Last Tango in Paris

Last Tango in Paris (Ultimo tango a Parigi, 1972) is a French-Italian drama by Bernardo Bertolucci — watch online on iFILM. Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider lead a film that hit cinemas in December 1972 and sparked a controversy that lasted decades.

Paul is an American in his mid-forties, adrift in Paris after his wife's sudden death. He wanders into an empty apartment and meets Jeanne, a young Frenchwoman also there to look at the flat. They strike a wordless arrangement: meet here, no names, no history, no explanations. Just the bare rooms and whatever happens inside them. Jeanne has her own reasons to step outside her ordinary life — a busy fiancé named Tom who is filming a documentary about her, a comfortable world that fits too tightly. Paul is drowning in guilt and has no other plan for the immediate future.

Bertolucci and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro built the film's visual identity around warm ochre and amber interiors that feel almost feverish — a palette both men would keep returning to throughout their careers. The film was banned in several countries and in Italy triggered a court case that stripped the director of his civil rights for years. That off-screen story turned Last Tango in Paris into one of the most argued-about films of the 1970s. Stream Last Tango in Paris (1972) online on iFILM.