Maria Schneider’s cousin tells in a book how ‘Last Tango in Paris’ affected her: “She was traumatized by that scene”

There are careers that change forever with a movie. Some for the better. Julia Roberts saw everything take off thanks to pretty woman; and the cast of Rebels (Matt Dillon, Rob Low and Tom Cruise among others) must still be thanking Francis Ford Coppola. Others, however, become slabs that are impossible to lift. They are titles that remain marked in an industry that forgives only those who want to. Women are usually the most penalized for these types of decisions.

The most tragic example of this remains that of The last tango in Paris. More than a film, it was a scene that marked and destroyed the career of a young and promising actress, Maria Schneider. She did it because the reactionary hordes of that time were much harder on her because of the scandal surrounding the production than on her film colleagues (in fact, the Oscars nominated Bertolucci and Marlon Brando and forgot about her). But, mainly, because in that filming an atrocity was committed when the consent of the performer was violated.

What would be known as ‘the butter scene’ was not in the script. It was Brando and Bertolucci who agreed on it outside, without anyone knowing. They wanted the terror of Maria Schneider, who was only 19 years old, to be real. They achieved it by crossing any moral limit. She always told it, she declared in interviews that she felt “violated,” but no one wanted to listen or act. Only with the arrival of Me Too and the new feminist revolution were interviews between her and Bertolucci rescued where both acknowledged that that scene was not consensual. It was too late, that ended up hurting a fragile actress, with a traumatic childhood, who ended up mired in addictions and being seen as a weirdo in the industry.

Schneider is one of those figures to restore. And the cinema is also assuming it. There is the biopic about the actress who appeared at Cannes, titled Maria and directed by Jessica Palud and which has as source material the personal biography written by her cousin, the journalist Vanessa Schneider. Is called My cousin Maria Schneider, and now the Circe publishing house publishes it in Spain. The actress’s cousin builds a book where she also tells her story and that of her family. An exercise in autofiction that draws on Annie Ernaux and that they planned to write together before Maria died of cancer in 2011 at the age of 58.

An exercise that gives dignity and vindicates the figure of Maria Schneider. That shows its cracks, its traumas. Also her talent and the roles that were hidden by the shadow of that scene for which she received jokes, sexist comments and that always persecuted her. A moment in the life of the actress that reconstructs and divides her story in two. A moment that was difficult to write about but had to be done because of its importance in her cousin’s later life. “Maria was traumatized by this scene, and she didn’t want to talk about it again,” Vanessa Schneider recalls on the other end of the phone without hesitation.

“In the family we couldn’t even pronounce the title of the film. It was prohibited. So it was difficult to write that moment, because I couldn’t not talk about The last tango in Parisbecause it has been very important in our life and had many consequences, but I also know that she did not want to talk about it,” she adds about the dilemma that returning to that painful moment has also caused her.

She always told it. She spoke after the film, in interviews, describing what was happening to her, and no one cared about her. Now they would have heard her

Vanessa Schneider
— Writer and cousin of the actress

The book refers to how, despite being a pioneer in her complaints about the machismo of the industry and speaking more than once about what had happened on that shoot, she was ignored until the arrival of Me Too. One can’t help but wonder what would have happened if that had happened today. For Vanessa Schneider that “could not be possible now, because that scene was not written in the script.” “If you want to change something in the script you have to talk to the actor and inform him. Thanks to the Me Too movement, producers and directors are very aware of these things,” he says.

Another focus of the book is the mistreatment of Maria Schneider by the press. Recover the sexist questions, the interviews where they only wanted to know about that scene, about the morbidity. They met an indomitable actress who never gave them what she wanted. A press that sexualized her until the day she died, when Liberation, the reference newspaper of the left in France, published a photo of her with her bare chest.

It was the newspaper that Schneider’s family read, and they did not expect that blow: “I was very surprised. A left-wing newspaper, which talks about equality and women’s rights and no one asked if that was indecent. He had just died. There are thousands of beautiful photos of her. Of her face, and they chose one where she was naked. “It was a lack of respect, and we all know that if the person who had died was an actor, a man, they would never have chosen a photo in which he appeared naked.”

She has been happy with the film that adapts “a part of the book”, since it focuses on Maria, ignoring the part of Vanessa and her family. But he believes that both share the same maxim, “return a kind of dignity.” “She was a strong woman, with personality. An actress with charisma, not a small victim. She was a young woman hurt by her family history and what she went through, but she always told it. She spoke after the film, in interviews, describing what she was going through, and no one cared about her. Now they would have listened to her,” he says.

Dignity but also justice, since “many people had forgotten about Maria and her story, and by putting it back in a book, in the press and in a film, it makes people ask questions again about the place of women in the industry and in cinema.” An example of how everything has changed is found in how they have filmed the same scene, the one with the butter, 45 years later: “Jessica Palud hired an intimacy coordinator to ensure that Anamaria Vartolomei, the actress who plays Maria, was in agreement with the scene, and both she and Matt Dillon, who plays Marlon Brando, said it was very helpful. That they felt protected and guided. Not everything is perfect, but there are many improvements.”