What is the film Last Tango in Paris about?

Answer 1

To me this movie, which I consider Brando's finest performances represents the human need to bond and relate with others without prejudice that comes from knowing too much about each other. It explores this anonimity that can be beautiful and bring about a true intimacy.

Last Tango in Paris (Italian: Ultimo tango a Parigi, French: Le Dernier Tango à Paris) is a 1972 film which tells the story of an American widower who is drawn into a sexual relationship with a soon-to-be-married Parisian woman. It stars Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, and Jean-Pierre Léaud.

The movie was written by Bernardo Bertolucci, Franco Arcalli, and Agnès Varda (additional dialogue), based on a book by the same title, written by Robert Alley. It was directed by Bertolucci and cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. Anges Varda also based the last scenes on the death of Jim Morrison in Paris.

The film caused a deep scandal in Italy for a sodomy scene; the film was sequestered by censorship and officially all the copies were destroyed. An Italian court revoked Bertolucci's civil rights for five years plus it gave him a four-month suspended prison sentence. Many years after, when the general modesty had changed and the censorship commission had been abolished, the film reappeared (because Bertolucci had kept a clandestine copy) and was projected in a slightly censored version.

It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Marlon Brando) and Best Director.

"One of Brando's great acting performances."
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
http://www.sover.net/~ozus/lasttangoinparis.htm

Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris" is one of the great emotional experiences of our time. It's a movie that exists so resolutely on the level of emotion, indeed, that possibly only Marlon Brando, of all living actors, could have played its lead. Who else can act so brutally and imply such vulnerability and need?

For the movie is about need; about the terrible hunger that its hero, Paul, feels for the touch of another human heart. He is a man whose whole existence has been reduced to a cry for helpÑand who has been so damaged by life that he can only express that cry in acts of crude sexuality.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19721014/REVIEWS/301010318/1023

Answer 2

Last Tango In Paris Plot

Answer 3

From imdb.com:

Plot synopsis:

A young Parisian woman begins a sordid affair with a middled-aged American businessman whom lays out ground rules that their clandestine relationship will be based only on sex.

Starring Marlon Brando, this was the first film to ever be awarded an 'X' rating (now known as NC-17).

Answer 4

I never sa it, nor do I have any desire to see it, and I only know about it because I saw the biography on Marlon Brando. I think it is about some guy that has an affair with a much yonger woman, and has explicit sex scenes in it. I got an X rating

Answer 5

Butter!