A shocking story, every time it goes out, returns to the media once more, and this time in a video interview dating back to 2013, which 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 the scene of the attack. From the 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.” Adding that he felt guilty for what he did, but did not regret it: “I wanted the reaction of a girl who was assaulted 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 offended 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, I 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.
“Let them say what they like regarding me: abuser, addict, bad-tempered, I don’t care,” Maria told Paris Match in 1978. The star of a number of Anthony films died of cancer at the age of 58. Brando said he had never seen the assault scene once in his life.
