Last Tango in Paris


Last Tango in Paris is a 1972 erotic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. The film stars Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider and Jean-Pierre Léaud, and portrays a recently widowed American who begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.
The film premiered at the New York Film Festival on 14 October 1972 and grossed $36 million in its U.S. theatrical release, making it the seventh highest-grossing film of 1973. The film's raw portrayal of rape and emotional turmoil led to international controversy and drew various levels of government censorship in different jurisdictions. Upon release in the United States, the MPAA gave the film an X rating. United Artists Classics released an R-rated cut in 1981. In 1997, the original cut of the film was reclassified as NC-17.

Plot

Paul, a middle-aged American hotel owner mourning the suicide of his wife Rosa, meets a young, engaged Parisian woman named Jeanne at an apartment that both are interested in renting. Paul takes the apartment after they begin an anonymous sexual relationship there. He insists that they not share any personal information, even given names, much to Jeanne's dismay. At one point in their relationship, he rapes her. Despite this, she tells him that she tries to leave him, but can't bring herself to do it. The affair of Paul and Jeanne continues for some time until Paul decides to leave Jeanne, after which she arrives at the apartment and finds that he has packed up and left without warning.
After attending his wife's viewing, Paul meets Jeanne on the street and says he wants to renew the relationship. He tells her of the recent tragedy of his wife. As he tells his life story, they walk into a tango bar, where he continues telling her about himself. The loss of anonymity disillusions Jeanne about their relationship. She tells Paul she does not want to see him again. Paul, not wanting to let Jeanne go, chases her through the streets of Paris. While running, she continually yells at him to go away and tells him that their relationship is over. Despite her threats to call the police, he chases her all the way back to her building where she is living with her mother and forces his way into her apartment. He mocks her for running away from him, followed by him saying he loves her and wants to know her name.
Jeanne takes a gun from a drawer. She tells Paul her name and shoots him. Paul staggers out onto the balcony, mortally wounded, and collapses. As Paul dies, Jeanne, dazed, mutters to herself that he was just a stranger who tried to rape her and she did not know who he was, as if in a rehearsal preparing herself for questioning by the police.

Cast

  • Marlon Brando as Paul, an American expatriate and hotel owner
  • Maria Schneider as Jeanne, a young Parisian woman
  • Jean-Pierre Léaud as Thomas, a film director and Jeanne's fiancé
  • Maria Michi as Rosa's mother
  • Massimo Girotti as Marcel, Rosa's former lover
  • Giovanna Galletti as the prostitute, an old acquaintance of Rosa
  • Catherine Allégret as Catherine, a maid at Paul and Rosa's hotel
  • Gitt Magrini as Jeanne's mother
  • Luce Marquand as Olympia, Jeanne's former childhood nurse
  • Dan Diament as the TV sound engineer
  • Catherine Sola as the script girl
  • Mauro Marchetti as the TV cameraman
  • Peter Schommer as the TV assistant cameraman
  • Catherine Breillat as Mouchette, a dressmaker
  • Marie-Hélène Breillat as Monique, a dressmaker
  • Darling Légitimus as the Concierge
  • Veronica Lazăr as Rosa, Paul's deceased wife
  • Armand Abplanalp as the prostitute's client
  • Rachel Kesterber as Christine
  • Ramón Mendizábal as the Tango orchestra leader
  • Mimi Pinson as the President of Tango jury
  • Gérard Lepennec as the tall furniture mover
  • Stéphane Koziak as the short furniture mover
  • Michel Delahaye as the Bible salesman
  • Laura Betti as Miss Blandish
  • Jean-Luc Bideau as the Barge Captain
  • Gianni Pulone
  • Franca Sciutto

    Production

developed the film from his sexual fantasies: "He once dreamed of seeing a beautiful nameless woman on the street and having sex with her without ever knowing who she was." The screenplay was by Bertolucci, Franco Arcalli, and Agnès Varda. It was later adapted as a novel by Robert Alley. The film was directed by Bertolucci with cinematography by Vittorio Storaro.
Bertolucci originally intended to cast Dominique Sanda, who developed the idea with him, and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Trintignant refused and, when Brando accepted, Sanda was pregnant and decided not to do the film. Brando received a percentage of the gross for the film and was estimated to have earned $3 million.
Maria Schneider stated in 2001 that her role in the original script was intended to be played by a boy.
An art lover, Bertolucci drew inspiration from the works of the Irish-born British artist Francis Bacon for the opening sequence of cast and crew credits. According to American artist Andy Warhol, Last Tango was based on Warhol's own Blue Movie film released a few years earlier in 1969.

