When it comes to "The Last Tango in Paris", what do you think of?
That "butter rape scene", isn't it?
The public's "interest" in this scene originated from an interview by the heroine Maria Schneider in the "Daily Mail" in 2007.
After that, "the 48-year-old male protagonist and the director planned to sodomize the 19-year-old female protagonist", "The rape scene turned out to be a real act"... titles like this began to be circulated by various media until today.
"Go, get the butter!" ("Go, get the butter.") has also become a classic sentence in movie history.
What is the truth?
The "Butter Play" was indeed not included in the script and was temporarily added that day. Maria was told about this detail before the shooting started. She didn't bring a lawyer or an agent at the time, so she did it anyway. According to director Bertolucci in a 2013 interview (with a link at the end of the article), he did this because he wanted to get a woman's true reaction to this matter, not an actor-like performance.
The plot in the film is rape.
The situation at the shooting scene: Marlon Brando did use butter as a lubricant, but there was no real rape.
Watching the British drama "Secret No. 9" in the previous paragraph, many people said that one of the episodes alluded to "The Last Tango in Paris".
The first episode of the third season:
The hostess was tied to the bed, preparing to perform the last scene in the script. Before playing the board, she flirted with the crew easily. Unexpectedly, after the filming, the director shouted to continue filming the next scene. She wondered, where is the next one? At this time, the crew put a plastic sheet under her (not in the script), and the heroine began to show real non-actor-like panic. She was later killed, and the entire process was recorded by the camera and became part of the film.
It is difficult to say that the inspiration for this plot came from "The Last Tango in Paris", because similar plots have also appeared in the movie "Silent Verification" and the novel "Dance of the Slaughterhouse".
However, to emphasize again, in "The Last Tango in Paris", Marlon Brando did not really rape the actress.
Nevertheless, the heroine Maria was stimulated.
In her later years, she said that her happiness now is very simple: "I like to meet friends, go to the market to buy vegetables, and go home to cook, but I don't use butter to cook anymore," she said with a smile, "only olive oil." ("I like to see friends and go to the market and cook. But I never use butter to cook any more," she laughs. "Only olive oil.")
Keywords such as affair, violence, indecency, etc. together, will generate click-through rates.
"The Last Tango in Paris", the first temptation to attract the audience of the once banned film is the "improper relationship" between the hero and the heroine.
I have watched online video programs that talk about movies quickly, and it took about 4 minutes to go through the "love" story of the hero and heroine, even if I finished the film.
But is it just that?
The 45-year-old male protagonist played by Marlon Brando has an affair with his wife who has been married for many years and has just committed suicide. As the landlord of the apartment building, he chose to hide in an apartment for rent in the building.
The 19-year-old girl played by Maria Schneider originally wanted to rent a house. After entering the room to find Malone, she made love to him who did not know each other.
The girl kept asking for it, and she asked the mysterious middle-aged man to tell her name, identity, and past. She wants to love.
And men just want to hide, don't need a name, don't need a hometown, or even live.
At the beginning of the film, the director assigned two paintings by the British painter Francis Bacon to the cast and crew.
Bacon's paintings often use abstract portraits to show the pain and loneliness of the male soul. The style of this painter's work also established the tone of the whole film: deformity, morbidity, and reality.
Bacon's painting of portraits as distorted images that look human-like and inhuman is obviously surreal. Why does he say his paintings are real?
Because these paintings distort only the external appearance of things, but what they distorted is the true appearance of things.
Bacon always put the main body of the picture in a confined space. And this confined space is a natural space as well as a psychological space. Under the construction of such a space, the picture becomes closed, depressed, and has a suffocating sense of loneliness. As a emptiness without time and space, the room itself has been transformed into a chaotic life form, completely releasing the dark side of the human spirit.
Closed rooms, unrecognizable furniture, dirty textures and colors, all illuminated by a coverless light bulb, this is a good place for violent action; here, sex becomes a dog-like scuffle, All feelings are equally contained in the frenzy and its remnants-loneliness.
