Trivia / Last Tango in Paris

• Banned in China: Given its subject matter, it's no surprise that countries around the world suppressed its release.
  • Chile banned the movie for nearly twenty years under Augusto Pinochet's rule, which was notoriously strict on obscenity.
  • Portugal and South Korea also banned the film for a few years.
  • Its domestic market, Italy, was even more merciless. Theaters pulled the film after almost a week, authorities seized all copies of the film they could find and destroyed them, and director Bernardo Bertolucci was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence and received a civil rights suspension for his involvement in the film. Marlon Brando also received a warrant for his arrest in Italy because of it, effectively exiling him from the country for years. This had knock-on effects on production on Superman: The Movie, which had to move production on the Krypton scenes from Cinecittà Studios in Italy to Pinewood Studios in the UK, which led director Guy Hamilton to leave the project (to be replaced with Richard Donner) because he had left the UK as a tax exile. The ban was finally lifted in 1987, but at that point the damage was done.
  • The film is also banned in Nova Scotia, Canada, and the challenge against the ban led to the landmark Nova Scotia (Board of Censors) v. McNeil decision in 1978, which held that provinces had the right to ban questionable films. Unlike the countries above, the ban has never been lifted.
• Based on a Dream: Bernardo Bertolucci developed the film from his sexual fantasies: "He once dreamed of seeing a beautiful nameless woman on the street and having sex with her without ever knowing who she was".
• Creator Backlash: Both Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider openly regretted appearing in the film, describing Bernardo Bertolucci's direction as sexually abusive. Schneider described her experience working on the film as humiliating and claimed that Brando felt "raped and manipulated" by Bertolucci, resulting in him not speaking to the director again for 15 years.
• Deleted Scene: Bernardo Bertolucci also shot a scene which showed Marlon Brando's genitals, but in 1973 explained, "I had so identified myself with Brando that I cut it out of shame for myself. To show him naked would have been like showing me naked."
• Enforced Method Acting: Crossed with a good deal of Creator Backlash for the two main actors.
  • Maria Schneider was really not happy with some of the things she was made to do, and said later that some of her tears in the film were real. Especially in the infamous butter scene. Bertolucci apparently told Brando what to do without giving Schneider any warning, admitting in a 2013 interview that he "wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress".
    • After there was considerable outrage when these remarks were taken to mean that Bertolucci and Brando had conspired to perform simulated sexual assault on Schneider without telling her that they'd do so, Bertolucci clarified that the only thing Schneider didn't know they were going to do was use butter. Bertolucci pointed out that she'd read the script, and knew perfectly well that the scene was about Paul having dubiously consensual sex with Jeanne. It was the specific use of butter that Schneider found humiliating.^note The implication is that Paul needs the butter as lubricant because he's sodomising Jeanne, which if Schneider hadn't know they were expecting her to simulate, would indeed have been humiliating and upsetting. Unfortunately, Maria Schneider died in 2011, so she was not able to clarify the issue either way when the controversy erupted. Schneider also went on to say she took to cooking with olive oil afterwards, never using butter again.
  • Marlon Brando, as ever, refused to memorize his lines, so at some points when he's talking to his dead wife, he dramatically raises his eyes to the ceiling—he's reading his lines off a piece of paper stuck up there.
• Friendship on the Set: Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider became friends with one another while making the film, later finding solidarity in their shared feelings of sexual humiliation regarding Bernardo Bertolucci's treatment of them on set. The two remained friends until Brando's death in 2004.
• Gay Panic: The film was originally to revolve around a passionate, homosexual relationship, but the idea was scrapped when Jean-Louis Trintignant, the actor originally conceived for the film, backed out. Incidentally, many have noted that the ghost of the original idea still remains in the film, especially with the whole "butter scene". Ingmar Bergman on seeing the film called out Bernardo Bertolucci for making what he saw as a homosexual love affair into a heterosexual one.
• One-Take Wonder: There was just one take of the controversial anal rape scene.
• Shrug of God: When Marlon Brando was asked what the movie was about during his 1979 Playboy Magazine interview, he responded, "Bernardo Bertolucci's analysis."
• Wag the Director: Marlon Brando improvised most his dialogue for the film because he felt that some of the dialogue was not to his liking. He even asked Bernardo Bertolucci if he could write his lines on co-star Maria Schneider's ass. Bertolucci refused to let him do it. He also refused to be naked on film, because, in his own words, "My penis shrunk to the size of a peanut onset".
• What Could Have Been:
  • Warren Beatty, Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo turned down the role of Paul.
  • Catherine Deneuve was considered for Jeanne, while Sylvia Kristel auditioned.
  • Argentine Tango composer Astor Piazzolla was going to write the music for this film and had actually submitted demos to director Bernardo Bertolucci. Bertolucci instead chose famed jazz musician Gato Barbieri as the film's composer, because he felt that his saxophone playing would give the film a more rich and sultry feel for the film.

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