Tango Here and There
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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- DirectorBilly WilderStarsMarilyn MonroeTony CurtisJack LemmonAfter two male musicians witness a mob hit, they flee the state in an all-female band disguised as women, but further complications set in.Tango in drag with a stiff arm.
- DirectorBilly WilderStarsWilliam HoldenGloria SwansonErich von StroheimA screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return."Valentino said there's nothing like tile for the tango."
- DirectorMartin DonovanStarsHart BochnerColin FirthDora BryanIn early 1980s Buenos Aires, a struggling movie theater owner takes in a roommate but suspects he is responsible for a series of political assassinations.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.
- DirectorPaul MazurskyStarsJohn CassavetesGena RowlandsSusan SarandonUnhappy 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.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.
- DirectorEttore ScolaStarsGeneviève Rey-PenchenatNani NoëlRaymonde HeudelineDance moves, music and fashion mark the passage of time inside a Paris dance hall, throughout fifty years of history.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.
- DirectorAlek KeshishianStarsBrittany MurphyMatthew RhysCatherine TateAn American intern at U.K. Vogue helps her friends find love.The always appealing Brittany Murphy dances a tango - rather well.
- DirectorMartin BrestStarsAl PacinoChris O'DonnellJames RebhornA prep school student needing money agrees to "babysit" a blind man, but the job is not at all what he anticipated.Al Pacino and Gabrielle Anwar's famous tango to "Por una cabeza."
- DirectorJuan José CampanellaStarsRicardo DarínEduardo BlancoMercedes MoránThe story of a social and sports club in a Buenos Aires neighborhood and of those who try to save it from being closed."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.
- DirectorEmir KusturicaStarsPredrag 'Miki' ManojlovicLazar RistovskiMirjana JokovicTwo underground black marketeers, Marko and Blacky, sell weapons to the Communist resistance in wartime Belgrade, living the good life along the way.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.
- DirectorChris ColumbusStarsTaye DiggsWilson Jermaine HerediaRosario DawsonIn 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.A bracing scene is Tango Maureen.
- DirectorPaul VerhoevenStarsRutger HauerJeroen KrabbéSusan PenhaligonDuring World War II, Dutch students join the resistance movement against the German occupation of the Netherlands.Same sex Nazi and Resistance tango.
- DirectorJean BeckerStarsIsabelle AdjaniAlain SouchonSuzanne FlonA 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?In the midst of this tonally, dramatically, and emotionally complex film there comes, as though to make it even more so, "La cumparsita."
- DirectorBernardo BertolucciStarsJean-Louis TrintignantStefania SandrelliGastone MoschinA weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.Tango tends to pop up in films about fascism.
- DirectorRégis WargnierStarsCatherine DeneuveVincent PerezLinh-Dan PhamEliane 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.Catherine Deneuve and Linh Dan Pham (as an adopted daughter) dance a tango symbolic of the fading French colony.
- DirectorLuis PuenzoStarsWilliam HurtSandrine BonnaireJean-Marc BarrIn 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.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.
- DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsLibertad LamarqueJorge NegreteMeche BarbaA prison escapee becomes involved with an independent oil well owner threatened by corporate thugs, who do their dodgy business in the glamorous Grand Casino.Someone sings in that casino - Libertad Lemarque directed by Luis Buñuel. There's also some good fun with porteño slang in an early scene.
- DirectorsServando GonzálezÁngel RodríguezStarsLibertad LamarqueCarlos LicoJulián BravoA 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.Libertad Lemarque, seeking her wayward son, sings "Nostalgias."
- DirectorJuan SolanasStarsJim SturgessKirsten DunstTimothy SpallAdam 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.Kirsten Dunst dances with Pablo Verón in a topsy-turvy ballroom.
- DirectorStephan ElliottStarsJessica BielBen BarnesKristin Scott ThomasA 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.Tango scene with Jessica Biel and Colin Firth.
- DirectorAugusto GeninaStarsLouise BrooksGeorges CharliaAugusto BandiniLucienne, 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?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).
- DirectorJames CameronStarsArnold SchwarzeneggerJamie Lee CurtisTom ArnoldA 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.Schwarzenegger parodies Connery's Bond tango.
- DirectorIrvin KershnerStarsSean ConneryKim BasingerKlaus Maria BrandauerJames 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.Connery's Bond tangos with Kim Basinger.
- DirectorDoug LimanStarsBrad PittAngelina JolieAdam BrodyA 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.Spies and assassins love tango.
- DirectorLewis AllenStarsEleanor ParkerRichard CarlsonPatricia MedinaItalian immigrant Rudolph Valentino makes it big in silent Hollywood, but he ends up struggling between his career and the woman he loves.If there's Valentino, there must be tango.
- DirectorKen RussellStarsRudolf NureyevLeslie CaronMichelle PhillipsIn 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.Nureyev directed with style and excess by Ken Russell.