Last Tango in Paris director Bernardo Bertolucci says Marlon Brando-Maria Schneider rape scene not consensual

In a 2013 video that resurfaced recently, the director of the controversial but sometimes considered high-art film Last Tango in Paris Bernardo Bertolucci confessed that the infamous ‘butter rape scene’ between the lead actors Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider was not consensual.

The Guardian reported that Bertolucci admitted in the video that he “conspired with Marlon Brando to film a graphic rape scene without the consent of 19-year-old actor Maria Schneider”. Bertolucci, according to the video, reportedly came up with the idea (with Brando) to shoot the graphic rape scene, where Brando’s character uses butter to sodomise Schneider’s character. Brando was 48 at that time.

“The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon in the morning before shooting,” Bertulocci said at an event held at La Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 2013, The Guardian report quoted him as saying. Bertolucci reportedly wanted a reaction “as a girl, not as an actress” and went on to admit that Schneider probably “hated me and also Marlon because we didn’t tell her”.

The explicit rape scene is one of the best remembered moments from the film; disturbing no doubt. Brando went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role and Bertolucci was nominated for Best Director.

Schneider, in an interview in 2007 , revealed that she felt “humiliated” and “a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci”. She went on to say that the scene wasn’t in the original script and that it was Brando who came up with the idea. “They only told me about it before we had to film the scene and I was so angry,” Mail Online quoted her as saying.

Following the fame that Last Tango in Paris gave her, Schneider revealed that she got into drugs — “pot and then cocaine, LSD and heroin, it was like an escape from reality”.

Schneider passed away in February 2011 after a long illness at 58 and her interview with Mail Online’s Lina Das wasn’t picked up until the former’s death, noted Slate . 

Schneider went on to act opposite Jack Nicholson in The Passenger and worked with directors such as René Clément in The Baby Sitter and Jacques Rivette in Merry-Go-Round. Brando, meanwhile, is remembered for his performances in The Godfather, A Streetcar Named Desire, Apocalypse Now and Julius Caesar.

Celebs react

Actors Anna Kendrick and Chris Evans had a little exchange on Twitter discussing this ‘confession’.

Ms Schneider stated this several years ago. I used to get eye-rolls when I brought it up to people (aka dudes).

— Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) December 3, 2016

Zero Dark Thirty star Jessica Chastain said of the revelations, “To all the people that love this film- you’re watching a 19yr old get raped by a 48yr old man. The director planned her attack. I feel sick.”

To all the people that love this film- you're watching a 19yr old get raped by a 48yr old man. The director planned her attack. I feel sick. https://t.co/qVDom2gYf6

— Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) December 3, 2016

Last Tango in Paris was critically lauded but surrounded in public controversy. The film’s director was put on trial for obscenity in Italy after the release of the film. Copies of the film were destroyed at the time and Bertolucci was served with a four-month suspended sentence in prison and denied his civil (including voting) rights for five years.

With inputs from PTI