When you see a love story, it's only a movie.

When you feel it with every nerve in your body, it's a masterpiece.

In Bernardo Bertolucci's art-house classic, Marlon Brando delivers one of his characteristically idiosyncratic performances as Paul, a middle-aged American in "emotional exile" who comes to Paris when his estranged wife commits suicide. Chancing to meet young Frenchwoman Jeanne (Maria Schneider), Paul enters into a sadomasochistic, carnal relationship with her, indirectly attacking the hypocrisy all around him through his raw, outrageous sexual behavior. Paul also hopes to purge himself of his own feelings of guilt, brilliantly (and profanely) articulated in a largely ad-libbed monologue at his wife's coffin. If the sexual content in Last Tango is uncomfortably explicit (once seen, the infamous "butter scene" is never forgotten), the combination of Brando's acting, Bertolucci's direction, Vittorio Storaro's cinematography, and Gato Barbieri's music is unbeatable, creating one of the classic European art movies of the 1970s, albeit one that is not for all viewers.


Last Tango in Paris (Italian: Ultimo tango a Parigi) is a 1972 Franco-Italian romantic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci which portrays a recent American widower who begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young, betrothed Parisian woman. It stars Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, and Jean-Pierre Léaud.
The film's raw portrayal of sexual violence and emotional turmoil led to international controversy and drew various levels of government censorship. The MPAA gave the film an X rating upon release in the United States. After revisions were made to the MPAA ratings code, it was re-classified NC-17 in 1997. MGM released a censored R-rated cut in 1981. The film has its NC-17 rating for "some explicit sexual content."

The film premiered in New York City on October 14, 1972, to enormous public controversy. The media frenzy surrounding the film generated intense popular interest as well as moral condemnation, landing cover stories in both Time[18] and Newsweek[6] magazines. Playboy published a photo spread of Brando and Schneider "cavorting in the nude."[6] Time wrote, "Any moviegoers who are not shocked, titillated, disgusted, fascinated, delighted or angered by this early scene in Bernardo Bertolucci's new movie, Last Tango in Paris, should be patient. There is more to come. Much more."[5] The Village Voice reported walkouts by board members and "vomiting by well-dressed wives."[19] Columnist William F. Buckley and ABC's Harry Reasoner denounced the film as "pornography disguised as art."[6]
After local government officials failed to ban the film in Montclair, NJ, theatergoers had to push through a mob of 200 outraged residents, who hurled epithets like "perverts" and "homos" at the attendees. Later, a bomb threat temporarily halted the showing.[20] The New York chapter of the National Organization for Women denounced the film as a tool of "male domination."[21]
The film's scandal centred mostly on an anal sex scene featuring the use of butter as a lubricant.[22][23] Other critics focussed on when the character Paul asks Jeanne to insert her fingers in his anus, then exacts a vow from her that she would prove her devotion to him by, among other things, having sex with a pig. Vincent Canby of The New York Times described the film's sexual content as the artistic expression of the "era of Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer."[24]
Film critic Pauline Kael bestowed the film with the most ecstatic endorsement of her career, writing, "Tango has altered the face of an art form. This is a movie people will be arguing about for as long as there are movies",[5] and called it "the most powerfully erotic movie ever made, and it may turn out to be the most liberating movie ever made."[25] United Artists reprinted the whole of Kael's extraordinary rave as a double-page advertisement in the Sunday New York Times. Kael's review of Last Tango in Paris is regarded as the most influential piece of her career,[26] the American critic Roger Ebert has repeatedly described it as "the most famous movie review ever published" and added the film to his "Great Movies" collection.[27][28]
American director Robert Altman expressed unqualified praise: "I walked out of the screening and said to myself, 'How dare I make another film?' My personal and artistic life will never be the same."[6] Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected 31 reviews to give the film a rating of 80%.[29]
The film earned $12,625,000 in North American rentals in 1973.[30]


In France, filmgoers stood in two-hour lines for the first month of its run at the seven cinemas where Tango played,[5] spurred by unanimous positive reviews in every major French publication.[31] In order to circumvent state censorship, thousands of Spaniards travelled hundreds of miles to reach French cinemas in Biarritz and Perpignan where Tango was playing.[32]
British censors reduced the duration of the sodomy sequence before permitting the film to be released in the United Kingdom,[33] though it is not cut in modern releases. Mary Whitehouse, a Christian morality campaigner, expressed outrage that the film had been certified "X" rather than banned outright, and Labour MP Maurice Edelman denounced the classification as "a license to degrade".[34] Chile banned the film entirely for nearly thirty years,[35] and the film was similarly suppressed in South Korea and Portugal.[36]
In Italy, the film was released on December 15, 1972, grossing an unprecedented $100,000 in only six days.[37] One week later, however, police seized all copies on the order of a prosecutor, who defined the film as "self-serving pornography", and its director was put on trial for "obscenity". Following first degree and appeal trials, the fate of the film was sealed on January 26, 1976 by the Italian Supreme Court, which sentenced all copies to be destroyed, (though some were preserved by the National Film Library). Bertolucci was served with a four month suspended sentence in prison and had his civil rights revoked for five years, depriving him of voting rights.[10] In 1987, 15 years after the film's release, a new ruling allowed the film to be released in Italy.[citation needed]
In Canada, the film was banned by the Nova Scotia Board of Censors, leading to the landmark 1978 Supreme Court of Canada split decision in Nova Scotia Board of Censors v. McNeil, which upheld the provinces' right to censor films

Release Date: February 7, 1973

Distrib: United Artists