Brando's dresser noted one day:"Something's going on here;he's taking this seriously."And indeed Brando was.Perhaps rejuvenated by the work he had just done on
The Godfather, he delivers an autobiographical perfomance of intensity and depth.His quality may be down to something as mundane as the fact that, so chaotic was this film, he was not reading his lines from que cards.The sex seems more incidental today, though it might not had
Bertolucci kept to his plan to show intercourse.(
Brando persuaded him not to.)The hype with which it was greeted (Pauline Kael suggested it would usher in a new age of cinema, Italian novelist Alberto Moravia claimed it was based on Freudian symbolism) is best forgotten so the movie can be watched for itself.Whatever else, it is a star vehicle for Brando, as a man who seeks to obliterate his wife's suicide with an affair with a young Parisienne. He does not disappoint.
Director:Bernando Bertolucci Cast:Marlon Brando,
Maria Schneider
