First things first. Brando and Bertolucci sexually assaulted Maria Schneider. There's no getting around this, and both men should have faced consequences for that. Having said that, I hope the people who gave this movie a '1' because of that are doing the same on all of Roman Polanski's films. Just because the rape he perpetrated didn't happen on film, doesn't mean it wasn't every bit as bad, or worse. With that out of the way, my perspective watching this film now, outside of the historical context in which it was released, shows the film as being about a very, very stupid man. Whether that was what was intended or not, I don't know. I can certainly understand a guy acting irrational after his wife's suicide, but that's what I got. The intensity of Paul and Jeanne's sexual relationship was something that wasn't seen much on screen at that time. At least not in "respectable" movies, and I think that the film's reputation has become inflated by the fact that people were seeing a "real" movie about sex. And as such, it is significant for being one of the first films in which sex - not just the fact that the characters have sex, but HOW they have sex - is the organizing principle. Brando does a terrific job of showing how this affects Paul. The problem is that as talented an actor as Brando was, Paul is just extremely unappealing. He's headstrong, self-deluded, impulsive, and just not very smart. Whether this was intended or was though of as smart at the time, I don't know. So, in a nutshell, I think that the film's reputation is overinflated because it happened to be a movie about sex at a time when people were really wanting something like that. The movie itself is a good, but not great story, effectively told, but hardly the work of utter genius that you see a lot of reviewers proclaiming.
Review of Last Tango in Paris
