Thirty years on

It's all very strange, watching “Last tango in Paris” thirty years after it was first released. Compared to today's sea of sex-and-voilence movies, the untellable run-ins with the law which this film encountered and which at one point saw it condemned to censorship, truly read like the Martian chronicles. The tragic, dramatic story that briefly brings together Paul  (a fifty-something “American in Paris” in the Millerian sense of the term, defeated by too many battles, the last of which with a wife who has just taken her own life) and Jeanne (young bourgeoisie girl, whose General-father died in Algeria, and who's engaged to a young filmmaker) has over time taken on an extravagant literary dimension that far outweighs the noted, limited success that goes hand in hand with scandal.
This is probably the right code for deciphering the work: much better, undoubtedly, than the orgy of psychoanalytical interpretations - some admittedly interesting and acute - centered around Eros/Thanatos and laden with allusions to Bataille-Strindberg, of which there are enough to fill entire volumes.
Acclaimed before it had even reached cinema screens (authoritative critic Pauline Kael compared its first showing to the first “Sacre du printemps” by Stravinsky), “Last tango in Paris” became an overnight legend: this is in all probability largely due to Marlon Brando, who here offers one of his most convincing performances. Taking the famous “method” learnt at the Actor's Studio to the extreme - and somehow completely inverting it - he became one with a character who was different to him, yes, but who was also someone to whom he lent personal, intimate traits, thanks to the creative freedom granted him. In the scene in which Paul speaks about his childhood, it is clear that Brando is speaking from his own experience and certain obsessions are also clearly his own: the victimistic relationship with the world, the deep-seated misogyny, the sense of immanent defeat that cannot but lead ultimately to death. A journey which time has lent a sepia-tinged legendary allure, making “Last tango” one of the best and most important Italian films of the past half century.

F.T.

Technical characteristics

• Area Code 2 - Europe

• Disc (DVD 9 - One side, double layer)

• DVD includes: 2

• Cinematographic format: 1.66:1 Anamorphic

• Colour: colour

• Video format: 16:9

• Audio: Italian: Dolby Digital 5.1, 
            French: Dolby Digital 5.1
            English: Dolby Digital 5.1 

• Subtitles: Italian, English and French

• Distributed by: CDE

Special contents

• The Most Famous Eight Seconds in the History of Censorship by Tatti Sanguinetti

• Bertolucci 30 Years On

• Last Tango in Paris Special

• Exclusive Interview with Bernardo Bertolucci, Alberto Grimaldi and ...

• Last Tango in Paris and Censorship