L.A Confidential: Fear and loathing in Hollywood

Actors outraged over non-consensual rape scene in ‘Last Tango in Paris’

Hollywood stars have expressed shock and outrage after a video recently resurfaced showing Bernando Bertolucci, the Italian director, admitting that an infamous rape scene from Last Tango in Paris was shot without the consent of the female actor involved, reported The Telegraph. Maria Schneider was just 19 when she starred alongside Marlon Brando, then 48, in the 1972 film. In one scene, Brando’s character uses a stick of butter before raping Schneider’s character.



Schneider told the Daily Mail in 2007 that no actual sex took place, but that she had felt “a little raped” by both Brando and Bertolucci because she had been forced to take part in the scene with no prior warning. “The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon in the morning before shooting it but I’ve been, in a way, horrible to Maria because I didn’t tell her what was going on. I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actor,” Bertolucci said in the clip, which has been cited previously but only came to widespread attention this week.

“I wanted her to react as she felt humiliated if it goes on and she shouts ‘no no’,” he continued, “and I think that she hated me and also Marlon. And I still feel very guilty for that.”

Bertlolucci, 76, said despite his guilt he had no regrets. “I feel guilty but I do not regret it. You know to make movies is sometimes to obtain something that we have to be completely free. I didn’t want Maria to act her humiliation, her rage. I wanted her to feel.”

Jessica Chastain, the Zero Dark Thirty star, was one of several film actors to express outrage. “To all the people that love this film — you’re watching a 19 year old get raped by a 48 year old man. The director planned her attack. I feel sick.” Others within the industry also took to social media to express their outrage, including Westworld actor Evan Rachel Wood, who last week said she has been raped twice in her life, and no longer wants to stay silent about it. “This is heartbreaking and outrageous,” Wood tweeted. “The two of them are very sick individuals to think that was okay.”



Captain America star Chris Evans wrote, “Wow. I will never look at this film, Bertolucci or Brando the same way again. This is beyond disgusting. I feel rage.” Ava DuVernay, the director and screenwriter added, “Inexcusable. As a director, I can barely fathom this. As a woman, I am horrified, disgusted and enraged by it.”

Schneider said in the 2007 interview that she had been infuriated by the scene at the time.

“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.” Schneider died of cancer in 2011.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6^th, 2016.

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