'The Last Tango in Paris': a review

This is a review of director Bernardo Bertolucci's 1982 erotic drama film 'Last Tango in Paris' starring Marlon Brando.

For those who have not seen this great film by the great Bernardo Bertolucci, I’ll keep this review as simple as possible without spoiling it.

The Last Tango in Paris is centered around a middle-aged widower named Paul (Marlon Brando) who enters into an impersonal no-names-no-questions relationship with a Parisian woman 20-something years younger than himself. Their relationship is built around a series of extremely intense, kinky, and ultimately empty sexual encounters in an old apartment building. The film uses the intimate act of sex in its purest sense as a way to show the disconnect between these 2 characters—one, who struggles to deal with the suicide of his wife and the other, torn between her love for him and another guy.

This is a beautiful movie with atmosphere so thick you can cut it with a knife. The look of this movie makes you want to fly to Paris immediately. The color palette is deep and saturated. The cinematography by Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, The Conformist, The Last Emperor) is terrific. The soundtrack theme by Gato Barbieri is sexy and consistent throughout. The intro credits open up with 2 paintings by Francis Bacon: Double Portrait of Lucien Freud and Frank Auerbach and Study for a Portrait, both of which seem to suggest, by their violently distorted—almost lewd—facial and body expressions metaphors of the characters and relationships in the film.

As beautiful as this film is as poetry and as affecting as it is emotionally, especially the scene where Brando confronts his dead wife’s corpse, I must warn those of you who have a problem with sex, because it gets extremely raunchy in this movie. When this film was initially released, the MPAA gave it an X rating and after revisions were made it still couldn’t get any cleaner than an NC-17 rating. But this is a European film and as any film connoisseur can tell you there’s a big difference between what America deems unfit and what the rest of the world thinks.

When most of us think of Brando we think of the Godfather, Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront, Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar, or Kurtz, the megalomaniac in Apocalypse Now. Tango is one of Brando’s lesser known films except among those whose movie tastes extend beyond our shores. Brando is the greatest actor who ever lived because he never seems like he is acting if that makes sense. There is such a raw, physical, yet visceral power about his performances that makes him seem opaque while at the same time transparent and vulnerable. Another actor who came across like this was James Dean. The fact that sex is so big in this film can obscure the deeper meaning behind its necessity by his character to shield himself with it, to keep his heart—still wounded over the loss of his wife—from being wounded again. Great, great film. See this one with a like-minded movie lover and remember the Merlot while you’re at it.

My analysis of Elia Kazan's 'On The Waterfront'

An analysis of 'On The Waterfront' starring Marlon Brando

On The Waterfront starring Marlon Brando is 1 of the greatest films of all time. Ex-boxer Terry Malloy could've been a contender, but after taking a dive, he winds up on the dock of a Brooklyn waterfront, a pariah for conspiring in the murder of Joey Doyle, a popular dockworker, who was going to testify against Johnny Friendly. Terry is set up in a cushy job, all he has to do is tell Johnny who the rats are. But when Terry falls in love with the sister of the man he helped kill, he is forced to make a decision that pits him against his own brother, Charlie The Gent, in one of the greatest acting scenes ever filmed!

The iconic cab scene involving Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando is enough by itself to consider this as one of the best films ever made. Winner of 8 Oscars and also starring Lee J. Cobb, Fred Gwynne (The Munsters), Karl Malden, and a very young, very sweet Eva Marie Saint in her acting debut, Waterfront is a film for the ages, a prime example of great casting and acting, and extraordinary direction from Elia Kazan who, just 1 year later, put out another iconic film, East of Eden starring the late great James Dean.

Why Apollonia had to die for Michael to return to Don Corleone and America

Art Of War, Chapter 9: The Army on the March

“Pass quickly over mountains, and keep in the neighborhood of valleys”--Sun Tzu

The Godfather (Mario Puzo): “Every man has but one destiny”

In this scene, Michael is still in exile in Sicily after murdering a New York Police Captain and a drug dealer. During his exile, he marries a young Sicilian woman named Apollonia. They are staying in the villa of a local Don who is a friend of The Godfather but for only a short time. Enemy spies are also in Sicily and Michael can’t stay in one place for long. His car is booby-trapped with a bomb that kills his new wife and this death of an innocent represents his baptism into his father’s world and seals his destiny to take over the Corleone empire. The Biblical metaphor here is that his love for Apollonia represented the one thing that could come between himself and complete unconditional surrender to his father’s will. Apollonia’s death and the poverty of his homeland enables Michael to fully understand his father’s determination to not be a puppet on anyone's string. Also, as explained in the previous clip, the Don had cleared the way for Michael to return to America and if Apollonia had not died, Michael may not have made the decision to return to America and stand by his father. Throughout this film, death complements life in some form or another.