TW: rape, assault
Bernardo Bertolucci, director of Last Tango in Paris, admitted that the infamous rape scene from the 1972 scene was not consensual.
In a recently resurfaced 2013 interview with Dutch TV show College Tour, a 73-year-old Bertolucci admits that he and Marlon Brando plotted the attack on Maria Schneider over breakfast. The scene involves Brando’s character using a stick of butter as lubricant to rape his lover, played by actress Maria Schneider.
“The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon in the morning before shooting,” Bertolucci said in the interview which was filmed at La Cinémathèque française. “There was a baguette, and there was butter, and we looked at each other. And without saying anything, we knew what we wanted.” While the two men enjoyed breakfast, they came up with the idea to violate a fellow professional.
While Bertolucci and Brando, 32 and 48 at time, respectively, knew what was coming, 19-year-old Schneider did not. Bertolucci’s defense? He wanted “her reaction as a girl, not as an actress.” “To make movies sometimes, to obtain something, I think that you have to be completely free,” he retorted, “I didn’t want Maria to act her humiliation, her rage. I wanted Maria to feel, not to act, the rage and humiliation.” Yes, he consciously planned to humiliate and violate Schneider for artistic purposes. Yes, despite hiring actors to, well… act. Apparently, being “completely free” includes being free of values, morals and remorse. When asked if he had any regrets, Bertolucci responded with “I feel guilty but I do not feel regret.”
Last Tango in Paris was Maria Schneider’s first film and her last nude scene. For years, she has been saying that the scene was not in the script, that she did not consent to it and that she felt raped by both director and actor. In a 2007 interview with Daily Mail, she said, “I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologise. Thankfully, there was just one take.” In the same interview, she refers to Marlon Brando as a father figure: “For me, he was more like a father figure and I a daughter.”
It’s interesting how a statement made by an actress is only validated and taken seriously when the director confirms it 9 years later.
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