Leo Braudy
BLUE TANGO
Let's see if we can come without touching.
-
JEANNE
(Maria Schneider) to
PAUL
(Marlon Brando)
in
Last Tango in Paris
Perhaps no one except Dorian Gray was ever ruined by a
book, and few good books are ruined by either good or bad reviews.
But good movies are periodically ruined by overstated, trumpeting
reviews that force any member of the audience to assume an aes–
thetic or cultural stance toward the film before he even sees it.
We all have our favorite personal examples of the way the mere
existence of expectation has warped or impeded the direct experience
of a film. The case of Bernardo Bertolucci's
Last Tango in Paris
fur–
nishes merely the clearest and most fascinating example yet of this
aesthetically sterilizing process, both because the film itself is so worthy
and because the effort to establish its value has absorbed so much
time, money, and the stored capital of critical reputation.
Last Tango's
first steps into.the world were modest. When it ap–
peared essentially unheralded on the last day of the New York Film
Festival in October, it greatly moved much of its audience, who,
without the need to call it a masterpiece or a classic, tried to convey
its special qualities to their friends. But their reactions could not be
quickly tested.
Last Tango
was not generally released in the United
States until February 1973, and in the months between it has been
treated or fallen victim to a critical and commercial advertising cam–
paign, compounded of both cynicism and good will, that has in–
sured for a long time to come that no one except a hermit could
possibly muster an unpremeditated or unconditioned response to it.
