Movie · 1972 · Drama, Romance · 2h 9m · NC-17 · IT
Curator score: 4.0/10 (124.9K ratings)
When you see a love story, it's only a movie. When you feel it with every nerve in your body, it's a masterpiece.
Overview
A recently widowed American begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.0/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.20/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 81%
Metacritic: 77
TMDB: 6.9/10
Director
Bernardo Bertolucci
Production
Les Productions Artistes Associés, PEA
Cast
Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Maria Michi, Giovanna Galletti, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Gitt Magrini, Catherine Allégret, Luce Marquand, Marie-Hélène Breillat, Catherine Breillat, Dan Diament, Catherine Sola, Mauro Marchetti, Massimo Girotti, Peter Schommer, Veronica Lazăr, Marie-Christine Questerbert, Ramón Mendizábal, Mimi Pinson, Darling Légitimus
Curator Review
Verdict
A notorious psychosexual drama with major historical significance, strong performances, and an influential mood of grief, alienation, and erotic despair. It is also inseparable from the abuse allegations surrounding its production, which many viewers will find overwhelming enough to outweigh any artistic value.
Best for
Viewers interested in controversial 1970s European cinema
People studying film history, performance, and censorship
Fans of bleak, psychologically raw relationship dramas
Skip if
You want a comfortable or romantic watch
You are sensitive to depictions of sexual coercion or exploitation
You prefer films whose artistry is not compromised by production ethics
Overview
Last Tango in Paris is one of those films that cannot be separated from its reputation, and that reputation now dominates the viewing experience for many people. As a work of cinema, it is austere, feverish, and often impressive in its control of mood: a study of grief, anonymity, and self-destruction played out through bodies and silence as much as dialogue.
Worth noting
Marlon Brando gives a performance of bruised volatility, and the film’s visual style turns Paris into a cold, haunted space rather than a romantic one. It has the feel of a provocation that wants to be taken seriously as existential drama, and in purely formal terms, it often is.
Bottom line
But the film’s legacy is inseparable from the exploitation of Maria Schneider, and that context changes everything. For many viewers, the ethical cost is too high to justify the experience; for others, it remains an important if deeply troubling artifact of 1970s art cinema.
Top Letterboxd reviews
grudlian (0.5★) · 2805 likes
Maria Schneider has come out and said she was in real life sexually assaulted on film for this. That voids any artistic merit that might possibly be gleaned from this movie.
Sarah (1★) · 2475 likes
"Bertolucci was inspired by his own sex dreams" "the sodomy scene was not in the script and was Brando's idea" "Schneider was 19 at the time" "Bertolucci said about Schneider 'the girl wasn't mature enough to understand what was going on"............ this is quite a Mess of a movie. and it's boring too.... what's with the seventies and perverts putting their odious fantasies on film and all that shit being perceived as Art
Leighton Trent · 2405 likes
Maria Schneider:
"I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can't force someone to do something that isn't in the script, but at the time, I didn't know that. Marlon said to me: 'Maria, don't worry, it's just a movie,' but during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears. I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon…
Stuart McKean (1★) · 640 likes
Not only is it the absolute slowest movie ever made. But it also tells us that making a women feel raped is okay as long as it's for an artistic purpose. Fuck Bertolucci. Fuck Brando. And fuck butter.
guilherme (2★) · 515 likes
many movies have been lost and are now impossible to be ever watched, this should be one of them.