You know what disturbed me about that Bernardo Bertolucci story yesterday? How many people were full-on raging about the use of the word “rape.” Semantic parsing isn’t a good look, especially when the discussion involved an actress (Maria Schneider) who explicitly said she felt like she had been raped, not to mention the discussion of Bertolucci admitting in 2013 that he colluded with Marlon Brando to assault Schneider, who was only 19 years old at the time. For whatever record, rape is defined as the “unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim.” What happened to Schneider constituted rape. She felt like she was raped. Bertolucci admits that they did not get her consent for certain parts of the scene.
But now that Bertolucci’s 2013 comments have gone viral, he wants to correct the record once again, lest his entire filmography be tainted by a crime he clearly admitted to just a few years ago. He issued a statement yesterday in his native tongue (Italian), and the statement was translated by Variety. Here you go:
“I would like, for the last time, to clear up a ridiculous misunderstanding that continues to generate press reports about ‘Last Tango in Paris’ around the world. Several years ago at the Cinemathèque Francaise someone asked me for details on the famous ‘butter scene.’ I specified, but perhaps I was not clear, that I decided with Marlon Brando not to inform Maria that we would have used butter. We wanted her spontaneous reaction to that improper use [of the butter]. That is where the misunderstanding lies. Somebody thought, and thinks, that Maria had not been informed about the violence on her. That is false! Maria knew everything because she had read the script, where it was all described. The only novelty was the idea of the butter. And that, as I learned many years later, offended Maria. Not the violence that she is subjected to in the scene, which was written in the screenplay.”
Again, the semantic parsing does no one any good. A teenage actress thought she was going to be filming an already violent and emotionally wrought scene, and then she was “surprised” by her costar and director when they made the decision to assault her with butter for a more “authentic” reaction. Again, consent is the issue. Bertolucci’s statement is basically like “we didn’t get her consent but it’s cool because it’s just butter.” It reminds me of the Stanford rape case and what the rapist’s father dismissed his son’s crime as “twenty minutes of action.” Oh, you just raped her with butter without her consent? Case closed, right?
Photos courtesy of WENN.
White men rule the world so not surprised that they got away with it.
The world just keeps getting more and more into hell and I don’t have any hope left in humanity.
It will all swing back around again. We get better, then we get worse, then we get better. Hope I live to see it!
@Lisa — this is my comfort, too. I was telling my therapist this yesterday, that the swinging of the pendulum is unpleasant, but know that it exists is helpful/comforting. This is an unavoidable part of the cycle.
this whole thing makes me sick to my stomach
This is basically my mindset right now too, Maya.
The good that I can see in this is that these stories are coming out. If anything, this frightful year of 2016 has the Standford rape case, Nate Parker rape, Cosby victims out there for the world to see and read, and conversations have been started – it’s a ripple through time and space that can do good hopefully. And the stories are condemning for the perpetrators. It’s not perfect, it’s not good, but it’s getting better and hopefully it will make these psychopaths at least reluctant to put someone through this torture in this day and age of social media and everything so easily being broadcast. Hopefully, it will also give women everywhere more power to fight back, speak up and not wait years and decades to do so…
I have never watched anything by either Bertolucci or Brando and I don’t intend to EVER. And they deserve retribution.
I wouldn’t be so quick to say things are getting better — see today’s news about Polanski. Maybe they are getting more public attention which I suppose is good, provided actual action is taken. When there is attention + no consequences, I start losing hope.
Oh dear, and now all the ‘Hollywood types’ who support bottom feeders like Polanski, Allen, Crosby et al are all going to come to the fore and claim it’s all just a misunderstanding and try and sweep it all under the carpet as they have done for decades because he’s such a great ‘artist’.
he IS a great artist. but like many before, he is an awful human being.
people seem to forget that artists can be very disturbed, Hitchcock, Picasso, always come to mind first. They DO get a free pass cos they are talented, so it is a vicious circle.
Not to detract from your larger point which is a worthy one but the worst you could say about Picasso was that he was a womanizer.
Disturbed? Maybe…but he wasn’t an accused rapist.
Kitten
It is very well documented that Dickens abused women, as well as Picasso. The list is long. Women were in different position back in the days, so men had even less boundaries.
It is hard to say which artist was violent, which one was a wife beater, which one was a rapist. Jimmy Page is basically a pedo, Connery likes to beat women, Salinger another pedo… It is all so messed up.
Not all women report rape, not all of them realize that a husband/partner can rape you. It is so complicated and disturbing.
Is anyone defending Bill Cosby? I’m actually seriously asking. I mean, after everything that has come out, are there really people defending him?
