The film premiered as the closing film at the
New York Film Festival on 14 October 1972, with high demand and enormous public controversy. The film did not have any press screenings due to concerns that the film was being shown against Italian law after the Italian censors had not passed the film. The lack of screenings increased demand for the film with some offering $100 to buy a ticket. The film opened in late 1972 in France, where filmgoers stood in two-hour queues for the first month of its run at the seven cinemas where it was screened. To circumvent Spanish state censorship, thousands of Spaniards travelled hundreds of kilometers to reach French cinemas in
Biarritz and
Perpignan where
Tango was playing. Following that, it was released in the United States, United Kingdom, and other venues. The film generated considerable controversy because of its subject and graphic portrayal of sex. Schneider provided frank interviews in the wake of
Tangos controversy, claiming she had slept with 50 men and 20 women, that she was "
bisexual completely", and that she had used
heroin,
cocaine, and
marijuana. She also said of Bertolucci, "He's quite clever and more free and very young. Everybody was digging what he was doing, and we were all very close." During the publicity for the film's release, Bertolucci said Schneider developed an "Oedipus complex|Oedipal [sic] fixation with Brando". In Italy, the film was released on 15 December 1972, grossing an unprecedented $100,000 in six days. One week later, however, police seized all copies on the order of a prosecutor, who defined the film as "self-serving pornography", and its director was put on trial for "obscenity". Following first degree and appeal trials, the fate of the film was sealed on 26 January 1976 by the
Italian Supreme Court, which sentenced all copies to be
destroyed (though some were preserved by the National Film Library). Bertolucci was served with a four-month suspended sentence in prison and had his civil rights revoked for five years, depriving him of voting rights. It grossed 7 billion lire ($3.9 million) in its initial release in Italy. It was re-released in 1987 where it grossed an additional 5 billion lire ($2.7 million). In 2000, it was listed as the
second-highest grossing Italian film in Italy adjusted for inflation.
Response in United States The film opened February 1, 1973 at the Trans-Lux East in New York City with a $5 ticket price and advance sales of $100,000, grossing $41,280 in its first week. The media frenzy surrounding the film generated intense popular interest as well as moral condemnation, and the film was featured in cover stories in both
Time and
Newsweek Columnist
William F. Buckley and ABC's
Harry Reasoner denounced the film as "pornography disguised as art". The New York City chapter of the
National Organization for Women denounced the film as a tool of "male domination". The film's scandal centred mostly on an anal rape scene, featuring Paul's use of butter as a
lubricant. According to Schneider, the scene was not in the original script, but was Brando's idea. Other critics focused on when the character Paul asks Jeanne to insert her fingers in his anus, then asks her to prove her devotion to him by, among other things, having sex with a pig.
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times described the film's sexual content as the artistic expression of the "era of
Norman Mailer and
Germaine Greer" and was upset about the high ticket price. writing that "
Tango has altered the face of an art form. This is a movie people will be arguing about for as long as there are movies." Many feminist film critics disliked the film. In a 1974 review in
Jump Cut,
E. Ann Kaplan criticized it for featuring "a one-sided relationship seen mostly through Paul's eyes." In
Women and Their Sexuality in the New Film, (1974) one of the first explicitly feminist books on film,
Joan Mellen complains about a similar issue, that Jeanne constantly gives way to Paul, "the man who is made more interesting in every way." However, a few did enjoy it, such as
Molly Haskell, who responded to feminist criticism in
From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies (1974) by noting that women more than men seemed to respond to the film, and that female sexual fantasies can include "rape, sadism, submission, liberation, and anonymous sex." The American critic
Roger Ebert repeatedly described Kael's review as "the most famous movie review ever published", and he added the film to his
Great Movies collection. American director
Robert Altman expressed unqualified praise: "I walked out of the screening and said to myself, 'How dare I make another film?' My personal and artistic life will never be the same." In 2004, director
Martin Scorsese compared this "towering Brando performance" to the actor's turn as Terry Malloy in
On the Waterfront (1954) and noted that "[w]hen you watch his work in ...
