In 1971 Bernardo Bertolucci directed Marlo Brando and Maria Schneider in LAST TANGO IN PARIS.
The film featured a controversial rape scene between the two actors. Bertolucci and Brando coerced the nineteen year-old actress into performing the scene. Wikipedia reports that she later said, “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. 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. I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologise. Thankfully, there was just one take.”
Bertolucci said that “I feel guilty, but I don’t regret it.”
This rape was a crime.
Pure and simple.
Not art.
Rape.
The movie critic Pauline Kael stated, “October 14, 1972… should become a landmark in movie history comparable to May 29, 1913—the night Le Sacre du Printemps was first performed—in music history… Last Tango in Paris has the same kind of hypnotic excitement as the Sacre, the same primitive force, and the same thrusting, jabbing eroticism. The movie breakthrough has finally come.”
For when crimes against women become acceptable in Art.
As it was for THE RAPE OF THE SABINE WOMEN.
So Me Too #.
Not far enough.
