The infamous scene from "Last Tango in Paris" that ruined the lead actress's life

By: Emma Jones/BBC
Translation: Telegrafi.com

It may be the most infamous scene in the history of cinema. The sexually explicit drama that premiered in 1972, Last Tango in Paris [Last Tango in Paris] – directed by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci – tells the story of a relationship between a middle-aged man, Pol, and a young girl, Ginny, in a Paris apartment. The so-called “butter scene” was not part of the original script and elements of it were shot without the prior consent of the 19-year-old actress, Maria Schneider.

After the film's premiere, Schneider struggled for years with drug addiction and mental health issues, but her story and the making of the film Last Tango in Paris are now being shown through film To be Mary [Being Maria]. In the film, Matt Dillon plays Marlon Brando, who portrayed Paul, while Anamaria Vartolomei plays Maria Schneider. French director Jessica Palud adapted the story from a 2018 memoir by Maria's cousin, journalist Vanessa Schneider.

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"I think we need to look at the context of the time when it was made." Last Tango in Paris"It's been fifty years since the film was made," Matt Dillon tells the BBC. "It was a different time, but it's very important to look at it from a different perspective today. It was a really traumatic experience for her. And not just at the time it happened, because in many ways that experience followed her and haunted her throughout her life."

To be Mary explores Schneider's past: she was the product of an extramarital affair between the famous French actor Daniel Gélin and a Romanian model. She first met her father when she was a teenager, and he introduced her to film sets. Last Tango in Paris It was her first leading role, and she would later recall – in a 2007 interview, when she was in her fifties – that she had been persuaded to take the role instead of a film with French actor Alain Delon, and that at 19 she “didn’t quite understand the sexual content of the film.” She said she “had a bad feeling about the whole thing,” but her agency had told her that she couldn’t turn down a role with Marlon Brando, one of the biggest stars of XNUMXth-century cinema.

She recalled what happened the day the scene was shot, where the character she played is raped by Brando, using butter as a lubricant. “That scene wasn’t in the original script. The truth is that Marlon suggested the idea. They told me just before we shot the scene and I was very angry … I felt humiliated and, to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t comfort me or apologize,” she said. “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. Luckily, there was only one take of that scene.”

Bertolucci would later talk about why he withheld details of the scene from Schneider, saying, “I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress. I wanted her to react humiliated.” He insisted that only the use of butter had surprised the actress, but Matt Dillon says what happened was “really wrong.”

"It's something actors often do - we don't tell the other person what we're going to do, or the director encourages us to not reveal our actions, so that we can get a real reaction," he says. "But it was really wrong to do that in such a sensitive scene."

Jessica Palud told the BBC that the replay of the rape scene "could not have been avoided" in the To be Mary, but this time the audience sees the events from Maria Schneider’s perspective. “I couldn’t avoid filming this scene because it was the exact moment her life changed completely. Everything goes wrong from there,” says Palud. “It was important that the scene be shown from her perspective – in her body, in her gaze, in what she experienced – and the fact that there were witnesses. Maria was being raped in front of the entire film crew, who were just watching and not reacting.”

This time, the scene was set up with the help of an intimacy coordinator, and Dillon, 61, says it was the first time he had worked with one. “I said to the intimacy coordinator, ‘Do you know what this scene is about?’” he said. “She said yes, and I said, ‘Because you can trace the origin of the intimacy coordinator role to this scene in that movie.’”

The use of an intimacy coordinator, who acts as a choreographer and intermediary between actors and production during simulated sexual or nude scenes, has become standard practice in the film industry following the movement #MeToo. Today it makes news even when actors refuse to use it – like Mikey Madison in the movie Anora, the Oscar winner, or when Gwyneth Paltrow revealed that she had told the coordinator to "stand back a little" during sex scenes with Timothée Chalamet in Supreme Martyr [Marty Supreme].

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing, I think it can evolve into something good,” Dillon says of the use of privacy coordinators. “It seems like they’re there to stop boundaries being violated, but they’re actually creating boundaries that allow for different ways of approaching these scenes. I hope it evolves in that direction, rather than people feeling like they’re there to tell us what we can and can’t do. Anamaria and I felt very comfortable.”

Anamaria Vartolomei (who also starred in the film happening, winner of the Golden Lion, which deals with illegal abortion), says that although she felt "safe, protected and guided" while filming the rape scene in To be Mary, she was shocked again. “That scene was really violent,” she tells the BBC. “I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Maria, because she really felt it. I was just playing her. But it really happened to her, and there was no one around. There were just people watching and doing nothing. I think the violence was doubly violent because she didn’t have the support that I had on set – but again, it was incredibly difficult for me.”

"I was so emotionally overwhelmed that day. I couldn't stop crying because I felt like I had accumulated the violence of the scene when I saw it on screen. When I had to play it, all the tears came out of me. I think it's very brutal. And it's crazy to think that someone could do something like that."

Not only did Maria Schneider lack professional support during filming, she also lacked the experience to know that Bertolucci couldn't force her to do that scene. "I should have called my agent or asked my lawyer to come to the shoot, because you can't force someone to do something that's not in the script—but, at the time, I didn't know that," she later said.

But it was also the shock caused by the film itself. Last Tango in Paris – after its release in October 1972 – was the one that would destroy Schneider. Despite (or perhaps helped by) the fact that it was banned or restricted in several countries, the film grossed an estimated $36 million in the US alone [estimated value of €197 million in 2025]. In France, audiences were reported to have waited in line for over two hours to get a ticket.