This guy can disappear with Cosby, Polanski, Allen and Parker.
People have. Many, if not all, of his Cosby Show costars have stuck by him: Rayven, Phylicia, Malcolm, have all used the strawman argument that he was such a great guy to them, that it’s simply not possible that he could be a rapist. They’ve also claimed that everyone is just jealous of his success as a black man in Hollywood and this is a conspiracy to take him down a peg.
I think that theirs is a difficult position to be in… Reading Diane Keaton’s book, I began to wonder what it would be like to hear allegations like that against someone you dated (Woody, ugh). But the evidence in both cases is so damning it’s impossible to ignore. I really hate that people that I once liked–not Cosby or Allen–have sided with the abusers.
Imagine being 19, and your costar goes off script in a rape scene. And you don’t know how far off script he’s going to go, and he’s really well respected and famous. And the director is on his side egging him on.
They assaulted her. Doesn’t matter if there was penetration. It doesn’t need to be rape rape to count.
Yes. I don’t believe anything he says.
He’s admitted the damning part, he just doesn’t realise it.
He admitted to purposefully humiliating, shocking and angering her without her consent. To putting her in a position where she had all of her control removed.
That to me is enough intent that it doesn’t matter about the rest.
How do you say f*ck this guy in Italian?
@detritus
It would be sort of ‘sto stronzo, ma che vada a farsi fottere’, it’s not a literal translation but it fits the bill.
Does any 19 year old know s what “off script” even means? I think Maria, like many young women under the age of 30 is too naive that they will be a star in any movie, and these perverts that are in high places of the film industry take advantage of it. I knew she was raped, I have always believed her, and the sad part was I am not surprised which is sad and it is becoming very disgusting and scary. I feel very sorry for any young man or woman who want to be famous, because this what they will wish for.
Kiki:
I think that a person knows when something feels “wrong.” So a child or a developmentally disabled person, even though they may not know what sex is for example, innately knows that an act that is being perpetrated on them is wrong.
Maria stated in an interview that she felt very comfortable being naked in the scenes, but something happened which felt wrong to her. She may have been 19 at the time and in tune with the 70’s- a time when many mores were being challenged-but something felt wrong in that scene.
This.
Consent is the issue. That’s it, really, isn’t it? That’s it and all about it. The end.
Not just that. Maria said the rape scene was NOT in the script. Which is why I don’t believe this hideous man one bit.
There was clearly a scene of sorts ready to be acted, but at the last minute it became a rape scene with a stick of butter. Something is getting lost in translation here. Methinks the narrative around what happened is being changed.
In the script, was it originally a rape scene – sans butter stick – or not?? She talked about it as though she DID NOT KNOW that it was going to BE a rape scene. That’s the difference here, much as I suspect, he doesn’t want to admit it.
I think she did know about the rape scene. She talked about it in interviews, but notes that it was a last minute change and she wasn’t comfortable with it. So she was told last minute/day of that there was going to be a rape scene, she didn’t feel comfortable, and then during the filming they add the extra humiliation with butter.
It is troubling no matter what, but I do think the nuance is important.
I was just reading thru the script. It states that Brando’s character. Paul, sodomizes Maria’s character, Jeanne. Here is the link:
http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Last-Tango-in-Paris.html
The butter scene is in the script and the scene is described as violent.
@Amelie Bertolucci himself admitted he had the idea for the butter the morning before shooting it and sprung it on her. So either that script is a transcript after the fact, or he didn’t show Maria the revised shooting script. She said she didn’t know & he confirmed it.
Whether that is the actual final shooting script is not proven by a transcript on the internet. One would have to see the actual copy she was working with. More probably it is a transcript that was typed up afterwards. And he admitted things were changed basically just before shooting. So no, that whole thing with the butter was not in the script she had prepared to shoot.
And the director could have told her about his and Brando’s “morning decision” before getting to work on that scene. As a decent human being should and would have. But he did not because he wanted an “honest reaction”. He also admitted to this. So now for him to pretend all was fine and she fully knew what she was in for and it was just the bit with the butter – and what’s a little butter in this context ey?! – is disgusting. Apart from contradicting himself there, he just abused her all over again.
Scripts can and do change on a daily basis. It is entirely possible that the scene was both in the script, and she only learned about it that day. This is not unusual in film production. No script is static.
Scripts are generally handed out each day, sometimes color coded to ensure everyone is working from the same script since everyone from PA’s to set dressers to makeup artists need one.
@Amelie
Scripts change, even nowadays.
