Last Tango in Paris movie storyline. Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial, landmark X-rated film initiated a trend for arthouse films to include explicit erotic content. It told about a primal sexual affair between middle-aged, bitter and grieving hotel owner Paul (Marlon Brando in his seventh and last Best Actor-nominated role) whose wife had committed suicide and a 20-year old French student Jeanne (Maria Schneider) who was engaged to be married to Tom (Léaud), a film director who was making a cinema verite film about her.
Upon meeting in an apartment both are looking to rent, Paul forces himself violently on Jeanne sexually, bordering on rape, and begins a torrid, sexually perverse but anonymous ‘no questions asked’ affair with her (they don’t know each other’s names) that becomes increasingly vile, unromantic and scatological. His set of rules was notable for the time: “We are going to forget everything we knew – everything”. The pure sexual nature of their relationship included the bathtub washing scene and the infamous, disturbing, and explicit sodomy (butter-lubricated anal sex) scene on the floor (“Get the butter”).
Later, Paul reciprocated by letting Jeanne penetrate him anally with her fingers – part of his objective to “look death right in the face…go right up into the ass of death… till you find the womb of fear.” Predictably, the film ended with his violent death on the balcony when she shot him with her father’s gun. The film remains the sole still-mature rated (X, NC-17) film to earn Oscar nominations, alongside Ellen Burstyn’s Oscar nomination for Requiem for a Dream (2000). (Midnight Cowboy (1969) and The Exorcist (1973) were subsequently re-rated as R.)
Last Tango in Paris (Italian: Ultimo tango a Parigi) is a 1972 Franco-Italian erotic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci which portrays a recently widowed American who begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman. It stars Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, and Jean-Pierre Léaud.
The film’s raw portrayal of sexual violence and emotional turmoil led to international controversy and drew various levels of government censorship in different venues. Upon release in the United States, the most graphic scene was cut and the MPAA gave the film an X rating. After revisions were made to the MPAA ratings code, in 1997 the film was re-classified NC-17 for “some explicit sexual content”. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released a censored R-rated cut in 1981.
The film score was composed by Gato Barbieri, arranged and conducted by Oliver Nelson, and the soundtrack album was released on the United Artists label. AllMusic’s Richie Unterberger noted “Although some of the smoky sax solos get a little uncomfortably close to 1970s fusion cliché, Gato Barbieri’s score to Bertolucci’s 1972 classic is an overall triumph. Suspenseful jazz, melancholy orchestration, and actual tangos fit the film’s air of erotic longing, melancholy despair, and doomed fate”.
Last Tango in Paris (1972)
Directed by: Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Maria Michi, Giovanna Galletti, Gitt Magrini, Catherine Allégret, Luce Marquand, Marie-Hélène Breillat, Catherine Breillat, Massimo Girotti
Screenplay by: Bernardo Bertolucci
Production Design by: Philippe Turlure
Cinematography by: Vittorio Storaro
Film Editing by: Franco Arcalli, Roberto Perpignani
Costume Design by: Gitt Magrini
Art Direction by: Philippe Turlure
Music by: Gato Barbieri
MPAA Rating: NC-17 for some explicit sexual content.
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: October 14, 1972
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