The infamous rape scene in the 1972 film Last Tango in Paris was non-consensual, according to comments director Bernardo Bertolucci made in an interview he gave in 2013 and recently unearthed by Elle.
Anyone who’s seen the infamous film—for which explicit depiction of sex between a then 48-year-old Marlon Brando and the 19-year-old French actress Maria Schneider sparked widespread outrage—knows exactly what scene Bertolucci is talking about.
According to the director, he and Brando didn’t tell Schneider that Brando was going to use a stick of butter as lubricant during the scene, an idea they had on the morning of the shoot. "I wanted her to act humiliated,” Bertolucci said in the interview, which was taped at an event at La Cinémathèque Française. “I think she hated me and also Marlon because we didn't tell her,” he added.
When speaking to The Daily Mail in 2007, Schneider revealed that she did indeed feel “raped” and “humiliated” by Brando. The story however, failed to gain traction and Bertolucci’s career and reputation remained virtually unharmed, something Chris Evans and Anna Kendrick discussed via Twitter:
Bertolucci admitted that he felt horrible for the way he treated Schneider, but justified his tactics in the name of art. “I think you have to be completely free," Bertolucci said in the video. "I didn't want Maria to act her humiliation, her rage, I wanted her to—Maria to feel...the rage and humiliation. Then, she hated me for all of her life."
After the film, Schneider descended into darkness, her life marred by drug addiction and multiple suicide attempts. She died in 2011 at 58 years old.
