NEW Brando/schneider - Last Tango In Paris (Blu-ray)

Marlon Brando's recent death effected me deeply. He has always been one of my favorite actors and I truly admire him for his extraordinary talent. During the last few weeks I have rented many of Brando's films and am still amazed, after all these years, at the force of his acting in "Last Tango In Paris." I believe that some of his best work was done in this film.

Paul, (Brando), an aging American expatriate in Paris, comes home to discover that his marriage has ended. His French wife, Rosa, had slit her veins, leaving bloody bath water and spattered walls behind. She didn't leave much else - no good-bye note or explanation for her husband, parents or lover, a guest in the fleabag hotel she owned and managed. She did bequeath the hotel, and it's seedy occupants, to Paul. Overwhelmed with grief, Paul walks the streets and finds himself looking at an apartment for rent. He finds Jeanne, (Maria Schneider), a girl-woman, barely out of her teens, looking at the same apartment. She is to be married in a few weeks to her bourgeois, filmmaker fiancee. Paul and Jeanne circle each other warily in the empty flat, each contemplating the rental, (and each other), and wondering who will take it. Suddenly, they grab each other and have hard, fast sex against the apartment wall. Thus begins a most bizarre relationship.

Paul makes the rules. Jeanne must follow them or she will not see him again. Their purely carnal relationship must remain anonymous, emotionless, and exist only within the walls of the apartment, which Paul rents for this purpose. There are to be no sexual taboos between them. He does not want to know her name or anything about her and refuses to give her any information about himself. They are not to see each other outside the apartment confines, nor even leave together. It seems as if Paul wants to bury his pain, his sense of betrayal and hurt in the mindless, sometimes brutal, act of sex. Director Bernardo Bertolucci's camera perfectly captures the impersonal nature of their coupling. The shots are blunt, without sensuality or eroticism, but an enormous sexual energy is captured. I think Jeanne is fascinated by the mystery that is Paul. She is bored, perhaps, and looking for something, maybe excitement. She is certainly intrigued by Paul's dominant role, and seems to enjoy playing the passive partner most of the time. She is clearly not happy with her boyfriend, who relates to her as the object of his latest film. He talks at her, not to her. And he does not listen. However, I do not see Jeanne as merely an object here, as do some others. The film focuses on Paul, not Jeanne.

It is unfortunate that Ms. Schneider's career fizzled after this movie. She is excellent as Jeanne and perfectly captures her character's capriciousness, playfulness, bewilderment, vulnerability, anger, frustration, seductiveness and curiosity. Brando is simply superb. There are times, when he and Jeanne are together, that it appears as if he is extemporizing. He acts as if there is no camera filming him - as if he is not acting at all. There is one scene, where he is alone with his wife's body - she is layed-out in a coffin. Brando begins to speak to her and just loses it. His remarkable outpouring of guilt and grief is probably the best acting I have ever seen.

Towards the end of the film there is a surreal ballroom scene where couples are dancing the tango. It is both haunting and memorable. The end is a bit of a letdown, but in a Brandoesque moment the actor comes to the rescue.

Bertolucci was very effected by the work of painter Frances Bacon, considered to be one of the best artists of the 20th century. He chose Brando after seeing a Bacon painting "of a man in great despair who had the air of total disillusionment." The "Last Tango In Paris," defined as "the most controversial film of an era," brought Bertolucci to international attention. It was nominated for two Academy Awards. Vittorio Storaro's cinematography adds to the cold, remote ambiance. His camera pans the colorless apartment and makes the viewing experience as impersonal as the couple's relationship.

This is obviously not a film for everyone. It has been called obscene, and worse. However, there are many, like myself, who think it is a great film. For fans of Marlon Brando, it doesn't get better than this. Bravo!
JANA

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.

To begin with, Last Tango in Paris is a landmark in film history, it's Bertolucci's most psychological film, and a breakthrough conventional censorship, banned for almost ten years, Last Tango is brooding and sensual, raw and miserable, Maria Schneider appears here so voluptuous and everlasting, can't blame Brando's character (Paul), to become mad, she is both a child and a woman, a combination no one can resist (your sex doesn't matter), the ultimate object of sexual Catharsis, becoming wrath. This is a chamber piece, a conceptual story in the minds of its two protagonist, enters Marlon Brando; Paul's construction couldn't be more close to Brando's psychological truth, it is his most alike character, and Brando just exudes all of his unlimited potential, skills, and mastery of the acting art, delivering one of the most perfect performances in all movie history, a must for every student of acting and for any aspiring director in much concern of his or hers actor's performance. Complex, incomprehensible, silent in sorrow and in much pain, but completely lost in a duel because of his dead wife, this is Paul, egoist, manipulative, the world moves because of him, even at his lowest hour of pathetic self indulgent anal ways, Paul is everything inside the Apartment, and nothing outside of it. Enters Maria Schneider; Jeanne a French beauty (just in her early twenties), cast in a child like role with the sweetness and seduction of a Lolita, only this time is both voluptuous and dependent of a real man's love, Schneider is just unforgettable in this seductive character, and her performance is first class, a woman of its time: unbreakable, untouchable, daggling in distress, from there to discipline, all the complicated self-destructive bound, because she's nothing, an object of animation, a subjective mannequin, beaten into submission, raping again and again.
The apartment is the metaphor to their relation, un-scout even approaching the movie's end, it stands in much need of human candor, but the human condition won't let this happen, and Paul and his beauty will be forced to crash against one another, it's pure ruin and misery, and Bertolucci cages this and much more that doesn't meets the eye, with that masterful direction that only exist in the very best. Alas, it resembles the relation of a father with his daughter, with that daddy's care for her, and her Oedipus lust that can't be ignore, but doomed to die, shackled Paul's princess, Jeanne is here to carry with the burden of a long gone will to just be in comfort when the moment of excitement, that's why they don't need names inside the apartment; Frantic or Therapeutic?
The photography is achieved with smooth and cold colors that only the erotic European films possessed in the 70's and 80's, Vittorio Sttoraro gives and unforgettable atmosphere to the story, he knew it by heard, and so Bertolucci, you will always remember the Tango Dance Contest Mad Scene, it is the very essential way of photography, direction, and real acting, all in one, based in a perfect and sensible raw script. The beautiful and haunting music score, adds more atmosphere and strength to the already powerful images.
The DVD edition comes with an excellent transferring of the film, surely it looks as good as the day it was released, but the lack of additional material makes you want to know more about this mythical movie (the edition comes with a very illustrative eight page booklet, with inside information about the film's history, but a full length documentary would have give a much entertaining and depth view of the film), again the transferring is a fine work of good visuals and sounds, and the best of all, it is the uncut and uncensored version, as Bertolucci originally intended to be shown in Theaters back in the middle 70's, when everything was still uptight for such a film, there was no problem at all with the nude scenes, the problem was about the moral violence that the picture depicted in a way that no one had dare before to showed in the big screen, from there it came its heavily censorship, the psychological alternation of the most devastating loneliness and the filth and stink of the Human Insight Tremors, shown here with the intention to shock, not to move. Controversial still.