Rape scene

The film contains a scene in which Paul anally rapes Jeanne using butter as a lubricant. While the rape is simulated, Schneider has said the scene still had a tremendously negative effect on her. In a 2006 interview, Schneider said that the use of butter was not in the script and that "when they told me, I had a burst of anger. Woo! I threw everything. And nobody can force someone to do something not in the script. But I didn't know that. I was too young." In 2007, Schneider recounted feelings of sexual humiliation pertaining to the rape scene:
In the same interview she also joked about it, laughingly, mentioning that her pleasures those days were very simple:
I like to see friends and go to the market and cook. But I never use butter to cook any more. Only olive oil.
In 2011, Bertolucci denied that he "stole her youth", and commented, "The girl wasn't mature enough to understand what was going on." Schneider remained friends with Brando until his death in 2004, but never made up with Bertolucci. She claimed that Brando and Bertolucci "made a fortune" from the film while she made very little money. She also acknowledged that:
Schneider died in 2011. In February 2013, Bertolucci spoke about the film's effect on Schneider in an interview on the Dutch television show College Tour, saying that although the rape scene was in the script, the detail of using butter as a lubricant was improvised the day of shooting and Schneider did not know about the use of the butter beforehand. Bertolucci said that "I feel guilty, but I don't regret it." In September 2013, Bertolucci spoke again about the scene at a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française, claiming that the scene was in the script but the use of butter was not. Bertolucci said that he and Brando "decided not to say anything to Maria to get a more realistic response".
In November 2016, a slightly different version of the 2013 College Tour interview was uploaded to YouTube by the Spanish non-profit El Mundo de Alycia on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, accompanied by a statement concluding that the scene "abused psychologically and, who knows if also, physically..." This gained attention when Yahoo! Movies writer Tom Butler wrote an article about it, prompting several celebrities to condemn the film and Bertolucci, and a number of newspapers picked up on the story, reporting that Bertolucci had confessed to Schneider being raped on set, prompting Bertolucci to release a statement, clarifying that a simulation and not an actual intercourse took place.
Bertolucci also shot a scene which showed Brando's genitals, but in 1973 explained, "I had so identified myself with Brando that I cut it out of shame for myself. To show him naked would have been like showing me naked." Schneider declared in an interview that "Marlon said he felt raped and manipulated by it and he was 48. And he was Marlon Brando!" Like Schneider, Brando confirmed that the sex was simulated. Brando refused to speak to Bertolucci for 15 years after the production was completed. Bertolucci said:

Francis Bacon influence

The film's opening credits include two paintings by Francis Bacon: Double Portrait of Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach and Study for a Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne. The hues used in the film were inspired by the paintings of Bacon. During pre-production, Bertolucci frequently visited an exhibit of Bacon's paintings at the Grand Palais in Paris; he said that the light and colour in Bacon's paintings reminded him of Paris in the winter, when
the lights of the stores are on, and there is a very beautiful contrast between the leaden gray of the wintry sky and the warmth of the show windows...the light in the paintings was the major source of inspiration for the style we were looking for.

Bacon's painting style often depicted human skin like raw meat and the painter's inspiration included meat hanging in a butcher shops window and human skin diseases.
Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro had previously worked with Bertolucci on The Conformist and often used an azure hue in the film. Storaro later told a reporter that
after The Conformist I had a moment of crisis; I was asking myself: what can come after azure?...I did not have the slightest idea that an orange film could be born. We needed another kind of emotion...It was the case of Last Tango.

For Last Tango in Paris, Bertolucci and Storaro took inspiration from Bacon's paintings by using "rich oranges, light and cool grays, icy whites, and occasional reds combine with Bertolucci's own tasteful choices of soft browns, blond browns, and delicate whites with bluish and pink shadings".
Bertolucci took Marlon Brando to the Bacon exhibit and told Brando that he "wanted him to compare himself with Bacon's human figures because I felt that, like them, Marlon's face and body were characterized by a strange and infernal plasticity. I wanted Paul to be like the figures that obsessively return in Bacon: faces eaten by something coming from the inside."