Director Admits This Rape Scene Was Nonconsensual & Designed To "Humiliate" Actress

Last Tango in Paris, a 1972 Bernardo Bertolucci film, is famed for its explicit sex scenes starring 48-year-old Marlon Brando and 19-year-old French actress Maria Schneider. At the time, it was given an X rating, the equivalent of a modern-day 18 — and to this day, its on-screen trysts remain controversial. Both Schneider and Brando, who have since died, later claimed that they felt violated and humiliated by Bertolucci. Here's why.

As Elle reports, a 2013 video of the Italian director, whom younger audiences will recognise from his work on Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers, has surfaced. The video shows Bertolucci admitting that the scene in which Brando's character, Paul, rapes Schneider's Jeanne, using a stick of butter as a lubricant, was planned without the actress' knowledge or consent. According to the director, he and Brando came up with the idea without involving Schneider.

"The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon in the morning before shooting," he said during an event at Paris' La Cinémathèque Française. Bertolucci explained that he wanted her "reaction as a girl, not as an actress." In other words, he wanted her to actually experience the rape.

"I wanted her to react humiliated," he continued. "I think she hated me and also Marlon, because we didn't tell her...to obtain something, I think you have to be completely free. 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."

Though he offered that he felt bad about the decision "in a way," he expressed no regret.

In a 2006 interview, Schneider said she "cried real tears" during the scene. She also claimed that her co-star Brando complained of feeling "raped and manipulated" by Bertolucci, conveniently glossing over his role in Schneider's sexual assault. The actor died in 2004, followed by Schneider in 2011. Bertolucci, meanwhile, is still alive. His latest film, Me and You, was released in 2012.