‘Gladiator’ started filming with a 30-page script, even Russell Crowe said so in an interview; he also said that many days they started filming not knowing what kind of scenes they will be asked to be part of….. If you download Gladiator’s script now in 2016, you will see there are about 120 pages of script.
Yes, it is. The biggest thing in these cases. Consent vs coercion. The ‘new’ definition of rape was hard fought for unacknowledged victims and survivors such as her. She was coerced but the times back then minimised her ordeal to the point she had to qualify and defend her right to her own trauma.
And it’s an all-or-nothing thing. It doesn’t matter what she may have consented to prior to the butter. It doesn’t matter if she said OK to 95% of the scene, if there’s one part of it–however big or small–she said no to or had no prior knowledge of in order to voice consent, it is rape.
Unless Brando was making a sandwich with that butter and the angle just made it seem that he was inserting it in her, it’s rape and it’s absolutely appalling.
Butter or no butter, it doesn’t make any difference. What they have done is despicable.
For those of you who can read Italian here there is a small excerpt of Bertolucci’s statement:
‘L’idea di come girare questa scena è venuta a me e a Marlon Brando mentre stavamo facendo colazione… Ad un certo punto lui ha cominciato a spalmare il burro su una baguette: subito ci siamo lanciati un’occhiata complice. Abbiamo deciso di non dire niente a Maria per avere da lei una reazione più realistica riguardo l’uso improprio del burro. È questo che ha generato il malinteso.
Maria dice: ‘ Mi sono sentita umiliata e, ad essere onesti, anche un po’ violentata da Marlon Brando e da Bernardo Bertolucci. Dopo la scena, Marlon non mi ha chiesto scusa e non mi ha neppure consolato’
For those of you who don’t read Italian.. Long story short:
Brando and Bertolucci were having breakfast. Brando was spreading butter on his piece of bread and they both looked at each other with a mischevious grin and BAM! The idea!
After the scene neither the actor or the director apologized to her or tried to console her.
Apart from this story being incredibly and BEYOND gross (what kind of man thinks of rape while spreading butter on a piece of bread is beyond my comprehension)… Maria might have even known about that scene but I highly doubt she, a 19 year old actress, had the knowledge to fully understand what that would have meant in a larger scale and in the upcoming years.
Maria was exploited and humiliated by 2 very sexist, white and powerful men.
Without even a second thought.
She was that disposable to them, and the only time there was the slightest remorse was when they suffered the barest consequences, when she was upset with them.
Agreed. The whole story is distrurbing on different levels, but the way they obviously saw her as basically disposable and the lack of remorse- as if this was just a normal case of a coworker/employee being upset with them about a misunderstanding instead of them sexually violating some girl for ‘art’- is a big part of that. It’s as if this guy doesn’t even see what’s wrong with what they did. And I agree that the whole ‘well he didn’t actually rape her’ argument is splitting hairs. Making contact with her privates with a foreign object without her knowing and consenting to that happening first is still sexually assaulting her. It must have been really traumatizing for her to have not only gone through that, but to have it happen on a film that many people would see for years thinking they were just watching an acting scene when the truth was that she was being assaulted on film.
Thank you!
And I would add that I don’t believe Maria thought she was going to be doing a rape scene, butter or no.
Only the script being leaked to the public will tell but did this 19 year old believe that she was going to be doing a simulated rape scene in that movie??
In the end, a ‘prop’ was pushed up against her (into her a little??). Did she understand this as the scene (minus prop) that she had to do?
I only have my doubts ofcourse but I would pay good money to see that script. And someone, somewhere has a copy.
“I don’t believe Maria thought she was going to be doing a rape scene”
That is not what she said in her interviews. She said that they explained to her before shooting the scene that they added the rape scene, but she wasn’t happy about it. I don’t think she knew about the butter.
That is so fucked up. I thought Marlon was better than that. I’m disappointed. Bertolucci has always been a stronz.
Sick 🙁
…why do so many people keep dragging race into this? That’s called racism. Period.
I totally agree. I was pretty shocked yesterday with the amount of comments on social media arguing that she wasn’t raped. Um… yes she was. A teenager was sexually assaulted and humiliated all because a director wanted it to be authentic. That is disgusting and shameful and honestly probably happens all the time. Thank goodness more and more people are talking about this. When I see or hear about behavior like this, I WON’T be silent. I’m going to let everyone know that I do not accept this. Not in my world!
Honestly he can choke and for a long ass time. I am so tired of men and their not having a basic understanding of consent
He is currently in a wheelchair peeing into a bag. As a poster on twitter said, karma is a bitch!
Somebody needs to bend this nasty old shit over and shove a stick of butter up his ass. Then we try this whole conversation with him again…
Yep.
