Last Tango In Paris Star, Maria Schneider dies at 58

[cynicalmum]

Maria Schneider performed a graphic sex scene with Marlon Brando at only 18 years old.

In 2007 Schneider talked about how exploited and 'raped' she felt.

Now she has died, Bertolucci, the director, has talked of his regrets. But I think his comments smack of indifference....

www.thefirstpost.co.uk/74653,people,entertainment,last-tango-in-paris-star-maria-schneider-dies-at-58-bernardo-bertolucci

From what I remember it was basically soft porn, a middle aged man's fantasy & very misogynistic.

The trouble with this kind of film is that liberals feel they need to support it because the only other option is to side with pro-censorship right-wingers. So film critics queue up to call it a masterpiece etc.

Thus any critical understanding of the film gets swamped by a Right vs Left 'culture war'

Oh my god that sounds horrendous! Poor woman.

I really really really really hate the fact that there are so many films out there where critics should just have said "phwoargh I'll have a bit of that" (being nearly all straight blokes), but instead due to their reputations and pretentiousness have hallowed them as "classics".

So if you go to film school now (which I didn't, mainly because of this) you are set to watch whole heaps of "classic" films that nearly all seem to be about rape, dismemberings, murders, violent abuse of women etc.

The Guardian piece says, "her subsequent career was hindered by drug addiction and mental illness... Her last significant role was the anguished Mrs Rochester in Franco Zeffirelli's 1996 adaptation of Jane Eyre."

The mad wife in the attic. There's irony for you.

This has just recently resurfaced. Seems Bertolucci admitted that he and Brando agreed to go with the rape scene unknown to her to get a proper reaction of humiliation, hurt and surprise.

Brando was about 47 - she was 19.

Dittany, I learned from her....

I didn't realise she was so wrong in either the film or now

I wonder whether a similar fate awaits actors like Margo Stilley, whose first film was 9 Songs, a sexually explicit film including actual intercourse

Wrong? Young! (And I didn't see that this is an old thread, and she died a few years ago)

Stilley has done several films since 9 Songs, including mainstream comedy (How to Lose Friends and Influence People)

For all the fuss at the time I doubt most people have even heard of 9 Songs. Michael Winterbottom largely does indie/arty films. The film got a cinema release but , certainly in Edinburgh, it was only shown in the independent art house cinema.

I watched about 15 minutes of it on Amazon video and it is excruciatingly dull.

A link:

www.thewrap.com/last-tango-paris-rape-butter-marlon-brando-maria-schneider-bernardo-bertolucci/

Poor woman being deliberately surprised and humiliated in that way by two older and more powerful men.

it took me a while to actually understand what had happened when this story came out

The director should be arrested.

The facts of what happened seem rather unclear.

According to this interview from 2007 she did know about the rape scene beforehand, it just wasn't in the script & she felt pressured into doing it:

"That scene wasn't in the original script. The truth is it was Marlon who came up with the idea," she says.

"They only told me about it before we had to film the scene and I was so angry.

"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.

Also, the article in the link you posted says all the sex was simulated.

Clearly wrong & callous to pressure her into doing scene she wasn't comfortable with, but people seem to be interpreting it to mean that she was actually raped on set; not sure this is the case.

IMO, she was coerced into going along with simulated sex, which would have involved actual intimate touching, taking advantage of her inexperience re calling her agent.

IMO, that was sexual assault.

From my recollection of the film and the camera angles, there isn't intimate touching visible. Maria didn't claim there had been either. If there had been and she had not consented to it, or been coerced into it, that would have been assault. But I'm not sure it happened.

I haven't seen it.

The only thing the actress has said in the links is that there was no sex.

The director has said :
The stories originated with a YouTube user posting a 2013 interview on Nov. 23 in which Bertolucci admitted Schneider hated him because of the butter scene. But he did not say she was raped.

“I’d been in a way horrible to Maria because I didn’t tell her what was going on,” he said. “Because I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress. I wanted her to react and she felt humiliated… and I think that she hated me and also Marlon because we didn’t tell her that there was that detail of the butter used as a lubricant.”

If the butter was applied to her at all without consent, as this certainly implies, then it was sexual assault.

However, the director was clearly a manipulative horrible piece of shit at the very least.

But if it was applied to her leg, or lower back, then it wouldn't be considered sexual assault.

There's been some bizarre interpretations of the film and the artists' interviews, even in the mainstream media. We have the Guardian's, "Brando’s character uses a stick of butter to anally rape his lover" - wtf!? So now people are interpreting this as Brando actually penetrated Schneider with a stick of butter, rather than the character lubricating the penis/anus rape with butter (which is what happens in the fiction that is the film).

"However, the director was clearly a manipulative horrible piece of shit at the very least" - I totally agree.

I saw it in 1978 when I was 19. I honestly didn't know it was supposed to be anal sex. I don't think I even knew anal sex was a thing.

"In the United States, the definition of sexual assault varies widely between the individual states. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network defines sexual assault as "unwanted sexual contact that stops short of rape or attempted rape. This includes sexual touching and fondling."[3]

The National Center for Victims of Crime states:[4]

“ Sexual assault takes many forms including attacks such as rape or attempted rape, as well as any unwanted sexual contact or threats. Usually a sexual assault occurs when someone touches any part of another person's body in a sexual way, even through clothes, without that person's consent. ”

Brag, why would touching her leg or lower back, without her consent, with an item that was intended to portray a sexual lubricant, not be sexual assault?

Brag, that is my understanding of what happened, yes. But I haven't seen the film.

Good article by Sali Hughes.

www.the-pool.com/news-views/opinion/2016/49/sali-hughes-on-maria-schneider-and-hollywood-men