![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Or maybe I should say L'Ultimo Tango a Parigi or Le Dernier Tango à Paris.
One of those classic arthouse films that I felt sure I must have seen in which middle-aged, pre-Godfather Marlon Brando bonks young whatersname, with a scene that does for butter what Ice Cold in Alex does for lager... Or not.
Paul (Brando) is grieving the death - by suicide - of his wife, and finds a cheap apartment at the same time as the young Jeanne (Maria Schneider) is looking at it. He persuades her that they should have sex together, but not share names with each other, and ignore the outside world. She is ostensibly in love with Tom (Jean-Pierre Léaud, Truffaut's alter ego in various films), who is making a documentary with her at the centre - although it's not really about her. Paul and Jeanne fall in love with each other, though not necessarily at the same time.
This is very much a film of its time - my guess is that most 9pm Channel 4 dramas are raunchier. Brando was 48 to Schneider's 20, and supposedly the infamous anal sex sequence was ad libbed by Brando (and her, I guess) on set, rather than being in the script. I don't think you see any of Brando's tackle, although he is clearly nude, whereas Schneider is repeatedly full frontal. Again, hardly more than contemporary post-watershed. (Do I want to see Brando's todger - not exactly - but it's the double standards of film makers and film censors.)
It is an astounding performance from Brando - who begins as seedy and dubious, but who seems to grow in stature and youth as the film progresses - the tango hall scenes in which he attempts to woo Jeanne make him seem very attractive, closer to the Brando of The Wild Ones. He is also quivering with repressed (and not so repressed) violence, as he had been in films such as Streetcar and On the Waterfront. It's not even acting - he seems to just be as he recalls the past (I gather some of these were Brando's memories.
I'm glad I've seen it - and it has dated better than I feared it might have. Curiously there seemed to be more laughter from the women than the men in the audience.
*
I missed the last bus, mind, and walked back home through a perfectly clear, but crisp night. There were pockets of rabbits scattered around the grass, and bundles of students, some of whom were clearly smoking grass. I found the middle way between T and W hills, that wasn't down the public footpath, but which comes out, eventually, on Forty Acres Road. The cathedral is clear in the darkness ahead, brilliantly illuminated, a dayglo answer to the secular questions of the campus on the hill.
Once I've reached the edge of the campus, I see no one until the Monument pub: a lone smoker. The town is more or less deserted. I might have been tempted to divert to the Bell&, and it looked like O was still in the Carps, but instead I followed the ring road round to Wincheap, and home and bed, after midnight.
One of those classic arthouse films that I felt sure I must have seen in which middle-aged, pre-Godfather Marlon Brando bonks young whatersname, with a scene that does for butter what Ice Cold in Alex does for lager... Or not.
Paul (Brando) is grieving the death - by suicide - of his wife, and finds a cheap apartment at the same time as the young Jeanne (Maria Schneider) is looking at it. He persuades her that they should have sex together, but not share names with each other, and ignore the outside world. She is ostensibly in love with Tom (Jean-Pierre Léaud, Truffaut's alter ego in various films), who is making a documentary with her at the centre - although it's not really about her. Paul and Jeanne fall in love with each other, though not necessarily at the same time.
This is very much a film of its time - my guess is that most 9pm Channel 4 dramas are raunchier. Brando was 48 to Schneider's 20, and supposedly the infamous anal sex sequence was ad libbed by Brando (and her, I guess) on set, rather than being in the script. I don't think you see any of Brando's tackle, although he is clearly nude, whereas Schneider is repeatedly full frontal. Again, hardly more than contemporary post-watershed. (Do I want to see Brando's todger - not exactly - but it's the double standards of film makers and film censors.)
It is an astounding performance from Brando - who begins as seedy and dubious, but who seems to grow in stature and youth as the film progresses - the tango hall scenes in which he attempts to woo Jeanne make him seem very attractive, closer to the Brando of The Wild Ones. He is also quivering with repressed (and not so repressed) violence, as he had been in films such as Streetcar and On the Waterfront. It's not even acting - he seems to just be as he recalls the past (I gather some of these were Brando's memories.
I'm glad I've seen it - and it has dated better than I feared it might have. Curiously there seemed to be more laughter from the women than the men in the audience.
I missed the last bus, mind, and walked back home through a perfectly clear, but crisp night. There were pockets of rabbits scattered around the grass, and bundles of students, some of whom were clearly smoking grass. I found the middle way between T and W hills, that wasn't down the public footpath, but which comes out, eventually, on Forty Acres Road. The cathedral is clear in the darkness ahead, brilliantly illuminated, a dayglo answer to the secular questions of the campus on the hill.
Once I've reached the edge of the campus, I see no one until the Monument pub: a lone smoker. The town is more or less deserted. I might have been tempted to divert to the Bell&, and it looked like O was still in the Carps, but instead I followed the ring road round to Wincheap, and home and bed, after midnight.
Tags: