Bernardo Bertolucci
Ultimo tango a Parigi

A symbolic film of an era opening to scandals and private revolts, after closing the collective chapter of '68, "Last Tango in Paris" fell victim to a shameful smear campaign by the censorship, which sentenced the film to be burned at the stake. The film was later saved by a pardon in recent times (I don't remember when).

With the film saved from the flames, which can only make any cinema lover happy A PRIORI, since we are not in Torquemada's times, I proceed to give my (poor) opinion. In agreement with Goffredo Fofi, this is a fake masterpiece. In fact, it's a really crappy film.

I'm sorry to say this also because the screenwriter is the dear Fausto Arcalli, Kim from the partisan, one of the most creative editors ever.
I'm sorry to say this because Storaro's cinematography is as beautiful as it could be seen in any film at that time.
I'm sorry again because the hair and pubic hair of Maria Schneider are enough to make one choke up.
I'm also sorry because Gato Barbieri's music is not at all as bad as it was said to be at that time, quite the contrary.

But to claim, as Bertolucci has claimed, to narrate eroticism in the world that had changed only a few years earlier turns out to be a convoluted and ridiculous experiment, full of clichés and nonsense.

Everyone knows the plot; anyway, in short, it's the story of two strangers who meet in a vacant apartment. She is young and eager for experiences, engaged to a filmmaker of the nouvelle vague (J.P. Leaud); he is a flabby hotel porter in full existential crisis (but with a camel coat), whose wife killed herself the night before.
Together they try to establish a pure relationship, without names. There are two subplots within the plot: he comes to terms with his dead wife and the hypocrisy of the living (mother-in-law, her lover); she confronts her fiancé's camera, as he wants to make a vérité film about her?

I won't go further; also because it's a movie of dialogues. Brando often rambles, even.

Bertolucci says and makes others say things to reality as a viscount to a coalman; setting aside the erotic side of the film that has aged terribly (with all the Bataille and Klossowski that's in there), "Last Tango" is a story that spirals into itself and the narcissisms of two characters that mistake life for thought and gesture for action.

Brando is at the peak of unbearable, hammy, indulgent, don't know where to look with his eyes; he talks about himself to the protagonist and in reality what we hear is the life of the real Brando, badly or does so in a tank top and with a harmonica in his mouth, of course. Rightly, Maria Schneider will get rid of him; fundamentally Brando is happy with how things are going for him, even if throughout the film he says otherwise.

Maria Schneider is not, simply put, an actress.

The sex scenes are unrealistic; to make love, one should at least lower the zipper of one's pants. A separate discussion for the famous butter scene, conceived as a rather successful solo (but even there it's tough to make love with pants up...).

Bertolucci doesn't fail to pay tribute to Italian neorealism cinema, with the appearances of Maria Michi in the role of the mother-in-law and Massimo Girotti in the role of the wife's lover. A fond, salon-like whim.

Everyone feels Important in this film, and everyone is saying the Last Truth about existence. On the director character, I keep silent because he was sufficiently torn apart already at the time.

The director will go further in these radical-chic exploits with the terrifying "La luna": another example of misunderstanding reality and private life in the eighties. Instead, one should recover the much-maligned "Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man" with a masterful Tognazzi. Then the Hollywood era with the decent "The Last Emperor" and the ridiculous "Little Buddha" only to fall again with "The Dreamers" in which I save the magnificent, voluminous, candid body of Eva Green.

As a tonic afterward, after viewing "Last Tango", I recommend the proverbial "Last Tango" in Zagarol, by Nando Cicero; without saying that it is a masterpiece, it is a partial revenge against Bertolucci's film, where the gloomy atmospheres of the original film are maintained, almost improved. I like to imagine it as: "Here's how things really went." And quoting Morandini "Franco Franchi in excelsis".