Bertolucci unleashes the wrath of Hollywood by recognizing the deception of Maria Schneider
The director has admitted that he tricked the actress to shoot the famous butter scene in 'Last Tango in Paris'.
Maria Schneider was 19 years old when Bernardo Bertolucci locked her up in a Paris apartment with Marlon Brando, who was then 48. They were two lovers who left her identity at her door. They didn't even know each other's names. A desperate widower and a hypnotized twenty-something woman gave themselves unconditionally in 'The Last Tango in Paris', a masterpiece censored in Spain, which is part of the collective memory of late Francoism: its s*x sequences (then they were said to be real) forced to go in a morbid procession to Saint Jean de Luz and Perpignan.
Just forty years after its premiere among us, 'Last tango in Paris' is once again in the eye of the hurricane. And it does so precisely because of the famous butter scene, which in its day overshadowed the depth of this journey of two lost beings with no return. In it, Brando brutally sodomized Schneider on the floor using the butter as a lubricant. "That scene is an idea I had with Marlon that morning before filming it," says Bertolucci in a 2013 interview at the French Cinematheque, posted on YouTube two weeks ago by a feminist collective from Alicante. "I was horrible to Maria because I didn't tell her what was going to happen. I wanted her reaction as a child, not as an actress. I don't regret shooting her, but I feel guilty."
The Italian director, today sick and in a wheelchair, made these statements two years after Schneider's death at the age of 58, who never got over her typecasting as Brando's erotic playmate and had an erratic career riddled with drugs and problems. psychological. The actress always hated Bertolucci for that uncomfortable experience that left her with emotional consequences. "The scenes weren't real, but I felt a little violated," she confessed in an interview in 2007. "I should have called my lawyer or my agent, because you can't force an actor to do something that isn't specified in the script. But at the time I was young and I didn't know."
It was, therefore, an abuse of a deceived actress, who was not expecting a fake rape that the echo of social networks has made real in recent days. "You are watching a 19-year-old girl being raped by a 48-year-old man. The director planned the attack. She makes me sick," actress Jessica Chastain tweeted this weekend, arousing the ire of Hollywood. Evan Rachel Wood added: "It's heartbreaking and outrageous. They're both sick people to think that was okay."
Actor Chris Evans promises not to see 'Last Tango in Paris' again, neither Bertolucci nor Brando in the same way: "I feel very angry, they should be in jail." In a statement, the director of 'Novecento' settled last night "the ridiculous misunderstanding". The actress was informed of the violence of the scene, except for the improper use of butter: "It comforts and at the same time grieves that there are people who are still so naive that they believe that what they see in the cinema happens in reality."
"The only thing that María did not know was the use of the manquetilla"
However, Bernardo Bertolucci has assured that María Schneider knew about the controversial rape scene in "Last Tango in Paris", and that the "only novelty" was the butter that Marlon Brando used as a lubricant.
"I have specified, although perhaps I have not been clear, that I decided together with Marlon Brando not to inform María about the use of butter. We wanted her spontaneous reaction to this improper use," said the Italian filmmaker in a statement released by the media.
Bertolucci points out that even so, "there are those who have thought and still think that Maria had not been informed about the rape."
"False! Maria knew everything because she had the script, in which everything was described. The only novelty was the butter thing. And that, as I learned many years later, offended Maria, not the rape she suffers in the scene and that was foreseen in the script", he stresses.
"Those who don't know that s*x in the movies is (almost) always simulated, probably, every time John Wayne shoots an enemy, they believe that he really dies," criticized Bertolucci.
