Bernardo Bertolucci says Last Tango actress knew about violent rape scene

Director Bernardo Bertolucci has released a statement following the outrage over remarks he made about the filming of the infamous rape scene from ‘Last Tango In Paris’.

Following the uncovering of an interview in which Bertolucci says that the use of butter as a lubricant in the scene was not revealed to actress Maria Schneider, there has been widespread condemnation.

However, Bertolucci has now gone on record to reiterate that the scene was not filmed in a non-consensual manner, and it was just the detail of the butter that he and co-star Marlon Brando kept from Schneider.

“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,” the 76-year-old director said in a statement.

“Several years ago at the Cinematheque Francaise someone asked me for details on the famous butter scene. I specified, but perhaps I was sot 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 [butter] use. 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.”

He also denied that the scene was non-consensual in another interview in 2013, with The Hollywood Reporter, that has also been recently unearthed.

“It was acting, it wasn’t real,” he said. “Was she sodomized? It’s ridiculous. It’s like thinking that in an action movie somebody that’s shot dies for real. It’s very naive.”

In the interview with La Cinémathèque Française from 2013, the director said: “The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon in the morning before shooting.

“But I’d been – in a way – horrible to Maria because I didn’t tell her what was going on. Because I wanted her reaction as a girl not as an actress. I wanted her to react humiliated. If it goes on she shot ‘no, no!’. I think she hated me and also Marlon because we didn’t tell her that there was this detail of the butter [being] used as lubricant.

“I still feel very guilty for that. I feel guilty, but I don’t regret [shooting it like that].

“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 – not to act – the rage and humiliation. Then she hated me for all of her life.”

The comments caused a number of prominent actors to condemn the move, among them Jessica Chastain, Chris Evans and Anna Kendrick.

In a 2007 interview with Schneider, who was 19 at the time – Brando was 48 – she said that she had felt ‘raped’ during the scene.

“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,” she said.

“I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologise. Thankfully, there was just one take.”

Schneider died in 2011 from cancer, aged 58.

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