The problematic feud at the centre of Bernardo Bertolucci’s masterpiece ‘Last Tango in Paris’
The 1972 erotic drama Last Tango in Paris is considered to be Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci‘s masterpiece effort. The film stars Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider and Jean-Pierre Leaud, telling the story of a recently widowed American hotel owner, Paul, who begins a sexual relationship with a married Parisian woman, Jeanne.
While the final movie was widely celebrated, it contains a scene in particular that seemed to cause great distress to Schneider. The scene in question sees Paul rape Jeanne whilst using butter as a lubricant. The sequence was simulated, but Schneider once expressed her regret at how it all went down.
In a 2006 interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Schneider explained that the rape scene was not actually in the original script. “When they told me, I had a burst of anger. Woo! I threw everything,” she said. “And nobody can force someone to do something not in the script. But I didn’t know that. I was too young.”
A year later, the actor further reiterated the negative effect the scene had on her in an interview with The Daily Mail. “They only told me about it before we had to film the scene, and I was so angry,” she said. “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.”
Schneider continued: “Marlon said to me: ‘Maria, don’t worry, it’s just a movie’, but during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn’t real, I was crying real tears. 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 apologize. Thankfully, there was just one take.”
Bertolucci expressed little remorse after Schneider’s comments were made, claiming that the young actor couldn’t understand what was going on because of her age. The director’s lack of care for Schneider’s feelings drew a wedge between him and the actor, and the two never made up, despite Schneider repairing her relationship with Brando.
The filmmaker had later shown slight guilt at the fact that he and Brando had not informed Schneider of their proper intentions. They had decided to conceal the scene from her in order to get a certain response, a practice that would certainly not fly in today’s productions. While Brando and Schneider made friends over the following years, Brando actually refused to speak to Bertolucci for 15 years because of the way things unfolded on set.