I cannot imagine being lubricated without knowledge it was coming, without consent, on film, 19 years old. She had to feel so threatened and vulnerable. No need to actually assault her. It’s sickening. I would think a part of her had to think he was about to put his penis in her after such a thing. What a sh#t director if you think you have to make them experience a feeling instead of letting it be acting. I’ve never watched this. Never will. I don’t care how much it is touted as a masterpiece. F#ck these guys.
And if you do this for a film, how low would you stoop in real life?
Yea no. You still assaulted her.
You wanted her humiliation to be authentic. In other words, you wanted to humiliate her. And record it for the world to see. How is clarifying the misuse of butter going to make that fact any less revolting?
“It was the butter! The butter did it!” F*** off…
That’s what truly sickens me to the core… that he wanted her *humiliated*. Sub-human POS.
I noticed that when I read one of the statements yesterday. He said something about wanting to film her ‘having’ the reaction, not ‘acting’ the reaction. She’s an actress, you a-hole! She’s being paid to ‘act’. I’m pretty sure that she (as an actual, living woman) can ‘sell’ the feeling of violation and humiliation – she doesn’t need you and Brando manipulating her for your artistic benefit.
That is the most important part, for me.
In a lot of films, you’ll have men and women naked and doing sexual things to each other. They have already agreed to be naked and intimate. However, it is VERY important that the production makes sure that everyone on set knows exactly what is going to happen. These kinds of things shouldn’t be improvised. Humiliating the actor, not the character, is not moral or ethical.
Women are not objects. Women are not objects. Women are not objects.
This a thousand times.
Yes, sadly, yes. I have two 15 year old sons, and you are damn well sure they understand the concept of consent inside and out, backward and forward.
This is why I have hope for future generations, especially for women.
Thank you.
Amen! I feel like making up placards and having this announced on loud speaker, everywhere, forever.
Yep, and other people are not f___ toys that you can do whatever you want to in order to generate a “spontaneous reaction.”.
Eff off, Bernardo Bertolucci
This man does not know the meaning of CONSENT and this is the problem, the issue at hand. I’m sure if someone did that to him he would be screaming rape from the rooftops.
Consent should be taught, reinforced, and protected. They assaulted her, end of story.
Chris Evans tweeted about this and a writer from Collider responded to him saying it’s awful and he never knew.
Anna Kendrick responded to both of them saying that it’s been out there, Maria has spoken about it but no one would listen and anytime she (Anna) tried to defend Maria she was told be quiet.
Chris responded with an “I didn’t know.”
BS all of you didn’t know. It’s been out there. You guys just choose not to “know” anything unless a man comes out and says it. Then it’s true and you “know.”
Anna also followed up and said that she wasn’t surprised people didn’t know because it was never treated as a big story.
It was out there. The point is that when Maria tried speaking about it, no one listened. Which goes back to my point that “no one knows” anything until the man comes out and says it’s true.
Yes. Like someone said yesterday, this has been known for basically decades, albeit in varying detail. And I clearly remember when she started talking about it and it did keep being mentioned in the media here in Germany for a while, but I follow film related news and it never became a really big story as in someone followed it up by chasing down Bertolucci or something, and then it just died down. I checked out some of her obituaries in the German press and it had mostly been swept under the carpet by then. I think I remember it got mentioned again in a few places when the story about Kinski molesting his daughters broke in 2013 with the publication of Pola Kinski’s book (as in ‘there are other stories about sexual abuse related to well-known names from the world of film’).
And it should be said that way back in the 70s Kinski himself had written about having sexually molested Nastassja and people did not believe him back then. He sure was a nutter who said all kinds of crazy things and probably spewed a lot of lies as well, but that revelation specifically should not have been treated lightly. But his own sons said it wasn’t true. So of course men and society in general protecting men.
It’s just crazy. I never watched that movie and deffinitely do not intend to now. It is so disturbing. We hear often how making sex scenes is so not sexy because every little detail is planned and discussed. That I feel like now is the thing directors respecting their coworkers do. Clearly in this case both of them thought that an actress os not worth of the same respect as men. If this piece of shit had any idea what respect is he would realize that this is exactly the thing you can not leave as as surprise. And he seems to be surprised to learn that she was offended by the butter. I hoe he understands it’s not because butter is a fat.
What a gross, nasty, rapey old man. Blech. You too Brando, i don’t care if you’re dead.
The butter was an added humiliation. This is what made the scene so memorable a lot of sick men.
For him to be so dismissive about the intentional impact is a blatant lie.
I am glad this movie is one I have never seen. Even though I am a classic era movie watcher, I have never understood MB’s appeal. I have always thought he was overrated and just weird (not in a good way).
