Bernardo Bertolucci defends ‘Last Tango’ rape scene

Veteran director has been under attack over past few days over abusing Maria Schneider

ROME: Italian film-maker Bernardo Bertolucci has blamed the ongoing row over his comments regarding the sex scene in Last Tango in Paris on a “ridiculous misunderstanding.” The veteran director has been under attack over the past few days by several Hollywood stars who accused him and actor Marlon Brando of abusing Maria Schneider – the female lead of the 1972 film – by keeping her in the dark about how the scene was to be shot.

Bertolucci, 76, acknowledged that the then 19-year-old Schneider was not aware that Brando’s character would use butter during the scene. “I want, for the very last time, to clear up a ridiculous misunderstanding,” Bertolucci said in a statement. “We wanted her spontaneous reaction. The misunderstanding arises from this. People thought, and think, that Maria was not informed of the violence she was to suffer in the scene. False! She knew everything because she had read the script, in which it was all described.”

Bertolucci spoke out after the recent online resurfacing of a 2013 interview in which he said that him and Brando had decided to introduce butter without informing Schneider. Bertolucci, considered one of the giants of Italian and world cinema, confirmed that was what happened. “The only new thing was the idea of the butter. It was this, I learned many years later, that upset Maria and not the violence that was in the scene and was envisaged in the script of the film,” he stated. “It is both consoling and distressing that anyone could be so naive to believe that what happens on the cinema screen actually takes place. Those who do not realise that sex is always just simulated in films probably believe that every time John Wayne shoots an enemy, someone really dies.”

In the 2013 exchange, Bertolucci explains how the butter idea came about. “We were having breakfast with Marlon on the floor of the flat where I was shooting,” the director recalled. “There was a baguette, there was butter and we looked at each other and, without saying anything, we knew what we wanted.”

Schneider, who struggled with drug addiction and depression until her death in 2011, said four years earlier that she had felt “a little raped” during the scene and was profoundly angry about it for years afterwards.

The relaying of Bertolucci’s interview comments have prompted outrage all over social media, fuelled by Hollywood’s top actors. “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,” Oscar-nominated Jessica Chastain wrote on Twitter.

Actor Chris Evans echoed her sentiments. “I will never look at this film, Bertolucci or Brando the same way again. This is beyond disgusting. I feel rage.” Westworld star Evan Rachel Wood, who recently opened up about her own sexual abuse, described Bertolucci and Brando – who died aged 80, in 2004 – as “very sick individuals to think that was ok.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 7^th, 2016.

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