Last Tango in Paris, you're watching the purest poetry imaginable, in dynamic motion".
Ethan Hawke considered Brando's work a seminal moment in the movement of performance. Praising both the star and the director of the film, Hawke told
Richard Linklater and
Louis Black that, "Brando upped [
On the Waterfront] with
Last Tango."
Pauline Kael, in her aforementioned review, had echoed the same sentiments by saying, "On the screen Brando is our genius as Norman Mailer|[Norman] Mailer is our genius in literature … Paul feels so 'real' and the character is brought so close that a new dimension in screen acting has been reached."
Richard Brody of
The New Yorker praised the personal nature of Brando's role, commenting in his review of
Listen to Me Marlon (2015) that, "When Brando said what he himself had to say, it was indeed of a unique value. That's why the best of Brando is when he's closest to himself, as in ... Bernardo Bertolucci's
Last Tango in Paris, from 1972. It isn't only his words that are better than those of the screenwriters; his persona, his character, is greater than those that are scripted." In 2019, actor
Brad Pitt said the film from the past he'd most like to have starred in is
Last Tango in Paris, "Brando. That one hurts."
Premiere had named Brando's performance the 27th-greatest film performance of all time in April 2006. The film was given a nationwide release on February 7, 1973, and grossed $36 million in the United States and Canada, though it is not cut in later releases.
Mary Whitehouse, a Christian morality campaigner, expressed outrage that the film had been certified "X" rather than banned outright, and Labour MP
Maurice Edelman denounced the classification as "a licence to degrade". The film was censored in Spain during the
Franco regime and was not released until December 1977.
Chile banned the film entirely for nearly thirty years under
its military dictatorship, and the film was similarly suppressed in
Portugal, until the
Carnation Revolution in 1974, when its première became an example of the freedom democracy allows. The same happened in
Brazil during the period of
military dictatorship when the film was censored, until it was finally released in 1979. Other countries that banned it include
Argentina,
South Korea,
Singapore, and
Venezuela. In Australia, the film was released uncut with an R certificate by the
Australian Classification Board on 1 February 1973. It received a VHS release by
Warner Home Video with the same classification on 1 January 1987, forbidding sale or hire to anyone under the age of 18. In Canada, the film was banned by the
Nova Scotia Board of Censors, leading to the landmark 1978
Supreme Court of Canada split decision in
Nova Scotia (Board of Censors) v McNeil, which upheld the provinces' right to censor films.
Legacy Being Maria, a film based on Maria Schneider's experiences working on
Last Tango in Paris, was released in 2024, having its premiere at the
77th Cannes Film Festival. The film was directed by
Jessica Palud and adapted from
Vanessa Schneider's 2018 memoir
My Cousin Maria Schneider. Also released in 2024, the biopic
Waltzing with Brando depicts the period between 1969 and 1974 in which Brando was preparing to star in
The Godfather and
Last Tango in Paris.
Cinémathèque française screening controversy In December 2024, a planned screening of
Last Tango in Paris at the Parisian theater
Cinémathèque française was cancelled after women's rights groups protested the showing due to the film's infamous rape scene. French actress
Judith Godrèche also protested the theater's decision to show the film without context given to the rape scene, writing on
Instagram: "It’s time to wake up, dear Cinémathèque, and restore humanity to a 19-year-old actor by behaving humanely." The cinema's director, Frédéric Bonnaud, stated that the decision to pull the film was because "We are a cinema, not a fortress. We cannot take risks with the safety of our staff and audience," and stated that "Violent individuals were beginning to make threats and holding this screening and debate posed an entirely disproportionate risk." His statements led to further criticism from feminist groups, who accused him as posing as a victim, and stating he should have instead apologized for wanting to screen the film to begin with. The 50/50 Collective, another women's rights group, had called on the Cinématheque to provide "thoughtful and respectful" place for Schneider’s testimony and experience alongside the screening. Other feminists stated they would have approved of the screening had a discussion been had after the screening and a note handed to the viewers describing the non-consensual background of the scene.
Accolades In 2002, the film ranked #48 on
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions. ==See also==