Posted on 12/01/2018 4:36:50 PM PST by Twotone
Bernardo Bertolucci made many films, but only once in a long career was his art perfectly in tune with the cultural moment. The early Seventies was the heyday of cinema porn. Not porn films, which is (or was) a specialized genre. But films about sex and with extensive nudity that played your local fleapit as if they were no different from Herbie Gets Rear-Ended or whatever Disney was making back then. The breakout title was the Swedish hit I Am Curious (Yellow), in the wake of which came more films for the curious - Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones - until it all more or less petered away in an Emmanuelle sequel too far: Emmanuelle, Emmanuelle 2, Emmanuelle In Paris, Emmanuelle In Bangkok, Emmanuelle In Shawinigan, etc. And suddenly cinematic sex, like so much real sex, was over almost as soon as it had begun, and the suburban porn movie was as obsolete a genre as silent comedy or singing-cowboy flicks. Now, instead of the good old days of community porn on Main Street, it's a participation sport on the Internet. A decade ago, Larry Flynt was reduced to applying to Washington for a federal bailout for the "adult entertainment industry": like the banks and auto-makers, it was supposed to be too big to fail, but then came the massive downturn, which is one thing you don't want to see in an "adult" film.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
I don’t like people who have no connection to show business spouting conspiracy theories like “Brando raped her” and Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie “had real sex” in Nicholas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now.” That was just stated last week with pompous certitude but self-satisfied stupidity by an ill-informed freeper.
No, Annie Hall. Co-star Tony Roberts introduced the movie but refused to take questions from the female hysterics who were determined to question him on the sexist attitudes of Annie Hall.
lol
You got goggles on.
Rochelle Rochelle was a foreign film about a young woman’s erotic journey from Milan to Minsk.
I believe they made a Broadway play based on it.
In a certain universe.
I was not quite a teenager. I’ve never seen it either.
I do remember the clip from the oscars and how it was presented as such a serious work. It was Brando chasing her up a set of stairs.
“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.” - Kael.
These liberal elite are perpetually clueless. And trendy lemmings.
One dies, another replaces him.
They are bane.
I tried to watch it about two months ago. After ten minutes, I was bored to death and quit watching. I may give it another go.
I love Mark Steyn.
Did someone say porn?
Once you’ve seen a man and a woman do the horizontal mambo, you’ve seen it all.
I saw it in NYC in a theatre reminiscent of that little theatre in Werewolf in London where all David (werewolf) was talking to Jack (his dead friend) and the porno movie is playing in the background.
I saw the marquee while out on a Saturday off and thought ‘Oh, I want to see Brando in an actual movie in a theatre’! and realized few min into it the theatre was mostly empty but for a few creepy looking guys and I was pretty uncomfortable. It was daytime still though, so I was not as afraid if it were dark. NYC in the 70s in the dark was pretty scary.
I remember 2 things about it:
1. Brando looked disappointingly old and fat. The poster for it was a joke.
2. It was a lousy, forgettable movie.
And another!
I was no stranger to “art films”-from the time I was about 10, anytime we traveled to the city to buy something that wasn’t available in our rural area, my mom would take me along to see the latest one wherever it was showing-she should probably not have been letting me see stuff like that-I remember an Italian one with Sophia Loren playing a prostitute/madam, stripping off her top onscreen, another one called “Bocaccio 70”-I think-with a blonde actress-lots of other art flicks. There was a lot of partial nudity and sex in all of them-and some were obviously made to be funny.
That said, I’d gone to the drive-in as a teen with cousins to see the latest scandalous flick-”Candy”, “Myra Breckenridge”, etc -but never ever with a date until I was in college and went with my fiance to see Last Tango. I was far from being a naive virginal girl, but I was so mortified during that butter scene that the only reason I didn’t head to the ladies’ room was because I didn’t want to look like an unsophisticated little ranch girl. My fiance laughed at me for hours... I watched Last Tango with my guy at his place last Summer-and I was damn near as mortified by that scene-he thought that was funny...
The plot was depressing-a recent widower obsessed with a much younger woman who was using him for a last fling before her imminent wedding, with all the tragic consequences. The more recent “Henry and June” is far more erotic, in my opinion-I even own the DVD...
“I do remember the clip from the oscars and how it was presented as such a serious work. It was Brando chasing her up a set of stairs”.
Oh, I dunno.
Brando was pretty fat then. Chasing a girl up a set of stairs really WAS serious work.
Brando dancing the tango at a club then dropping trousers and mooning the crowd as he and the girl were leaving was funny enough to be oscar worthy, too...
Forgettable is right. I saw it maybe 10 years after it was made in an art house theater. It had some scenes I suppose that might be considered memorable but I haven’t thought about this movie in decades until now with this Steyn piece. Some of the memory of it comes back from the article but again I probably won’t think about it ever again after this. When Brando died this movie wasn’t what I thought about.
I saw Last Tango earlier this year; the last time I saw it was in the ‘70s. So what still impressed me. I’ll tell you, it wasn’t the girl. I searched for Brando’s monologue with his dead wife. I skipped through the sex to the scene just afterward when Brando talks about what he remembers from growing up, his mother being arrested drunk and naked on a public street. Then I went to the final tango scenes where Brando sort of takes stock of what he has become. That is extraordinarily powerful method acting, maybe better than anything you’ll see in any film. You’re not supposed to like Brando’s role in Tango, but his talent is breathtaking. That’s what stayed with me after forty years.
Yes. Every now and then that pops into my mind...
but then I wake up, screaming ;)
13 and 7 were ABC, 11 and 4 were NBC, 2 and 9 were CBS and 5 was Local.
My mother, an archpuritan, was beside herself when she learned that my sister allowed her children to see Jaws. We couldn't understand why she was that upset. I mean meltdown upset. Then it dawned on us: she thought it was Deep Throat
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