I mentioned a couple of days ago that I’ll be attending a Being Maria post-screening q&a at Manhattan’s Quad Cinema. Thursday evening (3.20) at 7:15 pm. Director Jessica Palud and Matt Dillon (who does an excellent job of portraying Marlon Brando in the film) will be taking questions.
Being Maria, which I saw last night, explores the ramifications and results of trauma visited upon poor Maria Schneider, who died of cancer in 2011. Her troubles were due to the shooting of the infamous anal sex scene, the film says, and especially due to the persistent toxic reactions to that scene. The main topic is the jagged relationship between Schneider, Brando and Last Tango in Paris director-cowriter Bernardo Bertolucci.
I for one believe that it’s a dishonest film as Schneider (played by Anamaria Vartolomei) states that the sexual assault scene was a Brando-Bertolucci idea that was sprung on her at the last minute, which wasn’t the all of it or so I strongly suspect.
Bertolucci stated in 2016 that the only surprise visited upon Schneider was the use of butter as a lubricant, and that Schneider, having read the shooting script, knew that the scene would depict sexual assault.
I’m presuming that Bertolucci was speaking honestly when he said this, and yet Schneider claimed years ago that the anal sex scene wasn’t scripted but was cooked up on the morning of filming between Bertolucci and Brando…an improvisational thing altogether and not just regarding the use of butter.
And yet before shooting the scene Bertolucci (played by Giuseppe Maggio) tells Schneider that it will represent a breaking of trust between the Paul and Jeanne characters.
I have reason to believe that the Tango shooting script spells out the assault with some clarity, and I may even have proof that it’s actually in the shooting script, as I received a 100% authentic Tango shooting script PDF earlier today.
The 201-page script is all in French, but if the scene is in there I’ll find it.
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A friend says that the Tango shooting draft “indicates the scene in question will depict a sexual violation.”
Before shooting the scene Bertolucci tells Schneider that the scene will enact rape and represent dominance.
I won’t know for sure until I’ve read the 201-page shooting draft cover to cover, but I do trust (or WANT to trust) that Bertolucci, being a first-rate artist, a legendary sensualist and an immaculate truth-teller, was not fibbing in 2016 when he recounted the 1972 filming episode in question.
Posted on 6.4.19: I’ve been coming to Paris for decades, but until today I’d never visited the Last Tango in Paris apartment building in Passy with that spacious, musty-looking apartment that Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider had their anonymous encounters in.
In the film the address is 1 rue Jules Verne, but in actuality it’s located at 1 rue de l’Alboni. On top of which the bar/tabac where Schneider goes to call her mother on a pay phone is right across the walkway and down one flight.
The fact that I could sense a very faint residual after-vibe was entirely due to my own fevered imagination, but nonetheless this is the place where it all happened. Only Vittorio Storaro lives on.
