"The Last Tango in Paris" is an erotic drama by the Italian director and screenwriter Bernardo Bertolucci, which was released in 1972. The film tells about the sexual relationship between a middle-aged American and a young Parisian woman. Because of the frank scenes, the picture was negatively received by many critics and caused a lot of scandals. Subsequently, various incidents on the film set were widely discussed in the press.
The idea
Bernardo Bertolucci came up with the idea of the film “The Last Tango in Paris” when he fantasized about meeting a stranger in the streets of Paris and entering into an anonymous intimate relationship with her. According to the director, the main character in the script symbolizes the masculine beginning of Bertolucci himself, and the heroine is a collective image of a dream girl. Also inspired by the work of the British artist Francis Bacon. Andy Warhol claimed that the film was based on his own film, released a few years earlier.
Producer
Bernardo Bertolucci is an Italian director who began his career back in the fifties with amateur films and gradually began working with such masters as Dario Argento, Sergio Leone and Pier Paolo Pasolini as a second director and screenwriter.
A breakthrough for Bertolucci was the work that came out two years before The Last Tango in Paris, the film Conformist. He brought the beginning director worldwide fame and subsequently greatly influenced Hollywood and European cinema.
Creature
Bertolucci helped the script work Franco Arkalli and Agnes Varda. The operator of the picture was Vitorio Storraro, already working with the director on "Conformist". Soon after finishing work on the script, Bertolucci began searching for actors for the main roles in his new film.
Casting
Initially, the main roles in the film "The Last Tango in Paris" were to be performed by Jean-Louis Trentignan, who played the main role in the previous Bernardo film "Conformist", and Dominic Sanda. The actor refused the role after reading the script, and the actress was pregnant at that time and could not act in frank scenes. Also, the main male role was rejected by Jean-Paul Belmondo, Warren Beatty and Alain Delon, who, apparently, were embarrassed by the frank content of The Last Tango in Paris.
As a result, the main roles went to the Hollywood legend Marlon Brando, who shortly before that had finished shooting in The Godfather, and the beginning nineteen-year-old actress Maria Schneider. Brando refused to learn cues, considering the dialogue in the film to be bad, and improvised most of his text, and also refused to appear completely naked on the screen.
Plot
The plot of “The Last Tango in Paris” is rather arbitrary and difficult to describe. Brando himself admitted in his autobiography that even many years later he did not quite understand what the film was about. The picture is about a middle-aged American man named Paul, who recently became a widower. He owns a small hotel in Paris. One day he accidentally meets a young Parisian Jeanne, trying to rent an apartment in which Paul is interested.
They have sexual intercourse, soon Paul is renting an apartment. They continue their novel, but it requires complete anonymity, without giving its name and without revealing any details about itself. Jeanne continues her relationship with Paul, despite having a fiancé, a young director. One fine day, her mysterious lover leaves the apartment without warning.
After some time, Paul again meets Jeanne and asks for the resumption of their relationship. They go to the nearest bar, where a man tells his companion about himself, which finally destroys their relationship. Jeanne tries to get rid of Paul, but he continues to pursue her and even comes to her house, demanding to give her name. As a result, the girl shoots a former lover and kills him.
Scandals at the site
From the very beginning of filming the movie "Last Tango in Paris", the actors began to experience difficulties. According to Schneider and Brando, they were subjected to emotional violence by the director, who often demanded excessive frankness from them and, according to Marlon, even offered to shoot un simulated scenes of intercourse, which both leading actors refused.
Bertolucci himself had problems due to Brando's inability to remember his dialogues. As a result of this, the actor placed cards with text throughout the set, and during the shooting of erotic scenes even on the naked body of the partner. The director had to find loopholes so that these cards did not fall into the frame.
The main scandal on the set, which is often discussed to this day, was the work on the famous scene with butter. According to Maria Schneider, Bertolucci and Brando did not warn her about the changes in the script of the film, and what was happening in the frame was a real shock to her to such an extent that she burst into tears. And it got into the final installation. The director himself later admitted that he was trying to get the most realistic scenario from the young actress. Because of this scandal, many activists called for a boycott of the film "Last Tango in Paris" and other works of Bertolucci.
Actors reaction
Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider continued to be friends even after the filming of the film, but both did not speak with Bertolucci until the end of their days. The actor devoted a large chunk of his autobiography to the shooting of the picture, where he said that he had sworn to himself after participating in the project that he would never again become so vulnerable for the role.
Schneider received a deep psychological trauma. She promised herself never to act in erotic scenes again and throughout her life actively fought for the rights of actresses on the set and for gender equality in the film industry. “The Last Tango in Paris” remained the most famous film in the career of an actress who could not get rid of the status of a sex symbol and show herself as a serious actress. Schneider also claimed that she received too little a fee for the role, much lower than her male colleagues.
