Last Tango in Paris, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci (1972)
“In Last Tango the cinema doesn’t have the same place I attributed to it in the sixties, when I was obsessed by the cinema within the cinema... Last Tango is also my very own 'An American in Paris'. Alongside of the memory of Henry Miller begging through the streets of Montparnasse in order to eat, there is the nostalgia of a dancer who transforms his sad pilgrimage into a choreography in which he can star.” — Bernardo Bertolucci
It is 1972 and the sixties have ended abruptly. Noted film critic Pauline Kael exclaimed in The New Yorker that Last Tango in Paris was a new beginning for the cinema, and instead it was another beginning of the end. The super sized and Spielbergized blockbuster would overwhelm the introspective gaze; the mystery and passion of the tango would succumb to the mirrored reflection of disco fever. Looking back at Bertolucci’s famous opus now, one can see all the signs of decay. Something was in the air and the complexities of the art film were going to be no match for the effective packaging of instant gratification with mindless entertainment. Paul was dead.
“When people tell me their dreams I find it very uninteresting.” Douglas in Bertolucci’s La Luna
Last Tango in Paris is still remembered today for its raw sexual content but watching it for that now would be the equivalent of going to McDonald’s for a salad. What we really see is diffused yellow light, doubling and dissolution, colour and postures inspired by Francis Bacon’s paintings, dividers, mirrors, door and windows that force the characters deeper into the composition, Vittorio Storaro’s relentlessly tracking camera, and the character of Paul trying to create a life as his own myth as Brando. French actor Jean Pierre Léaud appears as Tom, Jeanne’s lover and youthful filmmaker. His presence comments on and parodies the French New Wave of Truffaut and Godard as Bertolucci acknowledges the end of his own era. Paul’s back story draws from Brando’s own resume, and we witness the American in Paris who has put aside his Oscar from The Godfather and stumbled into an Italian art film only to be shot and killed by an unknown French actress, Maria Schneider. The image of both Paul and Brando curled up in the fetal position on a balcony in Paris as Jeanne holds the discharged gun and mutters, “He’s a madman… I don’t know his name”, tells a lot of the story. Subsequent Brando performances in films like Superman and Easy Money tells the rest. Cinema’s greatest thespian and artistic gambler had decided to cash in his chips. An entire era had finally run out of breath – the art of cinema had succumbed to the art of the deal.
