Despite a famously raving review by American film critic grand dame Pauline Kael (who dubbed it "the most powerfully erotic movie ever made") Bernardo Bertolucci's often unfocused 1973 meditation on sexuality, existential angst and inventive uses of butter can now seem as quaintly compelling as wide collared blazers and velveteen trousers. Indeed, Argentine jazz saxophonist Gato Barbieri's evocative score has aged better than much of the film. Bertolucci's conceit to structure the film loosely around the erotic duel that's at the heart of the Tango led him to seek a non-traditional musician to score it (Tango legend Astor Piazzolla was rumored to have been an early consideration). Once selected, the then-largely obscure Barbieri originally produced a series of brief, Tango-jazz fusion cues that functioned more as emotional punctuation than traditional underscore. Those musical snippets were later re-arranged and re-recorded by Oliver Nelson for the wildly successful soundtrack album; it would be another quarter century before Barbieri's own recordings were issued, albeit briefly. Both Barbieri's and Nelson's work are reunited here in a comprehensive edition, emotive fusion-jazz that--for better or worse--virtually opened the door to mainstream jazz successes like Kenny G and the so-called Wave radio format. --Jerry McCulley