LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972, Bernardo Bertolucci)

 

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When two strangers in Paris become lovers, they agree to keep things purely impersonal.

Starring  Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Giovanna Galletti, Jean-Pierre Léaud

Written by  Bernardo Bertolucci, Franco Arcalli

Produced by  Alberto Grimaldi

Duration  129 minutes  

   

For Christmas when I was 12, I was given my own television, which I proudly set up on a shelf at the end of my bed. Oh, the late-night hours I would spend glued to that little black 14-inch Panasonic, scouring the paltry four UK terrestrial channels.

I remember the first film I watched on it. As I lay in bed with Christmas Day about to turn into Boxing Day, PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM came on. Woody Allen portraying his usual nebbish unlucky-in-love intellectual, this time taking dating advice from a beyond-the-grave Humphrey Bogart.

I used to discover loads of films this way. My love of David Cronenberg started by catching BBC 2 screenings of THE FLY and VIDEODROME. There I was, awake past midnight with school the next day, trying to wrap my head around James Woods misplacing a handgun inside his own abdomen.

And I can remember coming into class one morning and seeking out my best friend to confirm that – yes! He did also stumble last night upon a bizarre film where a guy puts on a pair of sunglasses that reveal the truth hitherto about an invasion of capitalist aliens. It’s likely that we both missed the credits, so didn’t even yet know that film was called THEY LIVE or that it was directed by THE THING and HALLOWEEN’s John Carpenter.

These days, discovering random movies on late-night TV is next to impossible. It’s partly because although the number of channels has increased, the range is much narrower. If ITV4 decides to put something like HOT FUZZ on, then the channel will do so 10 times in the course of a fortnight. It’s partly because instead of filling the twilight hours with obscure filmic treats, often they usually have  infomercials. And it’s partly because, in the streaming age, people just don’t tend to consume their media at home in the same channel-hopping way.

It’s also rare to stumble upon any surprise delights on streaming, due to poor navigation and a generally pretty vanilla line-up. Although Amazon Prime actually has some pretty great genre stuff, if you can find it.

All of which brings me to LAST TANGO IN PARIS. This feels like the kind of sordid flick that I used to come across and keep watching into the wee hours, not knowing how far it was going to push things. Although, as it turns out, this one wouldn't have been worth staying awake for.

I had never seen the film before, and by now of course I knew plenty about it. Its explicit content caused controversy in 1972, but the other reason I had no chance of watching LAST TANGO baggage-free was the same thing that delivers our Netflix, Prime, Paramount+, et al: the internet. Tales of what went on during filming are rife online – especially in recent years, with lead actress Maria Schneider revealing that the infamous rape scene ("Get the butter!") was improvised on set and left her feeling violated for real.

So it was with a feeling of distaste that I fired up the movie. But wait. It starts with smooth jazz over shots of Francis Bacon paintings. The lush cinematography is by Vittorio Storaro (APOCALYPSE NOW, other Bertolucci joints like 1900 and THE LAST EMPEROR). It’s set in Goddamn Paris. Gosh, this is clearly going to be a real classy experience. Isn’t it?

Not really.

Marlon Brando is introduced, stumbling about in anguish by himself on the streets of the French capital. Disheveled, long coat flapping about, hair a mess. He spies a young woman (Schneider) and follows her. Turns out she is on her way to view a flat, so he appraises it also.

Then, instead of going home to weigh up the location and per-calendar-month rent, old Marlon (and we are talking old: this is far from the hunk of THE WILD ONE or A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE) pounces on Maria and they roll around on the carpet having impromptu sex.

He rents the place and the two strangers embark upon a no-strings, no-names affair, never meeting outside the confines of the apartment.

Well, it’s an affair for her, at least – she has a fiancé, some kind of pretentious filmmaker (irony from Bertolucci?) who has cast her in his latest masterpiece. As for Brando, one of the few things we learn about him is that his wife has just committed suicide, so he definitely has his status set to 'available'.

In between their romps, Marlon recounts long stories about his childhood, like an incident where he saw some sheep and milked a cow. He shouts at her sometimes during sudden bursts of anger. They make animal noises at each other. They spend a lot of time on the floor – there is a mattress, but it lacks a bedframe. Brando finds a dead rat and jokes about making Maria eat it. For some reason, this beautiful and intelligent young woman (Schneider looks a bit like Linda Blair, circa EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC) keeps coming back to one of the most unpleasant men in the history of cinema.

"Your solitude weighs on me," she tells him at one point. And Brando does kill it in the role: crying a lot, wailing in agony, standing over his wife’s corpse and referring to her as a "pig-fucker" ... Come to think of it, there are a lot of references to animals in this movie. Is this because their purely sexual relationship has reduced them to the level of beasts? There’s probably a dissertation about that on a website somewhere, among the rest of the LAST TANGO discourse.

One thing I hadn’t read about it online was how terrible the sound mixing is. You know those films where you have to turn the volume down for the action scenes, then back up again when you can’t hear the conversations? This one does that with its music, an unsubtle score, presumably supposed to be stirring, that swells up seemingly at random to jolt you right out of the moment.

Overall, LAST TANGO IN PARIS is an historical curio rather than a film worth watching today. See it if you want to find out what controversy looked like 50 years ago. You’ll have to actively seek it out, of course, as well as dealing with all its baggage. But I wouldn’t go to the trouble, if I were you.

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Spoiler alert: Marlon dies at the end. Double spoiler: it’s from a gunshot wound administered by Maria. Talk about getting a good banging ( … sorry.)

What would a movie called FIRST TANGO IN PARIS be about?  The ‘happy’ couple do actually dance a tango towards the end, but it’s as ill-conceived and haphazard as the rest of their ‘relationship’.

