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What we do have is a clear record of attitudes, fears and longings of a period long gone, and there’s no point in judging or condemning methods now. There was much written, ballyhooed and renounced about the directing tricks Bertolucci used in Last Tango to draw the emotional response he wanted, but 45+ years hindsight is just that – clucking at growing pains changes nothing. There was no #metoo because we weren’t there yet, so what you saw was how it was. The blatant renunciation of the shyness and shame associated with any overt sexuality had beat social reserve and political correctness to the gate. I saw it a few times in my 20s and was impressed then I saw it recently – and I was floored. His is a performance so personal and age-specific that it’s difficult for any viewer under the age of 40 to completely connect to it. Brando turns in a lion’s roar of a performance in his own, inimitable way – improvising lines and going places few actors would dare go today. Schneider is a natural revelation as Jeanne, all innocence with a dark core. The physical relationship satisfies the older Paul only to a point, but when he breaks the anonymity in search of deeper intimacy that involves introducing their real lives, things begin to unravel and spiral to a tragic conclusion. Paul happens upon the much younger Jeanne (Maria Schneider), the fiancé of a budding film director (Jean-Pierre Leaud) while apartment hunting and they begin an affair under the strictest conditions of total anonymity. We don’t know the reasons or much about any of the unsettled baggage between them, but judging from Paul’s crushed and angry state, it has totally undone him.
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To experience Last Tango in Paris in the same context in which it first appeared is simply impossible now, but we were ready back then.Īwash in cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s earthy orange hues and marinated in Gato Barbieri’s instantly recognizable jazz score, the story concerns, Paul, a middle-age American expat living in Paris whose wife has recently committed suicide by slitting her wrists in the bathtub.
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70s auteurs pushed the envelope without remorse – or fear. What started with I am Curious Yellow in the late 60s begat 1971’s challenging jamborees such as A Clockwork Orange, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, Ken Russell’s The Devils. The line in which we happen to be standing is for a new release, Last Tango in Paris, by the director who had just wowed us with The Conformist. In February 1973, a glance down the snowy street at the marquees would likely have proclaimed the titles of 1972 holdovers: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Cries and Whispers, Jeremiah Johnson, Travels with My Aunt, and in the double-feature repertory at the end of the block – Sounder and The Ruling Class, with a midnight double bill of Night of the Living Dead and Deep Throat. You would queue outside in the snow, rain or scalding heat, depending upon the season, and often the lines for one film standing adjacent to audiences for the film playing next door. Theatres would be lined up along the same street, most houses with one screen, maybe two. No home viewing of any kind other than some bad quality fare from the 40s and 50s on the late show. No multiplexes, stadium seating or Dolby. Lecture over, so let’s first set-up the environment that was movie-going in 1973.
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It is the most accurate public record we have of that society’s attitudes, fears, fantasies and passions. Cinema is a sequence of recorded thoughts and images specific to the time and place where storytellers spin their tales. It is created by filmmakers of a specific period – for people of that same period – who want to test their limits, expand public consciousness and expose and/or challenge the mentality of the status quo. 1973 is definitely not 2018, so when I read most of the pieces about the film written by contemporary “critics”, I tend to recoil in amazement.Ĭinema reflects the attitudes and sensibilities of its time. The 70s innocent attitudes about authority, morality, and freedom of expression are no match for those emanating from this millennium. Whatever one may think of Bernardo Bertolucci’s chef-d’oeuvre about identity, aging, loss of a life partner, and anonymous sex, remember one truth about cinema – any judgment is wholly dependent upon whatever baggage – internal and external – one brings into the viewing at the time of that viewing.