Word: tangoes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tango and its somewhat milder predecessors are a casebook study in cultural osmosis-the process by which serious directors draw off the pornographers' best stuff and put it to respectable uses. I Am Curious (Yellow) (1969) seems to have started the current phase of candor. It was followed by progressively bolder films, from Midnight Cowboy (1969), with its homosexual as well as heterosexual couplings, to A Clockwork Orange (1971), with its rapes and sex à trois. Going beyond all of these, Tango proclaims the liberation of serious films from restraints on sex as unequivocally as the 1967 Bonnie...
...insisted on using an actual apartment rather than a set for the scenes between Paul and Jeanne, although he then chose very unrealistic colors and lighting to heighten the atmosphere. He required that the decor be in reds, oranges and flesh tones-"all uterine," in the words of Tango Set Designer Maria Paola Maino. The light that slanted into the rooms was always orange shafts from a low winter sun, contrasting with the cool violet and gray of the streets outside...
...still another he has the wisdom of an Indian sage. He is like one of those figures of the painter Francis Bacon who show on their faces all that is happening in their guts-he has the same devastated plasticity." (Two Bacon paintings appear under the credits on Tango, and several scenes in the film were visually inspired by his work...
Brando recently collected a final installment of the $1,500,000 he made for his work on The Godfather. He has hinted that if he can add enough to that with his income from Tango, he will quit acting for good. In fact, a few weeks ago he terminated his contract with his agent, Robin French, telling him, "I don't think I'm going to be needing you much any more...
...anybody who sees Brando's performance in Tango will find it hard to believe that this is a man who plans to retire, no matter what he may say. It is a performance that displays what Bertolucci calls Brando's capacity to "destroy himself and re-create himself continuously, in a kind of savage dialectic." After his Don Vito in The Godfather, Brando could have continued indefinitely in the security of similar roles. Instead, he has made new departures, taken new risks, and thus answered the imperative of his talent by regenerating it. In his willingness to confront...