Previously:  TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT

Next time:  THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST EMPEROR (1987, Bernardo Bertolucci)

 

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Biopic about the life of Aisin-Gioro Puyi, the 11th and final Emperor of China.

Starring  John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O’Toole, Ying Ruocheng, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun

Written by  Mark Peploe, Bernardo Bertolucci

Produced by  Jeremy Thomas   

Duration  163 minutes   

Could THE LAST EMPEROR be the ultimate Oscar ‘prestige’ film? It certainly ticks all the boxes:

– Bum-numbing runtime.

– Foreign setting (where everyone speaks English with an accent, so there’s no need for subtitles).

– Foreign director (from a different foreign country), who is also a ‘name’.

– True-life story.

– Sweeping cinematography.

– Lots of impressive costumes and sets.

– Bombastic score.

– ‘Important’, in some way.

And, holy shit: the thing won nine Academy Awards in 1987. Everything it was up for! And it did so THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING style, with nothing troubling the acting categories (see also TITANIC, although that did get Actress and Supporting Actress nominations).

What else was in the running for the big prize that year? You had BROADCAST NEWS, FATAL ATTRACTION, MOONSTRUCK, and HOPE AND GLORY. No clear winner among those, with that last one probably having the best chance since it was another historical drama.

So what swung the vote for LAST EMPEROR? Most likely it was the final point on my above tick list.

Being known as an important film rings alarm bells, as far as I’m concerned. That can be worse than style over substance: worthiness over substance. But then, maybe worthiness is substance? If so, only politically, not artistically. And from where did this worthiness actually originate? Was it the filmmakers’ intention, or was it manufactured later on by the marketing team? You know what I mean: "This is the movie we need right now", "A significant film for our times" – that sort of bollocks. Do directors hope to make a film that resonates specifically at the particular time of its release? Does a screenwriter sit down and think, OK, what's the most important thing I could possibly write my story about?

As a film, LAST EMPEROR seems to have been completely forgotten. It’s never mentioned in best-of lists, or cited as a worthy or unworthy Oscar winner. Its only discernible cultural impact was getting The Simpsons’ parody treatment, in the Stonecutters episode. And is there anyone who has ever sat at home and said, "Ooh, you know what, come on, let’s fire up THE LAST EMPEROR!" " … But I thought we were going clubbing?" "I said give me 10 CCs of LAST EMPEROR, stat!"

Also getting those alarm bells ringing for me was the critical consensus on LAST EMPEROR: phrases banded about like ‘visually breathtaking’, ‘astonishing use of locations’ and ‘stunning opulence’. Was I about to spend nearly three hours staring at a travelogue, as nice-looking but uninvolving as slowly leafing through a pile of holiday brochures?

Personally, I don’t care about nice scenery. I don’t care about historical accuracy. I don’t care if Bertolucci was the first director allowed to film in China's Forbidden City. Alright, that's harsh: I care a little bit, in passing, but not enough to sustain me through 163 minutes. I need more. I need story, characters, incident. I need it to be worth the time spent with this emperor – as a human being, not as a symbol or icon, no matter now pretty his clothes and surroundings may be.

So, did THE LAST EMPEROR give me what I need? Not really, I’m afraid. I’d call it the most boring Best Picture winner ever, but then THE ENGLISH PATIENT came along a decade later to tick those boxes all over again.

After opening on our emperor chap towards the end of his life in 1950, in what had by then become the People's Republic of China (and to which point the narrative will switch back intermittently), we start at the beginning, when he is coronated as a mere toddler. He’s petulant and sulky and rude to his servants, including Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (LICENCE TO KILL, RISING SUN, Shang Tsung in 1995's MORTAL KOMBAT).

This earliest period is mercifully brief, and we soon skip ahead to the teenaged emperor; although he’s still pretty bratty, revelling in the fact he can ‘do anything I want’. You could call this the coming of age segment, except that he doesn’t learn anything and is too irritating and arrogant for us to invest in his journey. When he learns that China outside the Forbidden Kingdom now has a president and so he ain’t the emperor of nowt no more, we think, Good, maybe now you'll learn some humility, ya spoilt little twerp.

From then on, we jump through the rest of his life, as he becomes gradually less insufferable, but no more interesting. He’s tutored by Peter O’Toole, who I think was sober during his scenes, but there’s no guarantee that his drinking buddies Ollie Reed and Richard Harris weren’t visiting the set and getting him plastered between takes. There are some tense moments when an optician tells our man he needs glasses, but his entourage insists that ‘the emperor does not wear spectacles!’ He marries Joan Chen and has a second wife as well, kind of. He cuts off his ceremonial ponytail, checks out of the Forbidden City and becomes a self-proclaimed ‘playboy’ in the outside world. Sometimes there’s a voiceover, sometimes there isn’t. Eunuchs are mentioned frequently. People loll around zonked out on opium. I too struggle try to stay awake.

Probably the highlight for me came during the opening credits, when I learned that there were in fact three collaborations in the ’80s between Dennis Dun and Victor Wong, beyond the John Carpenter classics BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and PRINCE OF DARKNESS. They’re even credited together! But sadly, they don’t share any scenes, let alone face down ancient sorcerers or cylinders hidden under monasteries that contain the liquid embodiment of Satan.

I don’t think I ever got over that disappointment, and LAST EMPEROR never provided anything that adequately compensated. At least I managed to get through this whole review without once using the word ‘epic’ ... shit.

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  As far as China was concerned, absolutely. See other individual countries for current status of emperor-ness.

What would a movie called THE FIRST EMPEROR be about?  Qin Shi Huang was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of a unified China. His era of 259 BC was quite a while ago, so details for a biopic are likely to be pretty sketchy.

Previously:  PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH

Next time:  INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com