A shocking story every time it goes out, it returns to the media once more, and this time in a video interview dating back to 2013 that was exhumed by Elle magazine in its American version a few weeks ago, director Bernardo Bertolucci confirmed that Maria Schneider, the heroine of his famous movie Last Tango in Paris (1972), did not know anything regarding her rape scene. Back (she was 19 years old).
He said that the scene was real and that it was the actor Marlon Brando (48 years old) who suggested the morning of the shooting day to “use butter” for penetration. Adding that he felt guilty for what he did, but did not regret it: “I wanted the reaction of a girl who was raped and humiliated, not the feelings of an actress.”
Pointing out that “Maria hated me. Brando and I hated me until she died.” “Paris Match” recounted, six years following the film, that the young actress spent the night screaming and crying in her room. Schneider told the Daily Mail in 2007 that she felt “a little bit raped by Marlon and Bertolucci” and that Brando told her, “Maria, don’t worry, it’s just a movie.”
And she added, “My tears did not stop falling, and he did not relieve me following that or apologize.” Later, she told “Liberation”: “I was a young woman who did not know what I should do or what my rights were.” After that, she refused to film nudity scenes, but I had a bout of depression when I was asked in the movie “Caligula” to strip. One newspaper later wrote of the scene that “Maria made her own butter.”
The publication of Bertolucci’s confession, the photographer, that the scene was “real” and “a trap” for the actress, sparked a wave of resentment among some Hollywood actresses on social media. Especially since this “cursed role” (in “The Last Tango…”) left a trauma in the life of its owner, who later learned (not because of him, of course) psychological pains that led her to heroin, several suicide attempts, and a stay in mental health clinics.
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