Tango'
depicts
joyless
lovers
Incredible.
The Last Tango in Paris is a movie of gold, decorated
with broken mirrors and distorted visions, bathed in
shadows and hidden pasts. It is a flowing camera-running,
tilting and turning around walls, along streets and irno
faces, searching out the despair of two people alone
together. It is a' movie of masterful editing spun like a web
of solitude around joyless If ers.
The film is a virtual battering-ram of sexual themes It b
often hard to look at. It is powerful, brutal, masochistic,
shocking and it is an absolutely beautiful film.
Last Tango is the story of Paul (Marlon Hiando), a
destitute American in Paris whose wife ha; committed
suicide. He has a chance meeting with the amoral,
baby-faced Jeanne (Maria Schneider), and the two begin a
three-day, nameless affair. Their love-making is joyless and
violent. He is the brutal embodiment of madiNmo and she
is taken completely with him in her search loi s,:i nation.
The psychological tension created by Brando and
director Bernardo Bertolucci is amazing, olt.n homing in
its complexity. The entire movie is a continuing rise and tail
of intensities.
Brando is quietly reflective one moment awl shouting
incredible obscenities the next. Be-rtoitcci's camera oft n
wanders from beautiful images directly to tin: degradation
of Paul and Jeanne's sexual battleground.
The depth and brilliance of Brando's per ha mane." go-,
beyond acting. One begins to wonder how mneh of P.ml r.
Brando. Schneider, although not as intensely presented as
Concert features blues te
The team of Buddy Guy
and Junior Wells is a vanguard
in the select circle of Chicago
blues men. They will perform
in the Union ballroom
Saturday at 8 p.m. The
concertdance is sponsored by
the Union Programs Council
Concert Committee.
When George "Buddy" Guy
left his native Louisiana for
Chicago, he became a member
of the "killer guitar" contests
in the local clubs. Such greats
as Freddie King, Otis Rush and
the late Magic Sam were his
competition.
"Everybody was so good
that you had to be doing
something different just to be
noticed. It didn't do you any
good just to get faster because
there was always somebody
just a little bit faster than you
could be," said Guy of those
early Chicago days.
The result was a
spontaneous display of
theatrics. Along with a musical
virtuosity rarely equalled, Guy
made playing the blues a
physical as well as musical act.
He has played guitar with
everying from a mike stand to
his teeth and in every
conceivable position. "Years
later when I started to travel
around to different cities,
people would come up to me
and say, 'You stole that from
Jimmy Page' or 'You copped
that from Alvin Lee.' Man, I
never even heard of those
people until after I had been
doing all of those things on my
own for years in the Chicago
clubs," Guy said.
Guy, however, is capable of
playing lyrically as well. Wells,
who will not make a record
472-
ombudman
KJ
will be interviewing
interested individuals for
senatorial positions Sept.
11-14.
3 positions from Pro-Grad
1 position from Engineering
Call 472-2581 or stop by
the ASUN office, Km. 334,
Union.
unless Guy is playing lead, says
of him, "He makes the blues
moan and say anything he
wants."
Wells is a virtuoso in his
own right; he learned to play
the mouth hai p . le.itiy ' en
ago from the Iwjsr.-.My !."
Bov Williamson. ! i w.-M
f
Chicago from IV'. .;;'
he was 14 and imn; m,;
bet
Conceit, Pege o
Urando, also seems right for her role. She is foxy and coarse
enough to take what Brando dishes out, yet in the end she
is too weak not to become saturated with the despair and
chaos of their relationship.
Last Tango has a myriad of brilliantly constructed
scenes. Among the best include Brando's groping search for
a lost understanding beside his dead wife's coffin, the poem
of random words he gives us as he tells of a despairing
childhood, his wife's former lover sitting beside him in an
identical bathrobe as they share feeling now lost to both of
them and the last tango as Jeanne masturbates Paul in the
shadows at the back of a dance hall cafe.
To figure out Last Tango could be a movie analyst's
dream or his nightmare. Bertolucci has said that his
psychiatrist's name should have been listed among the
credits.
Does Paul represent Bertolucci's vision of a degrading
America, trapped in the indignity of humiliations? Is the
theme basically sexual, showing the futility in a brutal,
sellish love affair? Or when Paul tears down his silent,
no-names barricade and tries to enter Jeanne's world of
bourgeois love that ultimately destroys him, does
Bertolucci have political implications in mind?
The sensationalized publicity that preceded Last Tango
becomes trite after viewing it. Bertolucci's script and the
acting performances are the guts of the movie. And when
i ombined with its brilliant technical framework, they form
one of our greatest examples of what can be achieved in
cinema.
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page
friduy, September 7, 1973
