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Tango Here and There

by jposburn • Created 6 years ago • Modified 4 years ago
A list in progress of films with a tango element, dance, music, or song, that may be dramatically important (or not) but doesn't make the full movie a "tango film." The dance styles are all over the place and sometimes promiscuously mixed... Argentine, ballroom, international, americano, interpretive. The order isn't a ranking. My notes can be read under "detail view." See also my lists of "Narrative Tango Films" and "Tango Documentaries."
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  • 103 titles
  • Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot (1959)

    1. Some Like It Hot

    19592h 1mApproved98Metascore
    8.2 (295K)
    After two male musicians witness a mob hit, they flee the state in an all-female band disguised as women, but further complications set in.
    DirectorBilly WilderStarsMarilyn MonroeTony CurtisJack Lemmon
    Tango in drag with a stiff arm.
  • William Holden, Nancy Olson, and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)

    2. Sunset Boulevard

    19501h 50mApproved94Metascore
    8.4 (249K)
    A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return.
    DirectorBilly WilderStarsWilliam HoldenGloria SwansonErich von Stroheim
    "Valentino said there's nothing like tile for the tango."
  • Colin Firth and Hart Bochner in Apartment Zero (1988)

    3. Apartment Zero

    19882h 4mR
    6.8 (4.4K)
    In early 1980s Buenos Aires, a struggling movie theater owner takes in a roommate but suspects he is responsible for a series of political assassinations.
    DirectorMartin DonovanStarsHart BochnerColin FirthDora Bryan
    A disturbing psycho-sexual political thriller with overtones of Hitchcock and Highsmith. Tango weaves in and out of the soundtrack and there is a cabaret scene of a tango singer. It's never quite a tango film, however, and the references drop away well before the end.
  • Tempest (1982)

    4. Tempest

    19822h 20mPG40Metascore
    6.4 (2.9K)
    Unhappy middle-aged architect Philip Dimitrius leaves his wife Antonia and career for a spiritual awakening on a Greek island with his new girlfriend Aretha and teenage daughter, leading to extraordinary results for everyone around him.
    DirectorPaul MazurskyStarsJohn CassavetesGena RowlandsSusan Sarandon
    Paul Mazursky's magical update of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" reconciles friend and foe with a tango dance party, stiff-armed but strangely tender, rather than dinner and a court masque.
  • Le Bal (1983)

    5. Le Bal

    19831h 49m
    7.6 (3.2K)
    Dance moves, music and fashion mark the passage of time inside a Paris dance hall, throughout fifty years of history.
    DirectorEttore ScolaStarsGeneviève Rey-PenchenatNani NoëlRaymonde Heudeline
    A wordless history of a fictional Paris dance hall. Not a "tango film," but tango has a heightened significance as it winds through multiple periods and survives competing fads.
  • Brittany Murphy in Love and Other Disasters (2006)

    6. Love and Other Disasters

    20061h 30mR
    6.1 (15K)
    An American intern at U.K. Vogue helps her friends find love.
    DirectorAlek KeshishianStarsBrittany MurphyMatthew RhysCatherine Tate
    The always appealing Brittany Murphy dances a tango - rather well.
  • Al Pacino and Chris O'Donnell in Scent of a Woman (1992)

    7. Scent of a Woman

    19922h 36mR57Metascore
    8.0 (351K)
    A prep school student needing money agrees to "babysit" a blind man, but the job is not at all what he anticipated.
    DirectorMartin BrestStarsAl PacinoChris O'DonnellJames Rebhorn
    Al Pacino and Gabrielle Anwar's famous tango to "Por una cabeza."
  • Avellaneda's Moon (2004)

    8. Avellaneda's Moon

    20042h 23m
    7.2 (5.8K)
    The story of a social and sports club in a Buenos Aires neighborhood and of those who try to save it from being closed.
    DirectorJuan José CampanellaStarsRicardo DarínEduardo BlancoMercedes Morán
    "Luna de Avellaneda" is a beautifully poetic movie about a neighborhood club threatened by hard times and vulture developers. It opens with a flashback to a 1950s carnival overflowing with tango, romance, sport, and procreation.
  • Underground (1995)

