Last night “This Is Heavy, Doc” tried to whitewash the Being Maria / Maria Schneider saga by calling me a whitewasher and a “poisoned soul.”
HE response; “A poisoned soul”? Who’s “white-washing”? I’ve gotten into this because the legend and narrative of Maria Schneider, who passed in 2011, and the tempest that’s been generated by her #MeToo allies has been used, I feel, to unfairly trash Bernardo Bertolucci’s professional reputation.
Was Schneider not a budding actress who was hired to bring to life before cameras a young, free-spirited Parisian character named Jeanne? When Brando pretended to anally assault Jeanne in Last Tango in Paris, Schneider-the-actress naturally responded with rage and anguish. That’s what Bertolucci wanted. It’s what the Tango dynamic required.
Bertolucci stated in 2016 that the sexual assault scene wasn’t a surprise as it was scripted. This is what I may or may not be able to verify by thoroughly reading and correctly translating the 1972 French-language Tango shooting script that yesterday arrived in my inbox.
The only surprise on the day of shooting, Bertolucci said nine years ago, was a decision to use butter as a lubricant.
Was it professionally unkind and disrespectful of Bertolucci and Brando to not invite Schneider into their small creative circle as the scene was being planned? Yes, it was. They hurt her feelings; she felt bruised. It was nonetheless a staged, allegedly written-out scene that required persuasive acting on the part of Brando and Schneider.
Schneider bore the emotional brunt of the scene, obviously. Pretending to endure a sexual assault had to feel traumatic to some extent, even within the realm of trying to sell a made-up, make-believe situation.
Keep in mind that Brando also felt emotionally manipulated and over-exposed in terms of his emotional past, which was used by Bertolucci to give dramatic definition to Paul.
Was it fair for Brando’s soft white underbelly to have been exploited for artistic motives? I think it was. Dramatic acting is not tiddly-winks, and yet Brando resented Bertolucci for having mined his personal childhood saga to produce dramatic dividends. They didn’t speak for quite a few years after Tango was released.
So did Bertolucci do something wrong or dishonorable by extracting strong, distinctive performances from Brando and Schneider, in some ways by manipulation and pushing their personal buttons and whatnot? I don’t think so. Art isn’t easy, and the creation process sometimes involves occasional bruisings and discomfort, especially given the fact that pulling emotional truth out of a person is essential.
What matters at the end of the day is what’s finally on the canvas. What Bertolucci did here and there may have been a bit cruel and hurtful, yes**, but it was done for the right reasons and was hardly a crime against humanity.
** Bertolucci’s manipulations on this film weren’t hugely different from that moment during the Chinatown shoot when Roman Polanski abruptly yanked a couple of strands of stray hair out of Faye Dunaway’s scalp. She was infuriated.
Not every first-rate director is an obsessive, but many are under the surface. The good ones are certainly exacting when it comes to the various details that have to be finessed and arranged just so.
