In Last Tango in Paris (1972, right), the camera takes frequent turns around the apartment, but Gato Barbieri's score actually implies a greater scope — a wider clearance — than the camera's movements. The build-up of strings seems to etch out an arc, so that it feels as if a second space is being cleared out, an extension of the film's eye. Together, the music and the camera take us on little whirls, little divings around the room — they spin us out to pick up a hat, take in a window fragment, and then deposit us back onto the ground when the sound stops. The manipulation of mood is so precise that we constantly feel as if we're being taken into depth, and then out of it: the film's objective seems to be to send us and leave us — there's the shiver of being pulled into a particular mood, and then not.
