Last Tango In Paris aka (Ultimo tango a Parigi - original title) (1972) Existential Sexploitation Noir goes legit

"Even if a husband lives two hundred fucking years, he'll never discover his wife's true nature. I may be able to understand the secrets of the universe, but... I'll never understand the truth about you. Never."

Directed masterfully by Bernardo Bertolucci. Written by Bernardo Bertolucci, Franco Arcalli, Agnès Varda with dialogue collaborator Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Bertolucci was known as a the director of The Conformist, 1900, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky, and a writer contributing to Once Upon a Time in the West.

Cinematography was by Vittorio Storaro (an award-winning cinematographer who won Oscars for Apocalypse Now, Reds, and The Last Emperor, and Music was by Argentine tenor sax jazz great Gato Barbieri.

Marlon Brando as Paul

Maria Schneider as Jeanne

The film stars Marlon Brando as Paul, an American expatriate and hotel owner, Maria Schneider as Jeanne, a young Parisian woman, Jean-Pierre Léaud as Thomas, a film director and Jeanne's fiancé, Maria Michi as Rosa's mother, and Massimo Girotti as Marcel, Rosa's former lover and Catherine Allégret as the maid Catherine. 

Jean-Pierre Léaud as Thomas

Catherine Allégret as the maid Catherine. 

Back in 1972 hardly anyone new what Films Noir were or cared. Or, if they did they did know mistakenly thought, they was a series of Black & White Crime genre only films made back in the 1940s-50s. Most questioned will even give you an ending year(s) of 1958 or 59. You an almost blame  that whole mishegoss on Raymond Borde and Etiene Chaumeton in A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941-1953. (Death of Film Noir) We know better now. Noir is any pan generic dark story told in a visually stylistic manner from any country world over. If it has enough of those Noir elements to tip Noir for you it's a Noir. 

Another Noir rule of thumb you can use is ask yourself if the dark and visually stylistic story would not have been passed by the Motion Picture Production Code and would have been condemned by the Legion Of Decency, if not, its probably a Film Noir.

The story

Paul, is rumbling forties-something an expat American. He has been a boxer, a sailor (who stayed for a while in Tahiti and learned French) who then made his way around the globe through Indochina the middle East and North Africa eventually landing in Paris. There, he eked out a living as nightclub bongo player until the gravy train stopped by one night in the form of Rosa. Rosa was independently "wealthy" in that she owned a dive residence hotel which also doubled as a hot sheet establishment for local streetwalkers renting her open rooms by the hour.  Rosa "married" Paul who helped out at the hotel partially in the function of a bouncer but she keeps Marcel, another dive tenant as her lover. 

Shit hits the fan when Rosa commits suicide slitting her wrists in a bathtub for no apparent reason. She leaves no note of explanation and as a result all the tongues of all the tenants start wagging gossip about Rosa. The suicide and the revaluation about Rosa's betrayal with Marcel sends Paul off the deep end.

The film picks up the story with Paul in a camels hair coat at the The Pont de Bir-Hakeim over the Seine. He is standing on the automobile tire while overhead, the second tier of the bridge carries the Line 6 of the Paris Métro. It connects the 15th and 16th arrondissement, passing through the Île aux Cygnes. Paul screams at the trains and the entire world they represent passing overhead.

Paul is not in his right mind, distraught in self-denial and mourning Rosa. He's on his way to see about renting a nearby apartment. His hotel now holds too many bad memories at the moment. Scoping out the same pad is twenty something Jeanne. 

Jeanne is a young woman pursued aggressively by an equally young Thomas, a TV film maker. We learn that Jeanne's father, an army officer, is dead, she may, if she is anything like the wild women I have met in my life, may have had definite daddy issues. 

Jeanne speaks about the vacancy to the concierge who reaches for the key to let her look around, but its gone. She hands Jean a duplicate mentioning something along the lines of the last enquirer must have forgot to drop it off.

In the apartment Jeanne begins to open shutters to let in more light to better see the apartment and is surprised to find Paul huddled in a corner. 

When she asks how he got in, Paul holds up the missing key. Paul moves back through a doorway into another dark room seeming to shy away from the light. There now develops a weird nihilistic sexual attraction a kinky "amour fou" an interior journey of self-discovery for both Jeanne and Paul. They are each virtual strangers to each other. Paul insists on no names. He insists that the whole outside world stays out there beyond the closed shutters while in here there is only their sex fantasies. 

This intense and abusive relationship continues a few days, its a last fling before they both have to get back to the real world, Paul to run the hotel, Jean to get married to Thomas. It ends when Jeanne shows up at the apartment and Paul's meager furnishings have disappeared.

It all goes Noirsville when Paul, after his wife's funeral decides to try to re-hook up with Jeanne.

Noirsville

This is a Brando acting tour de force, Maria Schneider, as Bertolucci ingeniously calculated, basically plays her age. That coupled with the extraordinary visually Noir cinematography of the master Vittorio Storaro who uses a classic neo noir palette of carnal reds, intestinal greens, puke yellows, bead body blues and dry bone whites.  the and the audios of Gato Barbieri all under the direction of Bernardo Bertolucci. 8/10