——You think this is a film critic writing "The Last Tango in Paris", but in fact this is a passage from an art paper about Bacon.
How appropriate!
A friend of mine said outrageously in the circle of friends, "How can you listen to folk songs?!"
In people's imagination, the music belonging to S should be rock, heavy metal, and subwoofer electronics.
However, the abuser in sex is often mild and melancholic in daily life. Otherwise, how could there be a "release" argument.
One day the man suddenly wanted to try a new trick. He assumed the posture of a surrender, but continued to humiliate the heroine, as if it would make him adjust to his proper pace, like tango.
Correspondingly, being a passive party may also be violent.
The two had sex abstractly in this confined room.
In the interaction between the man and the girl, he can't see his love for her, but only anxiousness and liberation of depression. He treats girls as meat (meat), not flesh (flesh).
This sex room did not link the two people together. They seemed to be imprisoned in their own plots, always maintaining an alienated relationship.
The man is still heavy, sad, and lonely.
And the girl, there is still a lot of future.
She has a love partner-a young filmmaker, passionate and full of action, with a constant flow of inspiration in her head.
The enthusiasm of the boyfriend for the girl is like the goddess of inspiration for the artist. My boyfriend said I want to shoot you every day, I want to marry you!
When buying a wedding dress, the girl still couldn't let go of the lonely middle-aged man, and ran back to the house in the wedding dress.
And the man disappointed her again. She decisively left.
The man picked up all the pieces and wanted to find her back. In his heart (or more accurately, in his head), the girl is his cloak. He thinks that as long as he starts a new life with her, there will be a wind of possibility.
He said, "Let's leave the apartment, go outside, and have others."
The girl asked suspiciously, "Other?"
The man takes the girl to the club he frequents, where a tango dance competition is being held.
He walked across the dance floor and muttered to himself.
He from Bourgeois told her in Bohemia, my name is Paul, 45 years old, I am the landlord of an apartment building, my wife committed suicide, and there is a problem with my prostate.
In the club, the originally fragile marginal person has transformed into a relaxed and sophisticated social person. The man moves along with the tango dance, clapping his palms to tell the waiter to serve the wine, leaning forward with cigarettes between his fingers, acting like girls, like the middle-aged men we are used to in the nightlife.
A friend of mine mentioned in the article that Dr. Sandra LaMorgese 's research on BDSM also belongs to meditation .
Meditation is a replenishing medicine for the body and mind. It concentrates the mind, mind, and spirit completely on the original beginning, bids farewell to negative emotions, regains control of life, and finally transcends material desires. According to this definition, anything that focuses on the mind and relaxes one's mind can be meditation.
(Subculture public account "Prosac")
This reminds me of the fact that the male and female protagonists in "Last Tango in Paris" also created their own "subspace" during the transition between the two sexual energy.
They used to be confused and nothing.
And now, the girl has a new life goal and is about to move in a certain direction. She completed the three stages of "human nature (she before meeting the hero) ➜ human alienation (she in the room) ➜ human liberation (she who walked out of the room)".
Looking at the middle-aged people around, she was bored, she just thought they were...pathetic.
In the dialogue between the hero and heroine, director Bertolucci cuts into the rotation of the tango dancers, echoing the psychological game between the two.
The girl finally knows who the man is: "Mr. Hotel", nature lover...
None of these aroused her interest.
She buried her head on the table, "It's all over."
The man said, what are you talking about, you little bitch, if you say this is the end, it is another beginning. Holding a woman and saying "no" is a posture of "requiring."
The girl gave the man the last masturbation under the table, got up and left.
Director Bertolucci was 32 years old when he made this film, and he was in a state of extremely decadent thinking. This film is an attempt for him to explore himself.
During the filming, Bertolucci tried to explain the role to Malone. He said that the role of the male protagonist in the film was his "adult time", and Maria was his former "dream lover". Malone later said that he didn't understand what Bertolucci was talking about.
In fact, to put it simply, the young filmmaker and the middle-aged male lead in the film are both psychological slices of the director himself. The heroine represents a glimmer of hope in disillusionment.
