On the Right

San Francisco, Jan. 24—Comes now the news that a new movie starring Marlon Brando will bring explicit sex to, so to speak, the feature film, the whole of it in this case under the ardent patronage of Miss Pauline Kael who says that the debut of Last Tango in Paris will rank artistically with the debut of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Time Magazine has done a cover story on the picture, describing in quite sufficient detail the couplings and the writhings of Mr. Brando and his victim and acknowledging—indeed pressing the point—that it isn’t love that drew them together, but that he finds love, and so on, and so forth.

The film was banned in Italy, whereupon one of those colloquies was arranged between Alberto Moravia and Jesuit theologian Domenico Grasso (where do they find those Jesuits?). Moravia—whose novels one recalls were placed on the Index by Pope Pius XII—said guess what. Right. And Father Grasso said that really the movie, whose sex scenes are “valid,” is a life and death struggle between Eros and Thanatos, and is redeemed because the film’s director, Hot Pants Bertolucci, gave Eros the edge. Father Grasso concluded that it is “an appreciable work, especially if the people who see it are mature, capable of grasping the idea underneath.” Especially if the people who see it are Pauline Kael.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

San Francisco, Jan. 24—Comes now the news that a new movie starring Marlon Brando will bring explicit sex to, so to speak, the feature film, the whole of it in this case under the ardent patronage of Miss Pauline Kael who says that the debut of Last Tango in Paris will rank artistically with the debut of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Time Magazine has done a cover story on the picture, describing in quite sufficient detail the couplings and the writhings of Mr. Brando and his victim and acknowledging—indeed pressing the point—that it isn’t love that drew them together, but that he finds love, and so on, and so forth.

The film was banned in Italy, whereupon one of those colloquies was arranged between Alberto Moravia and Jesuit theologian Domenico Grasso (where do they find those Jesuits?). Moravia—whose novels one recalls were placed on the Index by Pope Pius XII—said guess what. Right. And Father Grasso said that really the movie, whose sex scenes are “valid,” is a life and death struggle between Eros and Thanatos, and is redeemed because the film’s director, Hot Pants Bertolucci, gave Eros the edge. Father Grasso concluded that it is “an appreciable work, especially if the people who see it are mature, capable of grasping the idea underneath.” Especially if the people who see it are Pauline Kael.