“Bertolucci and Brando conspire magnificently, sometimes awkwardly, to create not just a film about an affair, but the affair itself — an affair which we have the option of resisting or accepting on a gut level, and which like most affairs (and unlike most current films) is better experienced than written about.”
“Suddenly moviegoers of both sexes have encountered ... Marlon Brando’s pseudo-sensitive stud’s swagger, Burt Reynolds’s coy centerfold swagger, and Norman Mailer’s ballsy literary swagger.”