Originally, the film was shot with Ma Long's full frontal nude scenes. It is said that because the director's sense of self-substitution was so strong that he felt ashamed of being naked when looking at Ma Long's nakedness, and ultimately did not use those shots.
The desperate male protagonist has a more desperate ending.
The middle-aged man's desire to get affirmation from the girl and regain value was never realized.
After the director explored the inequality between the male lead and the girl, the spiritual estrangement from his ex-wife, the unforgettable past with his mother, and the homosexual ambiguity with his love rival, he finally returned to the "comfort zone" of his mother.
In the 1960s, France experienced the Algiers War and the "May Storm" student movement. The French began to search for the meaning of self-existence in the nihilistic mood after the war.
People began to reflect on why they were reduced to parts of machines in modern capitalist society; why they were controlled by the “false demand” created by the cultural industry and used for entertainment and consumption in accordance with advertisements.
Ironically, the working relationship between the two actors and the director is like a response to the characteristics of the French era at the time. The actor has hatred because of the director's "fascist" style of directing.
Because she was so angry, the heroine Maria never spoke or met with Bertolucci after the filming.
The protagonist Malone also criticized the director's autocracy in interviews until many years later Bertolucci took the initiative to come to his home to seek peace.
Malone felt that Bertolucci had betrayed him because he had stolen a lot of real emotions from Malone. On the other hand, Ma Long’s perception of his acting profession has always been acting, not exposing himself. Exposing his heart made him feel unsafe.
Both the male and female protagonists feel that they have been raped by the director.
When Maria was 15 years old, because of an argument with her mother, she ran away from home and went to Paris. Although her father is also in Paris, he doesn't want to care about this daughter. Brigitte Bardot (yes, the famous Brigitte Bardot!) rescued her, provided her with a place to live, and introduced her agency to her.
Maria is bisexual. In her early interviews, she said that she had slept with 55 men and 70 women. In addition, she smoked marijuana, cocaine and heroin and killed herself.
In 1980, she met a same-sex partner who later had a stable relationship, and it was this partner who encouraged her to give up drugs.
Maria was unmarried all her life and had no children.
In her later years, she founded an organization called "The Wheel Turns" to help older actors who had fewer job opportunities. She said that actresses over 50 are in a difficult situation; when a woman gets older, she finally has some good stories to tell. Ironically, no one wants to listen to her.
I always feel that Maria's resentment towards Bertolucci is a bit childish.
For example, she said that Bertolucci is a sweaty fat man; Bertolucci and Malone made a fortune from this film, but she only took 2500 pounds; Bertolucci is a communist (context Chinese is derogatory); Bertolucci is a rogue pimp. She also said that Bertolucci has been praised, he no longer has any influential works after "The Last Tango in Paris", she even thinks "The Last Tango in Paris" is a bad film.
...... Probably it was dazzled by hatred.
Only talking about influential works, afterwards, Bertolucci also took at least the famous "Last Emperor", "Stolen Fragrance" and "Dreamer".
There may be problems with Bertolucci's working methods, but his artistic achievements should never be underestimated. The most commendable thing is that he has the courage to analyze himself and face his heart honestly.
The deep ones have been mentioned above, and now we talk about the shallow ones, about sexual fantasies.
The story of "The Last Tango in Paris" originated from a strange and beautiful woman Bertolucci saw on the street. He wanted to have sex with her crazy without knowing anything else.
"Stolen Fragrance" is derived from his experience traveling with a group of British people in a city in southern France. There was a girl who was eighteen or nineteen years old, and men who were nearly forty years old liked her very much. The movie is about their love and imagination for this girl.
It is best for a director to be a good hunter in various fields, because in this way he can better use other art forms to enrich his own works; like Bertolucci, he can express his artistic pursuits freely with first-class audio-visual technology.
In order to set off the character's psychology, the audio and video in the film are mostly elaborately designed.
The main melody in the original sound has various variations. For example, the addition of drums highlights the anger and violence of the male lead, the discordant saxophone implies emotional instability and marginality, and the sampling like a gorilla yells metaphors two things. The wild animal of human erotic relationship...