Throughout her life, Maria continued to be surrounded by scandals related to her open bisexuality and drug addiction. The actress survived several overdoses and suicide attempts. In the eighties, she was able to get rid of addiction and bounce back, but until the end of her days claimed that participating in The Last Tango in Paris ruined her life. In 2011, Maria Schneider died of breast cancer.
Public reception
From the very beginning of the rental reviews on the "Last Tango in Paris" from ordinary viewers were very different. Many noted the courage of the Italian director and the innovative nature of the film, while others called the picture pornography and questioned its artistic merits. In addition to erotic scenes, the anger of many viewers caused a scene in which Paul screams at the corpse of his wife.
In Europe, the audience reacted to the film much more calmly than in the USA. There, in one of the small towns, a group of citizens even threatened to blow up a movie theater showing a picture, calling all spectators of Bertolucci's work perverts. The National Women's Organization also posted a negative review of "The Last Tango in Paris" in the press, calling the film an instrument of male dominance and calling for a boycott.
To this day, despite the status of the cult classic of European cinema, the film has relatively low ratings among viewers on the sites of Kinopoisk and IMDB. This proves that even after forty years, the picture is not for everyone.
Critic reviews
In France, where the film was first shown, it received unanimously positive reviews. “The Last Tango in Paris” was soon shown in the United States, where critics were divided, but the most popular film commentators of that time, Pauline Cale and Roger Ebert, rated the film extremely positively.
Today, critics almost unanimously call the film Bertolucci a masterpiece, he is on many lists of the best films in the history of cinema. However, the beginning of a new revolution in world cinema, as many journalists predicted in reviews of The Last Tango in Paris, the film did not, and even by the standards of our day is considered quite frank and naturalistic.
Bans
In the director’s homeland in Italy, the picture was banned from showing, and Bertolucci himself, the actors and producers of the film tried to bring to trial for the production and distribution of pornography. As a result, they were acquitted, but the director was deprived of the right to vote for five years, sentenced to four months in prison, and all copies of the film were destroyed. The ban on the film was canceled only in 1987, while it was released in 1972. "Last Tango in Paris" was also banned in Spain, which forced many residents of border cities to go to France on foot to see the picture. The film was also banned in Brazil, Chile, Portugal and South Korea. In Chile, it was shown only thirty years after being released in the rest of the world.
In many countries, the film "Last Tango in Paris" in 1972 was given a "pornographic" age rating, which prevented it from showing in ordinary movie theaters. In Britain, a scandalous scene with butter was cut, but Christian activists still demanded a complete ban on the film from the government.
In the US, in the conservative southern states, there were many scandals associated with the screening of "Last Tango in Paris." Some movie theater owners and employees were arrested. As a result, the case of one of those arrested even got to the Supreme Court of the country, which, however, ruled that it was illegal to prohibit the painting.
Fees and Prizes
Despite numerous prohibitions and calls to boycott the frank film, excellent reviews on the Last Tango in Paris by critics were able to attract viewers to theaters. The picture managed to collect unprecedented for such an age rating 96 million dollars around the world. In Italy, the film earned a record one hundred thousand dollars in the six days that passed from the screens to a complete ban on the part of the government. In the United States alone, sales of home media "Last Tango in Paris" brought the creators almost thirteen million dollars. The budget of the film amounted to just over a million, so the picture became one of the most profitable in the history of cinema.
Despite the marginal status of an almost pornographic picture, the film "Last Tango in Paris" in 1972 was nominated for several prestigious awards. Marlon Brando claimed the title of best actor of the year according to the British and American film academies, and Bertolucci was nominated for an award to the best director for the Oscars and Golden Globes.
Influence and Legacy
Controversial reviews of The Last Tango in Paris in 1972 from professional critics years later gave way to almost unanimous approval of Bertolucci's work. The American director Robert Altman called the picture his beloved, and well-known film critic Roger Ebert also included in the list of best films in history. In addition, the film can be found in many lists of the most important films in the history of cinema. To this day, “The Last Tango in Paris” remains one of Bertolucci's most famous works, which was able to strengthen him in the status of a European classic and one of the most commercially successful directors of arthouse cinema.
New scandals
Over the last ten years of his life, Bertolucci continued to constantly ask questions about the famous scene with butter. In 2016, a fragment of the director’s interview appeared on the Internet, where he says that Schneider was indeed raped on the set, but later it turned out that the director was not understood. Nevertheless, this video attracted the attention of many film critics and Hollywood actors, including stars such as Chris Evans and Jessica Chastain, who publicly called for a boycott of the film and other works of Bertolucci, calling him a criminal. Also got Marlon Brando, who was called an accomplice in rape. The director had to issue an official statement, where he indicated that a simulated sexual intercourse was taking place in the frame.