Here's how the court in Bologna which seized and banned Last Tango in Paris saw Bertolucci's 1973 film: "Obscene content offensive to public decency, characterised by an exasperating pan-sexualism for its own end, presented with obsessive self-indulgence ... dominated by the idea of stirring unchecked appetites for sexual pleasure ... accompanied off screen by sounds, sighs and shrieks of climax pleasure."
That's the downside. Here's the upside, from Pauline Kael: "The movie breakthrough has finally come ... this must be the most powerfully erotic movie ever made, and it may turn out to be the most liberating movie ever made ... Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face of an art form. Who was prepared for that?"
Kael's 4,000-word review convinced most sceptics that Last Tango - the story of a middle-aged man (Brando) who, devastated by the apparent suicide of his wife, embarks on a sadomasochistic affair with a young girl (Maria Schneider) - was morally serious and a work of art. But the British Censor cut the anal sex scene all the same.
Whether the film really indicts the bourgeois family structures which suppress feeling and "civilise" the savage in us all is a moot point. But as a psychodrama it has the audacity of Godard and the naked power of Bergman. Not bad for starters.
Last Tango In Paris
Cert: 18
