'Last Tango in Paris,'with Maria Schneider, landed director Bertolucci obscenity conviction in 1972

The term"controversial"only begins to capture the response the film"Last Tango In Paris"evoked when it was released in the fall of 1972.

A lot of films are controversial.

Very few trigger such a firestorm that their director is sentenced to four months in prison. Very few trigger bomb threats to theaters, angry crowds of picketers and the agreement by both conservative commentators and theNational Organization for Womenthat they are either insidious or just plain pornographic.

ReviewerPauline Kaelsaid"Last Tango"changed the face of movies, and while that may or may not be true, it did turn out to define the outer limits of a brief trend toward more and more graphic content in mainstream movies.

By the mid-1960s, the major Hollywood studios had finally discarded their adherence to the 1930s Hays Code, which set strict standards for sexual explicitness, language and other"morality"content issues.

Suddenly free, filmmakers and studios began experimenting with nudity, strong language and other"adult themes."

By 1969 the X-rated"Midnight Cowboy"had won an Oscar as best picture, so it was probably not surprising that three years later there would be a mainstream release of"Last Tango,"which went several country miles past"Cowboy."

While"Last Tango"nominally had a large cast, its impression came from two characters: Paul, played by the already legendaryMarlon Brando, and Jeanne played by relative newcomerMaria Schneider.

Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando in bed in 'Last Tango in Paris.' (Everett)

Paul was a widower, Jeanne an engaged young Parisian. They meet, connect and agree to have anonymous sex, which Paul in particular feels will release all their inhibitions.

Director Bernardo Bertoluccifelt the same way, he said in many subsequent interviews, and his camera often focuses on the gratification this arrangement brings to Paul.

The camera doesn't explicitly record all those gratifications, but it captured enough of them to make viewers forget any concerns about whether there was too much butter on their popcorn.

The butter on screen went elsewhere, and even that wasn't as explicit as the sexual dialogue. Somewhere around the time Paul suggests Jeanne have sex with a pig– to prove her devotion to Paul – viewers could feel the new"sexual freedom"limits starting to approach the wall.

New York's NOW chapter denounced"Last Tango"as a"tool of male domination."Conservative writer and TV hostWilliam F. Buckleyprobably tapped a broader vein when he called it"pornography masquerading as art."

"Last Tango"never faced any formal censorship in theU.S., but British censors refused to allow its release without trims to the sexual scenes.

The most strident response came in Bertolucci's nativeItaly, where he tried for and convicted of obscenity and theaters were ordered not to show the film. In 1976, theItalian Supreme Courtordered all copies destroyed.

Brando and Schneider both turned against"Last Tango"after its release, saying the director and the film degraded them.

"Last Tango"still ended up carving a niche in film history. But this particular tango did indeed turn out to be the last.

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