    9. Underground

    19952h 47mNot Rated79Metascore
    8.0 (63K)
    Two underground black marketeers, Marko and Blacky, sell weapons to the Communist resistance in wartime Belgrade, living the good life along the way.
    DirectorEmir KusturicaStarsPredrag 'Miki' ManojlovicLazar RistovskiMirjana Jokovic
    A WWII Yugoslav resistance fighter drinks and dances with his actress-lover during an Allied bombardment, and tango, recurrent on the soundtrack, is the opening theme of a carnivalesque subterranean wedding.
  • Rent (2005)

    10. Rent

    20052h 15mPG-1353Metascore
    6.8 (57K)
    In New York City's gritty East Village, a group of bohemians strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic.
    DirectorChris ColumbusStarsTaye DiggsWilson Jermaine HerediaRosario Dawson
    A bracing scene is Tango Maureen.
  • Rutger Hauer in Soldier of Orange (1977)

    11. Soldier of Orange

    19772h 45mR
    7.6 (14K)
    During World War II, Dutch students join the resistance movement against the German occupation of the Netherlands.
    DirectorPaul VerhoevenStarsRutger HauerJeroen KrabbéSusan Penhaligon
    Same sex Nazi and Resistance tango.
  • Isabelle Adjani and Alain Souchon in One Deadly Summer (1983)

    12. One Deadly Summer

    19832h 13mR
    7.2 (5.7K)
    A young woman who oozes sensuality arrives in a small town and marries the local mechanic. Was it love at first sight? What links her enigmatic presence to the family's piano? Is it curiosity or is it something far more sinister?
    DirectorJean BeckerStarsIsabelle AdjaniAlain SouchonSuzanne Flon
    In the midst of this tonally, dramatically, and emotionally complex film there comes, as though to make it even more so, "La cumparsita."
  • Jean-Louis Trintignant, Dominique Sanda, and Stefania Sandrelli in The Conformist (1970)

    13. The Conformist

    19701h 53mR100Metascore
    7.9 (37K)
    A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.
    DirectorBernardo BertolucciStarsJean-Louis TrintignantStefania SandrelliGastone Moschin
    Tango tends to pop up in films about fascism.
  • Catherine Deneuve in Indochine (1992)

    14. Indochine

    19922h 40mPG-13
    7.0 (11K)
    Eliane adopts Camille, whose Vietnamese parents were friends. In 1930, a French navy officer is interested in Eliane (owns 60km2 plantation) and later in Camille. There's an uprising in Vietnam against French colonial power.
    DirectorRégis WargnierStarsCatherine DeneuveVincent PerezLinh-Dan Pham
    Catherine Deneuve and Linh Dan Pham (as an adopted daughter) dance a tango symbolic of the fading French colony.
  • The Plague (1992)

    15. The Plague

    19922h 28mR
    5.6 (1K)
    In the 1990s, a South American city suffers the outbreak of a plague. The people react in different ways: Dr. Rieux tries to cure the sick, two French journalists expect sensational headlines, pious believers lament this God-given scourge.
    DirectorLuis PuenzoStarsWilliam HurtSandrine BonnaireJean-Marc Barr
    This interesting version of Camus' "The Plague" includes an impressive tango by Carolina Iotti and Estanislao Herrera in which the performance cliché of the woman's back arched in the man's arms takes a shocking and sardonic turn.
  • Libertad Lamarque and Jorge Negrete in Gran Casino (1947)

    16. Gran Casino

    19471h 32m
    5.8 (913)
    A prison escapee becomes involved with an independent oil well owner threatened by corporate thugs, who do their dodgy business in the glamorous Grand Casino.
    DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsLibertad LamarqueJorge NegreteMeche Barba
    Someone sings in that casino - Libertad Lemarque directed by Luis Buñuel. There's also some good fun with porteño slang in an early scene.
  • El hijo pródigo (1969)

    17. El hijo pródigo

    19691h 42m
    6.4 (12)
    A lawyer convinces his client to cheat on a famous singer with great wealth, thus eliminating him and collecting the insurance. What nobody expects is that the farce is uncovered sooner than they thought.
    DirectorsServando GonzálezÁngel RodríguezStarsLibertad LamarqueCarlos LicoJulián Bravo
    Libertad Lemarque, seeking her wayward son, sings "Nostalgias."
  • Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess in Upside Down (2012)

