Ultimo Tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris)
Terms:
Freudian analysis: things represent sex; in many sex oriented films sex represents something else.
Film driven my dead woman whose reasons for suicide are never made overt, but seem to drive Paul (Brando) in the film. His wife is a kind fo invisible woman in the background and such women appear regularly as shady figures in the background.
One of the more common visual images is of women behind a translucent rather than transparent glass. Although Jeanne (Maria Schell) first appears in a shallow focus shot of Paul she is out of focus. When they pass on the street, they are unknown to one another. Their paths cross again at the shop where Jeanne appears behind a glass phone booth wall. Later in the film the bathroom where Paul;s wife committed suicide (maybe – the police think there is too much blood) there is the same kind of wall behind which a woman is cleaning up the mess from the suicide.. Paul’s statement to his mother in law implies that he has some suspicion about the cause and part of that revolves around his relationship with her. The relationship had ruptured and she had taken a lover in the same building and one is forced to wonder why this happened and whether or not she had not become involved in some way with the prostitutes who are always renting rooms in the hotel Paul’s wife owned and where the two of them lived.
By hiding the women and keeping them out of focus in these shots, the audience is kept aware of the woman behind Paul’s actions
Film maker makes movies of “real life” which are really somewhat obviously staged by the presence of the cameras and microphones. At their first meeting in the film, Tom’s crew is there filming their “passionate” meeting while the sound of the film strengthens and weakens as the microphone used in making Tom’s film moves towards and away from the .subjects linking Tom’s film with Last Tango in Paris as a film. The question of reality of what is filmed is raised as is the parallel constructed between what goes on the Paul’s rented room (which excludes the reality of the outside world) with the film being made by Tom.
The film’s use of moving camera (right from the beginning when it booms down and around Paul) parallels the idea of dance which occurs both in the title and at the end of the film – a kind of dance between the two participants not unlike the ideas that appear in Shinoda’s film Ai no Corrida (The Bullfight of Love) usually translated as [In the] Realm of the Senses).
In addition to camera movement, there are levels in the film, The rented apartment is on the top floor, The opening shot reveals the train above Paul and later when he two leave the rented apartment the train again is above the ridge crossing the street and the street is below. The young Jeanne is on the lowest level, Paul on the second and the train headed to the station on the top. To some degree the levels show age difference and the problems of the film about dealing with age and maturity.
There are different spaces in the film, the most important of which is the apartment rented by Paul and we he has his meetings with Jeanne which are meant to be anonymous – “No names here” he says. The only thing that matters is what goes on in the room, what goes on outside is irrelevant. In the room is anonymous sex, sexual experimentation which grows more and more humiliating and debasing. Paul in a sense regresses into childishness while Jeanne starts to grow away from childhood into adult status.
Aging however is not pleasant but a kind of disease, and from the very start when the older women slips in her dentures to the man looking for sex with a prostitute because his wife skin has become reptilian, and his fleeing from the prostitute finally because she is old and ugly, the film regards aging as problematical. . Paul’s strong reaction to the man can be seen as his recognition outside the room that he is fact middle aged and aging/ the age difference between him and Jeanne is reminiscent of that between Humbolt and Lolita. Being in the room with a young girl seems to remove some of that feeling. His childish games (playing with the dead rat for example) also indicate his development into a kind of second childhood. His statements that what ends also begins applies not just to the relationship with Jeanne but presummaly to his return to a younger state as well as to setting up a new “marital” relation to replace the one he had with his wife.
The blocking out of social involvement in the apartment allows for a kind of sexual freedom, but the participants lose something in the process. When Jeanne finds the cat in the apartment she makes animal like noises at it. In the scene which follows with Paul she wants a name to call him and he says his name is a growl and proceeds to give himself a name which consists only of animal like noises, which Jeanne then does as her own name. The next shot show her husband to be making his film and recording animal noises again linking the film to the film within the film.
The film’s ending begins where the film started. Paul is under the train tracks and Jeanne approaches him.This time they recognize one another, but actually know little about one another because of the rule that everything that happens in the rented room remains anonymous.Paul, nor claiming love, wishes to reveal who he is and pours out information to Jeanne who is now going to marry her boyfriend, the film maker Tom
When the break up finally occurs, Jeanne tries to end it so she can marry Tom, but Paul pursues her and ultimately follows her to her parent’s apartment where Paul after trying on Jeanne’s father’s hat is shot by Jeanne with her father’s pistol. The idea that Jeanne has grown up and can replace her father with a husband seems clear.
1972