Last Tango in Paris, All in the Family

Mercifully, this is the most we see of Marlon Brando.

By the way, I mentioned seeing Last Tango in Paris. I'll tell you what surprised me.

Long ago, there was an episode of All in the Family. Archie Bunker sits in a bar and says he went to see Last Tango in Paris because he assumed it was a dance movie. He adds that he saw parts of Marlon Brando he never wanted to see.

So when the movie played at the university, I went to see it and braced myself to see naked, flabby middle-aged Marlon Brando. But there was only "implied nudity" as far he was concerned, although I was pretty bored and my mind may have drifted at crucial moments.

Why do they make inaccurate jokes like this? Couldn't Archie Bunker have had an amusing reaction to the movie without misrepresenting it?

I watched it again just to be sure I was stating it accurately here. There was no naked Marlon Brando. He was 48 and playing 45. In one scene he wears a t-shirt and what look like executive-length boxer shorts.

Maria Schneider who played the girl thinks the film comes across as kitsch today, and she has a point. She remained friends with Brando. Even he felt manipulated by Bertolucci. She complained that Brando and Bertolucci made a fortune while she was paid only $2,500, even though Bertolucci was a Communist.