10 Movies That Were About Nothing More Than Dirty Old Perverts

2. Last Tango In Paris (1962)

Here we have Marlon Brando putting in an appearance as Paul - the embodiment of a pervert. He is an American in Paris who owns a hotel. His wife has just killed herself in a hideous manner. Paul meets Jeanne, a sexy young woman who is engaged. There is a magnetic attraction between the two and they start an affair based on anonymity where they don't use their names or details of their lives. Much kinky sex ensues. Paul has a change of heart and tells Jeanne all about his life. She is not impressed by this and flees to her apartment with Paul in hot pursuit. When they get there, a major tragedy ensues. So just how is Paul a pervert? I don't believe that sleeping with someone half your age is necessarily a perverted act (if both parties are of the age of consent) but he does draw Jeanne into perverted deeds. We can see this in the infamous 'Butter' scene in which Paul uses butter as a lubricant to anally penetrate Jeanne. The scene is actually quite funny because Brando doesn't take his jeans down to perform the act and I fail to see how the logistics of anal sex can be implemented in this state. He also gets Jeanne to insert her fingers up his rectum on another occasion and tells her to prove her love for him by having sex with a pig! If those actions are not those of a Dirty Old Pervert, then I am an innocent cloistered nun. Incidentally, Maria Schneider who played Jeanne expressed in a contemporary interview that she felt sexually humiliated in some of the scenes in which Marlon Brando's Paul is perving over her. She went as far as to say she felt raped and called director Bernardo Bertolucci "a pimp and a gangster" and that starring in the movie was the biggest mistake of her life. Interestingly, Brando also said he felt 'raped and manipulated' by the film and didn't talk to Bertolucci for 15 years. This could all have been averted if the character of Paul hadn't been such a Dirty Old Pervert. Mind you, perversions and all, it is a bloody good movie. Just ask Pauline Kael.