I personally think Montgomery Clift was a better actor of a similar acting style and seemed a nicer person offscreen. I cannot imagine Clift coming up with or going along with such a terrible violation of another person.
It’s really weird, the way people get away from consent as being all that matters. They get bogged down by semantics and by technicalities over who did what where how and when. It’s all irrelevant. Is there informed, enthusiastic consent from someone in their right mind to give it? If the answer is no, then you don’t have any right to proceed, and if you do, you are a criminal. The rest is just waffle.
Thank you thank you thank you. The waffle meant many get away with misdemeanor instead of a felony, and even when it is clearly rape, they still get away with a dismissal of a little action. Boggles the mind
He can make all of the “clarifying” statements he wants. The horse is out of the stable now. He purposely set out to assault, traumatize and humiliate a 19 year old girl and has been proud of it ever since. She was in a room full of men who not only did nothing to stop it, they patted each other on the back for what genius “artists” they were. They weren’t being “artists” at that point. They were being rapists. Absolute filth.
OK, so I’m obviously not gonna go watch but his defence is that the one part of the scene she wasn’t aware of was butter, so what was it they were gonna supposedly use INSTEAD? From what I understand the butter touched if not penetrated her private parts, if he’s so adamant that she only didn’t know about the butter then what was going to be used to touch/penetrate her private parts? Let me go ahead and guess the actions weren’t in the script either.
I never wanted to see this film because I had read the story of Maria before knowing the film
She was already fragile because of her personal history and these rotting ended the work of destruction of this young woman
She talked about it several times and one of her last interviews that I saw of her, she explained that young actresses should not accept to play scenes that are not in the starting scenario
how sad !!!
Years ago Jodorowsky admitted to doing the same, he got an actress raped on camera to make his film ‘more realistic’.
Nobody complained because he’s some sort of ‘mystical magician’.
That both Bertolucci and Jodorowsky were so candid talking about it shows just how bad the situation is for women.
I’ll never watch this movie. I’ve also switched to tubs of margarine because I’ve read “stick of butter” too many times not to vomit upon sight of it.
So …if this had been a man, he would be okay with it?? NOPE. Don’t think so you serial predator relic. Boil his ass in a vat of butter.Foul old toad.
Sickening and disgusting. I’m reading here that some are disappointed by the actions of the great Brando; to that I say, ‘huh?’. He always had suspect character and a crazy lifestyle.
Multiple wives and lovers, he went through dozens of women and discarded most like tissue paper. Rita Moreno has written about the abuse she suffered at his hands as his lover of many years, and she was one of the more famous ones. Seventeen children (alleged – not an inaccurate count) including his troubled son Christian and daughter Cheyenne and the personal mess that ended in her death and the murder of her bf. He lived a batsh*t life to say the least.
Great acting talent aside I personally never saw the attraction. The platitudes were always over-done to me, considering his issues. No different in the end than Allen, Polanski or their ilk (I’m side-eyeing Nicholson here as well)…when they’re all dead and gone for what will they be remembered? It won’t all be the professional accolades unfortunately.
“just” butter. Its like telling a guy who gets assaulted “just” a baseball bat, not a tire iron.
not expected = not consented
of a sexual nature = physically violating
not expected physical acts of a sexual nature are usually termed rape or at the least, sexual assault. Where is the question or uncertainty about this?!
I really really hope he will be harrassed about this from here on out.
But as someone above said, he probably has no understanding of what consent means or where moral boundaries lie, in this case in the work place. He sees himself as this great artist who has the right to dehumanise a woman for his own gain and not even blink.
In his statement he did not at least say something to the effect of ‘I was struggling with the decision, but she knew about the rape scene as such, only maybe the butter surprise was me taking it too far, but I did not realise it at the time’.
No, he went the full ‘oh she knew about it all apart from the tiny butter thing’, basically saying I did nothing wrong and implying that it was all her problem the way she perceived it as being humiliated and degraded. Instead of maybe, just maybe, issueing a statement that said he realises now that this was utterly wrong and that he at least apologizes to her.
I hadn’t realized that she had died five years ago (of cancer). I’m sorry that she isn’t seeing this outpouring of validation for what she experienced and felt. I feel sick when I think about how excited she must have been, at 19, to get this role. And then her life and career were changed by this act.
I’m almost glad this disgusting lunatic ‘clarified’ his answer because he just repeated, again, that he conspired to rape an actress in collusion with Marlon Brando because they thought it would be cool and authentic to get her reaction on film.
Let the record stand this man solicited rape upon a woman.