First, a personal note. Judging from this film alone, Maria Schneider is one of only three actresses I can think of at the moment (the other two are Marilyn Monroe and Christina Ricci) who, whenever she appears on screen, seems to be the most beautiful woman in the world - makes it impossible to concieve, at that moment, of anyone more beautiful. Acting ability is of course a prerequisite for this. (Otherwise, I'm thinking, not "My God, a vision of loveliness", but "Pity about the flat performance.") And indeed, Schneider gives by far the best performance in the film. Does this mean I understand her character? Not fully, of course not. But better an enigma than something empty (Jean-Pierre Léaud), inconsistent (Marlon Brando) or both (Brando again). Léaud spends his time gesticulating seemingly about nothing; it's probably his character more than anything who contributes the fatal odour of a French New Wave film. Brando is better than usual, but has he ever in his whole career, apart from in "Superman", managed to avoid giving the impression that he's trying too hard? Not that I blame him entirely: he has, after all, been asked to play an obnoxious, pretentious, vulgar jerk, which he does well enough, so it's not a complete surprise that his lapses into human feeling fail to convince. Schneider's reactions speak for me. At one point she walks into the flat the two of them share, looks at Brando in disgust, and says (paraphrasing) "What do I come here for? Do you really think a middle-aged American lying smugly on the floor eating cheese is so damned interesting?" Brando waggles his eyebrows like Groucho Marx as though to say, "But of course"; but I'm thinking: "Thank the heavens, she's finally realised how boring he is. -It all is."
My moment of realisation came earlier, when Brando's character broke his own rule and started talking about his past, and we heard some unbearably tedious story about milking a cow and having parents who were drunkards. "My God!" you could almost predict Schneider's response. "I take your point! Enough with the childhood reminiscences - unless the fact that they're so boring is due to the endlessly rambling, unmodulated way you deliver the lines." I'll admit she didn't quite SAY this, but you could tell she was thinking it.
Semi-spoilers follow (although I try to be circumspect).
The title is "Last Tango in Paris"; so when, long after we start to feel that the two-hour mark must have come and gone by now, we actually see a tango, it's a welcome sight: the first tangible evidence we get that the film will ever end. But the ending turns out to be like that of the 1990 screen version of "Cyrano de Bergerac" (and again, stop reading if you wish to know no more). That "Cyrano de Bergerac" ends with Gérard Depardieu's death scene, but WHAT a death scene! Fatally wounded, Depardieu manages to stagger from one end of Paris to the other before actually dropping off the twig; people only take longer than this to die in operas. Something similar happens here. Neither main character, but the affair between them, is fatally wounded at about the moment they dance a tango together: it's over, we know it's over, they know it's over (at least, Jeanne knows, and I suspect Paul does too, but with Brando's acting, who can tell). But the affair must still stagger across Paris and up a flight of stairs before we and they are finally allowed to be rid of it.
It's dingily and carelessly shot; it's serious, but it has no point. It feels as though the decade of the 1970s produced the film all by itself, without any help (or more importantly, resistance) from any human writer or director. A lot of 1970s films are like that.
My moment of realisation came earlier, when Brando's character broke his own rule and started talking about his past, and we heard some unbearably tedious story about milking a cow and having parents who were drunkards. "My God!" you could almost predict Schneider's response. "I take your point! Enough with the childhood reminiscences - unless the fact that they're so boring is due to the endlessly rambling, unmodulated way you deliver the lines." I'll admit she didn't quite SAY this, but you could tell she was thinking it.
Semi-spoilers follow (although I try to be circumspect).
The title is "Last Tango in Paris"; so when, long after we start to feel that the two-hour mark must have come and gone by now, we actually see a tango, it's a welcome sight: the first tangible evidence we get that the film will ever end. But the ending turns out to be like that of the 1990 screen version of "Cyrano de Bergerac" (and again, stop reading if you wish to know no more). That "Cyrano de Bergerac" ends with Gérard Depardieu's death scene, but WHAT a death scene! Fatally wounded, Depardieu manages to stagger from one end of Paris to the other before actually dropping off the twig; people only take longer than this to die in operas. Something similar happens here. Neither main character, but the affair between them, is fatally wounded at about the moment they dance a tango together: it's over, we know it's over, they know it's over (at least, Jeanne knows, and I suspect Paul does too, but with Brando's acting, who can tell). But the affair must still stagger across Paris and up a flight of stairs before we and they are finally allowed to be rid of it.
It's dingily and carelessly shot; it's serious, but it has no point. It feels as though the decade of the 1970s produced the film all by itself, without any help (or more importantly, resistance) from any human writer or director. A lot of 1970s films are like that.