Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Writing Credits: Bernardo Bertolucci (story)
Bernardo Bertolucci (screenplay)
Franco Arcalli (screenplay)
Agnès Varda (additional dialogue)
Starring: Marlon Brando
Maria Schneider
Maria Michi
Giovanna Galletti
Gitt Magrini
Catherine Allégret
Luce Marquand
Marie-Hélène Breillat
Catherine Breillat
While looking for an apartment, Jeanne, a beautiful young Parisienne, encounters Paul, a mysterious American expatriate mourning his wife's recent suicide. Instantly drawn to each other, they have a stormy, passionate affair, in which they do not reveal their names to each other. Their relationship deeply affects their lives, as Paul struggles with his wife's death and Jeanne prepares to marry her fiance, Tom, a film director making a cinema-verite documentary about her.
"Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris" is one of the great emotional experiences of our time. It's a movie that exists so resolutely on the level of emotion, indeed, that possibly only Marlon Brando, of all living actors, could have played its lead. Who else can act so brutally and imply such vulnerability and need?
For the movie is about need; about the terrible hunger that its hero, Paul, feels for the touch of another human heart. He is a man whose whole existence has been reduced to a cry for help -- and who has been so damaged by life that he can only express that cry in acts of crude sexuality."
Posted by Malcom M.
Masterpiece
Brando indeed dominates in 'Last Tango' - I think the role of Paul is probably the last of all those Brando's grand performances in his brilliant career, despite heavy improvisations. After this part, he never gave himself that much again...
Camerawork (maestro V.Storaro) and jazzy music by Gato Barbieri are both perfect elements in this film. 'Last Tango in Paris' isn't flawless but for me it stays as one of the best erotic movies of all time.
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