On the contrary, in the soothing passages, the main melody will become sweet and melodious, and even turn into a waltz.
It is said that the Argentine tango composer Estor Piazzola was originally set to compose the film, and the director Bertolucci decided to switch to the jazz musician Gato Barbieri. He believes that Gaut's saxophone performance will bring a richer and more intense feeling to the film.
The photography in the film is also very distinctive.
The movement of the lens seems to be musical,
In terms of composition, the director has repeatedly used the method of oppressing the characters to one side or even one corner of the screen. This kind of composition highlights the weightlessness of the character in the social environment and expresses the character's mood.
In the passage of Ma Long's long mumbling monologue, the change of light and shade makes Ma Long's improvisational performance under the fixed camera full of sad poetry.
In character scheduling, Bertolucci has many fresh attempts. For example, after the heroine and heroine had sex for the first time, the scene was originally a panoramic scene. Through a few rolls of the heroine, the character approached the camera, which became a scene that strengthened the audience's sense of participation.
The protagonist goes to chat with his wife's derailed partner, which is a rare humorous part of the film, black humor.
They wear the same bathrobes, drink the same whiskey, and have the same room decor. The two men analyzed the woman's psychology like detectives. Reminds me of what Haruki Murakami said in "Assassination of the Knight Captain": A husband doesn't understand the wife who lives together, just like you see the moon in the sky that you don't know about her every day.
After talking about the woman, the two men talked about the appearance of the dead, the maintenance of the hair, and the exercise of the abdominal muscles...
There are pictures and posters on the wall of this man's room.
I recognized some of it, and thus decided that this wall was the idea of director Bertolucci's inspiration wall.
Beauvoir, Camus, Sartre-the three giants of existential philosophy (or literature).
in addition,
The poster above Beauvoir’s photo is the work of French female artist Sonia Delaunay.
The artist uses abstract bright geometric patterns as the main creative elements.
I think this may be the source of the image maze built by the director, the colorful blocks created by the filters formed by mirrors and glass, and the lost selves.
The poster below Beauvoir’s photo is about British sculptor Henry Moore.
His sculptures are famous for expressing abstract human bodies, and the most well-known work is "Mother and Son".
This man also has a wall with jazz musicians on it.
I can't recognize these, please leave a message to let me know.
(Note: Someone has commented on the official account. It said that there may be Louis Armstrong and EllaFitzgerald)
There are several versions of this film. My article is based on the 129-minute one.
Because of the huge controversy in the film, only part of the film was shown at the Venice Film Festival in the home country of director Bertolucci. The film was also prosecuted under the Italian law of obscene language and conduct. Subsequently, the film premiered at the New York Film Festival, and tickets were fired up to $150! Because the film is banned in some countries, people even smuggled from the beach border to neighboring countries to watch it.
...
I wanted to say how happy we are now!
What happened in the past two days, this sentence suddenly became out of date.
Look and cherish.
Reference materials:
1. Interview with director Bertolucci (video, YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22pQlooA9OQ
2. Interview with heroine Maria (text): MailOnline: I felt raped by Brando; by LINA DAS
3. Zhao Lihong: Women in French Erotic Movies
4. Dou Qi: From a one-dimensional person to a fully-developed person——Study on Marcuse’s human thoughts
5. Ren Feng: A Preliminary Study of the Audiovisual Thinking of Film Master Bertolucci——Analysis of the audiovisual language of the wonderful opening paragraph of the film "Last Tango in Paris" as an example
6. Han Jiazheng and Liu Yan: "The Last Tango in Paris"-an abnormal expression of the fringe of modernism
7. Zhang Tao, Amber: Analysis of Modernity Features in Francis Bacon’s Paintings
8. Chen Lu: Metaphor of Space-Interpretation of the Space Language of Francis Bacon's Paintings
9. Li Ke: Analysis of the "distortion" in Bacon's Triptych
If you think the article is helpful to you, please click "useful".
Original by Teacher Huang
Public account: Teacher Huang Cinema (huangfilm)
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