Last Tango in Paris
ラストタンゴ・イン・パリ
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
An anonymous affair in an empty flat; the rape scene, filmed without telling Maria Schneider the butter would be used, is now the film's primary text.
Paul, a middle-aged American who owns a run-down hotel in Paris, is mourning his wife, Rosa, who has taken her own life. Jeanne, a young Parisian engaged to a film director named Tom, is looking at an empty apartment to rent when Paul arrives to see it too. They have sex there, strangers to each other, and Paul takes the lease. He insists that in the apartment they tell each other nothing about themselves, not even their first names, which dismays Jeanne. They keep meeting in the bare rooms. At one point Paul rapes her. Afterwards she tells him she has tried to leave him and cannot. Then one day she comes to the apartment and finds it empty: Paul has packed up and gone without a word.
After his wife's wake, Paul meets Jeanne in the street and says he wants to begin again. He breaks his own rule and tells her about Rosa's death and about his life, first in the street and then in a hall where couples are dancing the tango. Knowing who he is disenchants her, and she tells him she does not want to see him again. He will not let her go. He chases her through the streets of Paris while she shouts at him to leave her alone and threatens to call the police, all the way to the flat she shares with her mother, and forces his way in. He mocks her for running, tells her he loves her and asks her name. Jeanne tells him her name, and kills him. As he dies on the balcony, she murmurs to herself that he was a stranger who tried to rape her and that she did not know who he was, as if rehearsing what she will tell the police.
Starring
Marlon Brandoas Paul
A middle-aged American hotel owner in Paris, raw with grief after his wife's suicide, who wants a relationship without names.
Paul’s story
Paul is forty-five, an American washed up in Paris, and his wife, Rosa, with whom he ran a cheap hotel, has just taken her own life. In an empty flat he has sex with Jeanne, a stranger, takes the lease and forbids names and pasts. Between their meetings he receives Rosa's mother, come to bury her daughter, and gets to know Marcel, a lodger at the hotel who was Rosa's lover and owns a dressing gown like his. In the flat he rapes Jeanne. Then he vanishes. After Rosa's wake he finds Jeanne in the street, tells her the life he refused to tell before, and at a tango contest asks her to live with him. She says it is over. He chases her home, forces his way in and asks her name. She tells him, and kills him.
Maria Schneideras Jeanne
A young Parisian, engaged to be married, who keeps returning to the empty apartment and to Paul.
Jeanne’s story
Jeanne is twenty, a colonel's daughter living with her widowed mother, engaged to Tom, a young television director whose film about her is to end with their wedding. Looking at an empty flat, she meets Paul and has sex with him. She resents his rule that they know nothing of each other, and keeps coming back. After he rapes her, she tells him she has tried to leave him and cannot. One day the flat is empty. When he finds her again and tells her who he is, the spell is broken, and at the tango hall she tells him it is over. He chases her home and asks her name. She tells him and kills him, then murmurs what she will tell the police: a stranger who tried to rape her, whose name she never knew.
Jean-Pierre Léaudas Tom
Jeanne's fiancé, a young film director, who belongs to the life she leads outside the apartment.
Why it matters
Last Tango in Paris set out to show a grief so complete that a man wants sex without names, history or tenderness, and for years it was argued over as a landmark of erotic freedom; Pauline Kael called it the most powerfully erotic movie ever made. Italy seized it within a week of release and tried Bertolucci for obscenity, and in 1976 its Supreme Court ordered the copies destroyed. What it is most remembered for now happened off the page. Maria Schneider was told of one detail of the rape scene only just before it was shot; in 2007 she said she had felt humiliated and 'a little raped' by Brando and Bertolucci. Bertolucci said that he and Brando had kept it from her to get a more realistic response, and in 2013 that he felt guilty but did not regret it. It leaves a question beside its story: what truth on screen costs when someone is not asked.