LAST TANGO IN PARIS

Italy/France, 1972, 129 minutes, Colour.
Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Jean-Pierre? Leaud, Massimo Girotti, Catherine Allegret.
Directed by Bernardo Bertollucci.

Last Tango in Paris was the subject of early controversy on its release, but it soon settled into acceptability and something of a classic. One might ask if there is any character who illustrates the modern, lost, non-hero, victim of his childhood, of his inability to relate and of his self-pity, it is Marlon Brando's Paul in this film. It is an excellent and moving performance. Helplessly and brutally groping for meaning and survival in an anonymous physical relationship with a twenty-year-old girl, excellently portrayed by Maria Schneider, herself confused by the needs of the older man and the giddy television posing world of her fiance (Jean-Pierre Leaud), he comes partially alive for a time. He is able to dance a last tango before his death. Bernardo Bertollucci, after television films and The Conformist, has made a telling and a detached film communicating the frustration, of ageing and the nonsense of life, but the bleak and sombre outlook, several graphic sexual sequences and the constant swearing made the film unacceptable to many audiences. However, the film is a valid look at the modern human condition.

1. The quality of the film in itself? The background of the sensational advertising and talk? Court cases etc.? Were these justified?

2. The general critique, acclaim from reviewers? Oscar nominations? How important a cinematic achievement is the film?

3. How does the film stand now in itself? Themes, performances? The work of the director? As a film of the early 70s reflecting permissiveness, yet showing the depths of frankness?

4. The importance of the colour, the Parisian locations - the exteriors with the streets, the trains, the cars? The interiors, especially of the various houses? The contrast between inside and outside? Light and darkness, shadows, the amber colouring? The importance of space? The positions on the screen right from the initial Francis Bacon paintings of Man and Woman? The contribution of the musical score? The saxophone music and its mood? How did this all contribute to the theme?

5. The meaning of the title and the emphasis on each word? The focus on the tango as a bizarre dance of the 20s, the symbol of the dance, the symbol of the tango? Artificial and awkward gestures, rotation, joining? The two partners seemingly moving independently of each other? The emphasis on the last tango as actually portrayed at the end of the film? The death dance for Paul? The relation between sexuality and death? The focus on Paris and Jeanne as a girl of Paris? Paris for the expatriate American? The tradition of Hemingway and masculine toughness etc.? The atmosphere of Paris in American literature?

6. The importance of Francis Bacon's paintings during-the credits for the atmosphere? The immediate transition to Paul's anguished walk in the Paris streets? Introduction to themes of personal anguish, the anguish of being alive, the experience of death? The audience's experience of pity? The pathos of Paul's anguish leading to death?

7. The encounter with Jeanne in this atmosphere? The contrast with Paul. and his shabby look and overcoat with her clothes, youthfulness? Her walking along the street? The experience in the phone booth and the chance passing of Paul?

8. The apartment as real, as symbol? The girl's encounter with the concierge and her strange behaviour? The key? Jeanne going into an empty room and the irony of the way that it was filled for her? The encounter with Paul when she discovered him in the darkness? The ritual of looking around, the ritual leading up to a sexual encounter? The reaction to the suddenness and the brutality of the sexual encounter? The motivations of both? The exhaustion? The bond created between the two?

9. Why did each of them return? The length of the film covering only a few days? The growing encounter between the two? Sexuality with its physical aspects, couplings? The build-up to the furnishing of the room and the discussions about rocking chairs etc.? Beds? The gradual beginning to talk, to sit in the room? The ordinary experiences shared there e.g. the washing? The humiliating scenes? The importance of the build-up to the discussion about the test of love and the degrading actions asked by Paul? The build-up to desperation within the department? An interior representing the interior of the participants?

10. Paul's world of grief? The brutality and violence of his world of grief? His return from the apartment to the hotel? The significance of his wife being dead and the effect on him? The importance of his memories of his wife and his description of the five years? The discussion with the maid and the rehearsed details of the discovery of the dead woman? The encounter with the mother and the memories of the past and the contrast with religion and hypocritical behaviour? The encounter with Marcel and the revelations about Rosa and Paul living in his memories?

11. The significance of Paul's wanting to remain anonymous? Names being forbidden? Being assertive just as himself? The importance of the audience knowing about him when Jeanne did not? The audience understanding the change that he was undergoing? The significance of the encounters with Jeanne on him? Her misinterpreting them for love, in fear? His gradually becoming alive and the possibility of some kind of a resurrection in his life?


12. The contrast with Jeanne's world? Glimpses of life as we saw them, her casual approach to life, the sequences with her mother? The preparation for the gun in the drawer? Her permissive life style? The contrast with Tom and the many sequences of his filming her and the build-up to the documentary, the cinema verite techniques of filming her? The artificiality of his having the camera crew? Getting her to return to the scenes of her childhood and her memories? The contrast of Jeanne's memories and Paul's? The characterisation of Tom and the artificial contrast with Paul? A world of light and lighting and photography?

13. The impact of the maid's telling the story of Rosa's suicide while she was washing the bath and the curtains? The visuals? The chatter of the maid, the rehearsal the effect on Paul as he listened? The physical effect on Paul as she finished?

14. The significance of his encounter with his mother-in-law? In the dark? The memorial to Rosa? The confrontation and the anguish between the two? her mother's view of her daughter contrasting with the reality?

15. The significance of the encounter with Marcel? As a person, his hobbies with the newspapers, his exercise? His discussion of Rosa? The irony of their having the same clothes? Marcel as a person? what did Paul learn and experience by his conversation with him? His despising and ridiculing of him?

16. The portrait of the dead wife? Seeing her embalmed as the equivalent of a saint? Yet the background of love hatred? The bloodlessness of the embalming and the audience's knowledge of so much blood in her death?

17. The incidental atmosphere about the hotel. especially the prostitute arriving with the man and Paul's pursuing him down the street?

18. The drama of Paul's monologues and Marlon Brando's style in communicating these? The long close-ups, the reminiscences about America, family, parents, going to dances, the farm etc.? How his past life affected Paul? Was he nostalgic for it? America a world apart from Paris? How much audience sympathy for him in his story?

19. The suddenness of Paul's proposal after so many encounters, the confusion of Jeanne, his brutality with her and humiliation and yet her loving him? The way that she communicated that she loved him? The proposal making her afraid, an uncertain future?

20. The tango sequence and its placement? The people in the room, the ritual of the dance? The inhuman aspects of the dance and the competition? The encounter and Paul coming alive and beginning to talk, Jeanne and her confusion? The comic departure with Paul taking his pants down?

21. The build-up of the atmosphere of the tango and Paul and Jeanne's participation in it to the chase, the crescendo of the music, the pace of the chase and the effect on each of them? The going to the flat? The gun? Paul revealing his name and dying?

22. Paul and the experience of death? The connection between love and death, passion and suffering? His going out on to the balcony and the foetal position in which he died? The use of this symbolism?

23. The final sequence of Jeanne rehearsing what she was to say? How deliberate was this, how stunned was she, how afraid?

24. Themes of love and lovelessness? Physical sexuality? Communication and bonds? Purity and ugliness?

25. Themes of death; the connection between sexuality and death?

26. The insight into relationships couples, people being alone?

27. Appearances and reality? Truth and artificiality?

28. The theme of gaps: age gaps, national gaps, class gaps, experience gaps? The importance of the language gap and the use of French and English? The gaps of silence. of ignorance?

29. A fable of modern alienation and existential angst?

30. Themes of pain. passion? The modern hereof the modern anti-hero?