Last Tango in Paris

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Last Tango in Paris (1972). While looking for an apartment, Jeanne, a beautiful young Parisian, encounters Paul, a mysterious American expatriate mourning his wife's recent suicide. Instantly drawn to each other, they have a stormy, passionate affair, in which they do not reveal their names to each other. Their relationship deeply affects their lives, as Paul struggles with his wife's death and Jeanne prepares to marry her fiancé, Tom, a film director making a cinema-verite documentary about her. Crazed with grief after his wife commits suicide, Paul, an American expatriate, roams the streets of Paris until, while apartment hunting, he faces Jeanne, an unknown girl across an empty room. Brutally, without a word, he rapes the soon-complaint stranger. It should have been hit-and-run sex, but Paul stays at the scene of the erotic accident. While arranging his wife's funeral, Paul leases the apartment where his to meet the puzzled girl for a series of frenzied afternoons. "No names here," he roughly tells her, setting up the rules of the game. They are to shut out the world outside, forfeit their pasts and their identities. Paul degrades Jeanne in every possible way, levelling all her inhibitions into sheer brutality. Paul is soon dissatisfied with mere possession of her body; he must also have her mind. When she rejects his mad love to enter a comfortable marriage with her dull fiancé, Paul finally confesses: "I love you, you dummy." Written by

Director

Bernardo Bertolucci

Writers

Bernardo Bertolucci (story)

Bernardo Bertolucci (screenplay)

Cast

Marlon Brando-... -Paul

Maria Schneider-... -Jeanne

Maria Michi-... -Rosa's Mother

Giovanna Galletti-... -Prostitute

Gitt Magrini-... -Jeanne's Mother

Catherine Allégret-... -Catherine

Luce Marquand-... -Olympia

Marie-Hélène Breillat-... -Monique

Catherine Breillat-... -Mouchette

Dan Diament-... -TV Sound Engineer

Catherine Sola-... -TV Script Girl

Mauro Marchetti-... -TV Cameraman

Jean-Pierre Léaud-... -Tom

Massimo Girotti-... -Marcel

Peter Schommer-... -TV Assistant Cameraman

Trivia

• The original screening version of the film was over four hours long.