Jeff Wells and I recorded a podcast. We chatted a bit about the Oscar game and whether or not it’s good for films to be seen as Oscar frontrunners even before they’ve been seen.
We also revisit Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. I wanted to look at the movie through fresh eyes, factoring in the last-stage evaluation of the movie as abusive to the young star, Maria Schneider. I found Last Tango to be an exceptional cinematic experience, of the kind they not only don’t make anymore but couldn’t make.
I call them “live wire” movies. Watching them is like touching an electrical wire. You don’t know what it will feel like or much it will shock you. I know that we see things differently now, and no director would feel emboldened to “surprise” a 19-year-old actress with what amounts to a rape scene (simulated), which included the butter scene. That scene upstaged everything else about the movie, and I can imagine how Schneider would feel bad about that. If people only remember that one thing about you, it will haunt you.
On the other hand, live wire cinema leaves wreckage in its wake, but it’s also the kind of movie that audiences would never experience otherwise. Their commitment was not to violate or hurt Schneider but to create an authentic reaction. Actors back in the day, before everyone became so fragile they needed “intimacy coordinators,” welcomed the challenge. That they spent the entirety of the Me Too era then complaining about how they were exploited has meant greatly sanitizing movies — in my view.
I kind of feel like it’s a rough and tumble business, like politics. Not everyone is made for it, and those who aren’t should stay away. I don’t agree that Schneider’s experience renders the movie dangerous. For Marlon Brando’s performance alone it’s worth seeing.
By the way, Schneider’s character is happy and laughing five minutes after “the scene” and continues her affair with Brando’s character. It was a moment when she was taken to the limit, somewhere she didn’t want to go, but it was also within the strange universe they’d built together.
The year was 1972. Nixon would win in a historic landslide that year. Brando won for The Godfather, along with Best Picture. He would be nominated for Last Tango the following year. The shock of it would wake up many on the Left to just how different they were from the silent majority. Movie makers were grinding against the status quo, breaking free from traditionalism and also competing with the more transgressive and daring films from other countries.
There is transgressive cinema happening now, but it’s only allowed in the Queer Movie genre. Heterosexual masculine men have been diminished, even blotted out entirely from American movies now. Thus, it’s notable to witness Brando’s screen presence. It is something we just don’t see anymore. And what a shame that is.
I mean:
Anyway, have a listen.
