A Paris Apartment and a Story of Broken People
Last Tango in Paris, a film directed by Bertolucci Bernardo, utterly shocked the world back in 1972. This, for the film’s unique twist on both death and the sexual acts which lie at the center of it. The film features Paul, a widower and American old, and Jeanne, a Parisienne young, in a unique performance played by Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider respectively. Their first encounter, which happens by chance, escalates and transforms from a mere, physical ‘rental’ connection housed in a purchased apartment, to a deeper connection centered around emotions of loss and struggle, as well as control, both self and over the other.
The film story is, on the face of it, rather bare. It involved two individuals who intentionally setup a rendezvous so that they can, divorced from the baton of names, histories and responsibilities, interact at a merely physical level. However, this arrangement is a complex war zone filled with trauma Paul is in. loss of ‘wife,’ the complex accompanying emotions of ‘anger’ and ‘sadness’ and ‘destruction’ looming. On the other side, Jeanne finds herself in a complex suburb consisting of ‘youth’ and ‘marriage’ which acts as the ‘thorn’ to the illustration of ‘bloom’ on her side. With the combination of both, the entire relationship acts as an ‘attraction’ with a ‘repulsion’ which eventually leads to the inferno and sad ending that is now infamous.
And as the film is also framed, as the self-sustained, it is honored with the work of people who have spent long hours, days and even years creating theories around it, selflessly contributing to it, as critics and fans alike have insisted for years.
The Ending That Shattered Viewers
The final act remains one of the most debated in cinema history. Paul, breaking the rules of their anonymity, confesses his past to Jeanne and pleads for something more. Instead of surrendering to love, Jeanne shoots him on the balcony, watching as he staggers and dies.
To some, this was Jeanne’s ultimate liberation—an act of reclaiming control from an older man who tried to define her existence. Others saw it as tragic inevitability: Paul could never escape his despair, and Jeanne’s bullet was simply the physical end to an already doomed soul.
Even before release, whispers circulated that Bertolucci had filmed multiple endings. Some claimed Paul was originally supposed to leave Jeanne voluntarily, disappearing into the Paris streets. Others speculated that Jeanne would join Paul in death, echoing Romeo and Juliet. While Bertolucci denied having alternate versions, the rumors only fueled the film’s mystique.
The Fan Theories That Refused to Die
Over the years, Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris has bred a cottage industry of fan theories. One of the most popular posited that Jeanne never existed. Rather, that she was a figment of Paul’s heavily disturbed mind, a projection of the grief he was in the process of unraveling. Supporters point to her almost complete isolation in the film, save for Paul and her fiancé, as an indication that she was perhaps meant to be a metaphor.
‘Jeanne’ is arguably the most persistent character in the film. In this case, the supposition is that the film is a form of political allegory. America is Paul in the film. Disillusioned and broken from the Vietnam War, along with the civil unrest, while steaming, bruised horns. Young, embyonic and defiant Europe is Jeanne and she is resistant to being struck through the withering of the aging empire. The violent ending is Europe’s repulsion against the dominance of America, the latter being signified through a dreadful.
Critique from the likes of France and Italy, scattered with similar theories was common during the highlighted period. Although Bertolucci himself dismissed this almost elsewhere, he has been quoted as saying. “I was filming emotions, not geopolitics. The similarities above, however, afforded me plenty of academic liberties’.”
How the Actors Reacted to the Speculations
Marlon Brando, as all know, was difficult to understand, but that was only one puzzling aspect of his character. In an interview, he is quoted as saying that Paul was, “A man in pain”, which suggests that Brando was Paul’s most ardent supporter. This was, however, at odds with his later statements in which he seemingly contradicted himself. “Paul was dead before the movie began”, he said to one reporter in 1973, which seemed to disregard the character’s potential.
Schneider was different and possessed an affliction that was the result of her trauma filled experience on the movie. “I thought the movie was an exercise in trauma”, was how she responded to missing the meaning of the movie and to the deviation she sorely wished was available. She, later on, described the filming if the ‘butter scene’ as, in her opinion to be mostly unscripted, and her experience highlighted the discomfort and pain that she felt. For her, and many others, the movie was more than a piece of art, it was also an ethical quandary.
Marlon Brando’s character in the film was more than one side of a sliding door and recollections of the impact Jeanne had on the overall story. Bertolucci, at certain points, half-heartedly embraced the suspicion of his audience and appreciated that people would call the end a moral type of story. In an interview, he once said “Cinema is alive when people leave with doubts”, which blurred his take on the film and confirmed the suggestive notion of ambiguity as technique.
The Production Secrets Hidden in Plain Sight
Aside from the theories and the reactions, the production of Last Tango in Paris was also surrounded with details that augmented its mythology. Brando made it known that he did not want to memorize most of the lines and did not consider most of the dialogue he was improvising and fusing with his own pain and Paul’s as fusions. The monologues he did of his deceased wife, in as much as a more elaborate version might be interpreted, contained much of his actual family history and relatives were in fact distressed after watching it.
At the boundless age of 19, Schneider was for the very first time in the process of filming. The crew members disclosed much later that Bertolucci’s intention was to not to give certain pieces of information to the actress so that she would give ‘authentic’ responses – a technique that would now be mostly considered abusive.
The furnishing of the actual flat which was a Parisian one, was also said to take up a role as a ‘character’ in the movie. The furnishings of the movie were said to ‘ decay’ more and more as the movie ‘evolved’, with the walls being more and more stained and less and less furniture being visible. Bertolucci said it was purposeful ‘narrative to the story’ which was intended to reflect the devastating decay of the agreement Paul and Jeanne had.
The Audience That Couldn’t Look Away
At its premiere, the picture attracted prurient interest, and in some cases, outright outrage, and in Italy, obscenity; in America, it was termed X-rated. Yet with all the censorship, the picture was a magnificent box office success, earning many, and millions, Oscar nominations and winning several.
As most would’ve imagined, that fame attracted some fan theories. In lightly bulb lit, and deeply and gray cigarette fumigated, and Paul’s deaths, approached from many angles. They were part of a philosophy themed in the era, and many were of that era. They all, practically without exception, challenged the social political, authoritative norms of the day.
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