    18. Upside Down

    20121h 49mPG-1345Metascore
    6.3 (75K)
    Adam and Eden fell in love as teens despite the fact that they live on twinned worlds with gravities that pull in opposite directions. Ten years after a forced separation, Adam sets out on a dangerous quest to reconnect with his love.
    DirectorJuan SolanasStarsJim SturgessKirsten DunstTimothy Spall
    Kirsten Dunst dances with Pablo Verón in a topsy-turvy ballroom.
  • Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jessica Biel, and Ben Barnes in Easy Virtue (2008)

    19. Easy Virtue

    20081h 37mPG-1358Metascore
    6.6 (23K)
    A young Englishman marries a glamorous American. When he brings her home to meet the parents, she arrives like a blast from the future - blowing their entrenched British stuffiness out the window.
    DirectorStephan ElliottStarsJessica BielBen BarnesKristin Scott Thomas
    Tango scene with Jessica Biel and Colin Firth.
  • Louise Brooks in Prix de beauté (Miss Europe) (1930)

    20. Prix de beauté (Miss Europe)

    19301h 33m
    6.9 (691)
    Lucienne, typist and gorgeous bathing beauty, decides to enter the 'Miss Europe' pageant sponsored by the French newspaper she works for. She finds her jealous lover Andre violently disapproves of such events and tries to withdraw, but it's too late; she's even then being named Miss France. The night Andre planned to propose to her, she's being whisked off to the Miss Europe finals in Spain, where admirers swarm around her. Win or lose, what will the harvest be?
    DirectorAugusto GeninaStarsLouise BrooksGeorges CharliaAugusto Bandini
    The great Louise Brooks plays a woman who enters a beauty contest and pursues a film career in defiance of a possessive husband. When she wins, she dances a tango that is played in her honor. The music re-emerges as a theme in a romantic tragedy that was Brooks' first sound film (she is convincingly dubbed in French).
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies (1994)

    21. True Lies

    19942h 21mR63Metascore
    7.3 (292K)
    A fearless, globe-trotting, terrorist-battling secret agent has his life turned upside down when he discovers his wife might be having an affair with a used-car salesman while terrorists smuggle nuclear war heads into the United States.
    DirectorJames CameronStarsArnold SchwarzeneggerJamie Lee CurtisTom Arnold
    Schwarzenegger parodies Connery's Bond tango.
  • Kim Basinger, Sean Connery, and Barbara Carrera in Never Say Never Again (1983)

    22. Never Say Never Again

    19832h 14mPG68Metascore
    6.1 (75K)
    James Bond is called upon to try to recover nuclear bombs stolen by Spectre, but he will have to get rid of a professional assassin, hired especially to eliminate him.
    DirectorIrvin KershnerStarsSean ConneryKim BasingerKlaus Maria Brandauer
    Connery's Bond tangos with Kim Basinger.
  • Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)

    23. Mr. & Mrs. Smith

    20052hPG-1355Metascore
    6.5 (568K)
    A husband and wife struggle to keep their marriage alive until they realize they are both secretly working as assassins. Now, their respective assignments require them to kill each other.
    DirectorDoug LimanStarsBrad PittAngelina JolieAdam Brody
    Spies and assassins love tango.
  • Richard Carlson, Anthony Dexter, and Eleanor Parker in Valentino (1951)

    24. Valentino

    19511h 42mApproved
    5.7 (380)
    Italian immigrant Rudolph Valentino makes it big in silent Hollywood, but he ends up struggling between his career and the woman he loves.
    DirectorLewis AllenStarsEleanor ParkerRichard CarlsonPatricia Medina
    If there's Valentino, there must be tango.
  • Rudolf Nureyev and Michelle Phillips in Valentino (1977)

    25. Valentino

    19772h 8mR
    6.1 (2.3K)
    In 1926 the tragic and untimely death of a silent screen actor caused female moviegoers to riot in the streets and in some cases to commit suicide.
    DirectorKen RussellStarsRudolf NureyevLeslie CaronMichelle Phillips
    Nureyev directed with style and excess by Ken Russell.

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