huge success in 1972, considering the fact that Bernardo Bertolucci was at that time more appreciated by the european marxist intelligentsia than by the common saturday night's moviegoer. But Marlon and very explicit sex scenes provoked scandal and success. It's fair to admit now that the majority of the audience was more interested in Marlon and Maria's naked bodies than in the anarchic and iconoclastic substance of the movie.

One can like the symmetry of these stories treating of the relations between symbolic fathers, mothers, sons, daughters who could be symbols for society, death and I don't know what ! Unfortunately, it's not the cinema that I like but I do sincerely respect any contrary opinions.

A DVD for the autumn.

Rating:
Summary: Sexuality Grows Up
Review: BRILLIANT! Marlon Brando gives what is probably the greatest performance ever put on film, as Paul, an expatriate American living in France, whose wife has just committed suicide. Ambling through the streets, he finds a young woman named Jeanne. They find an apartment which becomes a meeting place where they experiment and tear all the thick layers of superficiality. This is Bertolucci's masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: "My ( ) shrank to the size of a peanut" Marlon Brando
Review: This, bar Apocalypse Now, is our last record of Marlon Brando's precious talent. The film delves deep into his mind, his life, his experiences, his technique. What strikes you about the splendour of his performance is the small intricacies of his performance: in their first encounter with the girl his toys with an old lamp (it may sound ridiculous but we are enthralled). Despite the fracas surrounding the film's erotic content - the film is most certainly not about sex - it is about BRANDO (what better excuse to make a movie! ) The only criticsm is the worthless subplot of the camera-man, when he is off the screen we long for Brando. What a same he never played Jay Gatsby after this triumph - should have won another Oscar!

Rating:
Summary: Dare To Compare
Review: The story is about the selfpity of a fresh widow who is trying to escape from his emotional pain . He goes for a flirt with a selfish,tricky youngster .
The erotic scenes turned out not so controversial especially when comparing with another erotic feeded 70s classic 'Turkish Delight' from Paul Verhoeven .
I compare these two movies and directors to point out the dishonesty of Last Tango In Paris in its erotic reality .
If that aspect was just as intense as in Verhoevens Turkish Delight then The Last Tango would have been so much more .
For the rest , everything is perfect , except then the final scene where Paul (Brando) gets shot without any justified reason . I call it dramatizing the climax , catch the audience by surprise , but it came out of nowhere with 0% back up .

Rating:
Summary: Underground classic
Review: This is a complex, slow, mesmerizing film. Brando gives on of his best performances (see also Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now). Without Brando this film would have been utterly boring. It's the kind of film you have to watch a few times in order to make sense of everything. The film just starts and you have to put the pieces together--and character motivation is rather difficult to figure out. In fact, although this film is a good film, it's confusing as to why the characters do what they do. If you love Brando and Bertolucci, I'd recommend seeing this film. If you want to learn technique and style of acting--this is a very good film. I don't think we'll see another actor like Brando who gives memorable performances such as he does in this film.