The contrast between Bertolucci, Brando and Schneider became clear: the critical response to the film solidified Bertolucci's reputation as an international master, and both he and Brando were nominated for Oscars for the film. Brando – already doubled as a legend for his role in the film Nuni [The Godfather] by Francis Ford Coppola during the same period – reportedly earned around three million dollars [estimated value of 16.5 million euros in 2025] from The last tango, after receiving a percentage of the profits. Schneider said she was paid about four thousand dollars [approximately 22 thousand euros in 2025]. She appeared completely nude in the film – Brando never appeared nude.

The young girl found it increasingly difficult to cope with the sudden fame. In interviews she gave after the film's premiere, she declared that she had slept with 50 men and 20 women and that she had "tried heroin", because - as she would later explain - even though this was not true, she

she was seen as “that sexy, stupid woman.” Her erratic behavior, she said, stemmed from fear. “To suddenly become famous all over the world was a terrifying thing,” she said. “I didn’t have bodyguards like they do today. People thought I was just like my character, and I was making up stories for the media, but that wasn’t me … It drove me crazy. I started using drugs … It was like an escape from reality. It was the 70s [of the XNUMXth century] and anything was happening back then.”

Her cousin, Vanessa Schneider, has said that she was also a victim of the double standards of the time: "To puritanical viewers, she was a soft-spoken woman who made porn. It was brutal for her, especially when it didn't fit her nature at all - she was quite modest, reserved and in some ways even conservative."

“People thought I was like the girl in the movie, but that wasn’t me,” Maria Schneider said in a 2007 interview. “I felt very sad, because I was being treated like a sex symbol; I wanted to be known as an actress, and the whole scandal and the aftermath of the movie drove me crazy – I had an emotional breakdown.” Schneider also revealed that she had attempted suicide during that period.

Schneider later managed to break free from her addiction, but even though she made about 50 films during her career (including the acclaimed film The Passenger, in 1975, where she starred alongside Jack Nicholson), she stated that "The last tango It's still the movie everyone asks me about.” She died in 2011, from cancer.

“The unfortunate thing is that Maria Schneider gave an incredible performance in that movie, and you could clearly see that her career could have taken a completely different direction,” says Matt Dillon. “But she already had so many obstacles in front of her. Her family was in a very messy situation. She was abandoned by her parents and then she was abandoned by the people she worked with. I think that feeling of abandonment followed her throughout her life.”

Schneider is not the only actress of that generation to suffer because of the fuss surrounding an erotic film in which she starred. Sylvia Kristel also had a hard time moving away from the sensation caused by the soft-porn film. Emanuela [Emmanuelle] in 1974, in which she had the lead role and which also included a rape scene. And it wasn't just women who suffered from making sexually explicit films; Schneider later said that "even Brando said he felt raped and manipulated" during the infamous scene. Last Tango in Paris.

"It was the era of famous directors," the podcast host tells the BBC. Girls in the movie [Girls on Film], Anna Smith. "And the pattern, largely, seems to be authoritarian male directors exploiting and intimidating young actresses. This sense of ownership, by some of these exalted men, gave them the power to control women."

“We had this idea of ​​the creator, of the director with supreme power,” says Vartolomei, “and they were considered to be some kind of directorial gurus, and everyone around them listened to them like they were gods. I think that was the problem back then. Now we are more protected, our voice is heard, and also valued – which wasn’t the case back then.”

But, the film director To be Mary, Jessica Palud, points out that one of the most remarkable aspects of Schneider's character was that, long before the era of #MeToo, she spoke openly about what happened during the filming of Last Tango in Paris"What I learned that was really interesting and touching about her is that, even though it was the '70s [of the XNUMXth century] and at that time many young actresses were being attacked or raped, they kept it to themselves. Maria was very clear and direct in interviews ... she would talk, but no one would listen."

Schneider's experience in The last tango was taken seriously in 2016 when a 2013 interview with Bertolucci resurfaced, about French Cinémathèque, where he talked about the infamous scene and his wish that Maria Schneider's humiliation had been real. This time it caused great public outrage. Some people had not previously realized that, although the sex scene was traumatic, it was only simulated between Brando and Schneider. The director, then 76, called the outrage "ridiculous" and insisted that Schneider had prior knowledge of the scene.

The three main figures in Last Tango in Paris – Bertolucci, Brando and Schneider – are now deceased. Knowing that the horror, shock, sadness and anger that appear on Maria Schneider's face are real and deliberately provoked, should the film, as the French newspaper asked, Le Monde – after the cancellation of a show in Paris in 2024, due to protests – be accompanied by a special warning?

“I’ve long thought that the perceived canon of cinematic masterpieces needs to be reexamined – because it comes from a deeply patriarchal place,” says Anna Smith. “I think it’s healthy to revisit the classics from a modern perspective; I hope we’ve now developed a deeper understanding of the harm that certain attitudes and practices can cause.”

Jessica Palud says: To be Mary tries to show this, but adds that "I didn't want to judge or condemn, but to show the system and what needs to change in it, so that this new generation is protected. There is still a lot to do. But, thank God, a scene like that wouldn't happen today."

Vartolomei adds: “I feel like this film is doing justice to Maria, along with Vanessa Schneider’s book. At the time Maria was considered a victim, but to me she is much more than that – she found the strength to speak out, to have her story heard, even though she decided to speak out in a society that wasn’t ready to accept her voice. But now I’m just happy that we’re finally hearing her.” /Telegraph/