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LEO BRAUDY
Channel 13- the New York educational television station -believe
it is performing a public service by running an interview with Kael
about the film followed by the gloomy choric disclaimers of Andrew
Sarris, John Simon, and Richard Schickel? Oscar Wilde once wrote
that controversy about a work of art indicated that it was new, com–
plex, and vital. But most of the private arguments about
Last Tango
I have watched or participated in have been fairly desultory, despite
Kael's belief that people will
be
arguing about it "for as long as there
are movies." It's easier to argue about the critics than about the
movie, easier to trade their prejudices than hazard a feeling or per–
ception of one's own.
Last Tango
has become no longer Bertolucci's
film but the creation of movie reviewers and cultural journalists who
are constantly trying to convey through their overblown outrage about
each other's opinions that they are involved in a serious aesthetic
venture, requiring incredible risks and stamina, and occasionally in–
telligence and taste. They manufacture Cultural Events, establish
Great Directors and Classic Films, to convince themselves of the
worth of what they are doing and vary for us the week-to-week bore–
dom of suffering again the same sensibility at the same stand.
Kael has said that she exaggerated purposefully about
Last
Tango
because she believes part of her critical role is to overpraise
works she thinks are merely good or very good so that the films
will
be distributed in something like their original versions and audiences
will be moved to go see them. She has done similar service for
Bonnie
and Clyde
and on a smaller scale for
Pretty Poison
-rescue opera–
tions on films she thought would have been lost without her. (An–
drew Sarris helped revive Ophuls's
Lola Montes
with the same kind
of benevolently intentioned hyperbole.) But why does a clearly worth–
while act of salvage, or a focus on neglected merit, have to be ex–
pressed in critical judgments that actually prevent us from under–
standing the film? Kael's exaggeration makes her like a godmother
who smothers the baby by her caresses. What is the real difference
between overpraising
Last Tango
to "save" it and mounting a mere–
tricious advertising campaign that packs in audiences looking for a
glimpse of Marlon Branda's penis? Neither allows the audience to en–
counter the film in a way best suited for full understanding. They
both merely serve to get you into the theater to see it - "it" here
being x-thousand feet of film stock- not a complex work of art, but,
