The most shocking moment about Marlon Brando
To this day I still can't get past what he did to Maria Schneider when they shot the ‘butter scene’ in 1972’s Last Tango in Paris. If you haven’t seen the movie, Marlon’s character (Paul) rubs his fingers in butter and sticks them inside Jeanne’s (Maria’s character) private parts against her will. What was actually happening was that Maria had just been told this scene was going to happen so her reaction on screen is genuine, as the director and Marlon had only come up with the idea for the scene that same morning.
In 2013 the director of the film, Bernardo Bertolucci, explained why they chose not to tell her and forced her to do it instead:
The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon [who was 48 at the time] in the morning before shooting it. I’d been, in a way, horrible to Maria [who was 19 at the time], because I didn’t tell her what was going on. I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress. I wanted her to react humiliated. I think she hated me and also Marlon because we didn’t tell her. To obtain something I think you have to be completely free. I didn’t want Maria to act her humiliation, her rage, I wanted Maria to feel ... the rage and humiliation. Then she hated me for all [of her] life.
Maria, who passed away in 2011 at the young age of 58, told DailyMail in 2007:
But during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn’t real [no penetration}, I was crying real tears. I felt humiliated and, to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologize. Thankfully, there was just one take.
I was so young and relatively inexperienced and I didn’t understand all of the film’s sexual content. They only told me about it before we had to film the scene and I was so angry. I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can’t force someone to do something that isn’t in the script, but at the time, I didn’t know that.
I find it sad that the director couldn't simply allow Maria to act, and instead both he and Marlon decided that it was okay to take advantage of a 19-year-old girl just to elicit their desired reaction.
