Bertolucci's 'Last Tango In Paris'

A film that exists as legend as much as cinema, Last Tango in Paris generated enough heat in 1973 to last several lifetimes: Italy immediately banned it and even revoked its director’s right to vote; in Alabama several theater owners were arrested for showing it, while in New York disappointed patrons threw beer cans at the screen because it wasn’t pornographic enough. New Yorker critic Pauline Kael’s impassioned hosanna to the film (“the movie breakthrough has finally come; Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face of an art form”) quickly inflamed less moral passions; her review was even used as the film’s marketing campaign. Oh yes, the story: the middle-aged Brando meets the youthful Maria Schneider, embarking on an amour fou of anonymous sex and self-loathing that ends more in madness than in love. Lost amid the extratextual noise is Brando’s performance, still jolting in its intensity, and Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography, all autumnal glow and stately hues.

—Jason Sanders