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When Last Tango in Paris was screened last December as part of a Marlon Brando retrospective at the Film Forum, a notice appeared on the event’s webpage noting that “lead actress Maria Schneider admitted in 2007 that the sexually degrading scene was suggested off-script by director Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando without her prior knowledge,” urging viewers to learn more about the scandal, the actors, and the director. However, when the same theater screened the film in 2015, there was no such notice, even though Schneider, who died in 2011 at the age of fifty-eight, had spoken openly about her experiences years earlier. What changed? Her story was made famous by the remarkable memoir Tu T’Appelais Maria Schneider by one of her cousins, the French journalist and writer Vanessa Schneider. Published in France in 2018, the book gained wider recognition here when it appeared in English in 2023 as My Cousin Maria Schneider, translated by Molly Ringwald. (An excerpt appeared in The New Yorker before publication.) Vanessa Schneider’s poignant account not only addresses the controversial scene at issue—one depicting an anal rape—but also details the many other forms of abuse her cousin endured on set and the consequences she felt throughout her life. With the book’s publication, Maria Schneider’s abuse at the hands of Bertolucci and Brando is no longer just a footnote in an obituary or a topic of outrage among experts; it has finally taken its rightful place as part of the history of the film itself.
This Friday, the French film Being Maria, based on the book, opens in the United States. Directed by Jessica Palud and released in France last year, it is a straightforward dramatization of the events described by Vanessa Schneider, as well as some that came about as a result of Palud’s own research. What it lacks, however, is the author’s voice. As the book’s French title—which translates as “Your Name Is Maria Schneider”—indicates, Vanessa Schneider writes in the first person and refers to her cousin in the second person throughout the narrative. She moves freely through her experiences and knowledge, disrupting chronology and evoking her personal relationship with the actress in bold, subjective ways. By contrast, Being Maria offers no discernible sense of form or authorial perspective in its reconstruction of the events of Maria Schneider’s life. It is a drama of investigative journalism and personal passion that forecloses the book’s mode of evocation, exploration, and personal connection. As a work of art, the film may seem soft-spoken but it is also bold, and its boldness lies in its very existence—in its dramatization of the making of one of the most famous (and now infamous) films of all time, in its portrayal of two of the greatest actors of all time, and in its reconstruction of a scene of moral crime and the harrowing aftermath of that crime.
Being Maria simplifies, moves quickly, and compresses the book’s story. Maria (played by Anamaria Vartolomei) first appears at age fifteen, living with her hard-working but fickle mother, Marie-Christine (Marie Gillain). When Maria begins to associate with her biological father, the famous actor Daniel Gelin (Yvan Attal), who has not publicly acknowledged paternity, her mother angrily throws her out of the house. Daniel introduces Maria to his friends in the film industry, she is swayed, gets an agent, and then, at age nineteen, lands a role—virtually unknown—in Bernardo Bertolucci’s (Giuseppe Maggio) Last Tango, filmed in early 1972. It premiered at the New York Film Festival in October and was released in France and Italy in December.
Last Tango tells the story of a twenty-something woman named Jeanne (Schneider) who meets a young film director named Tom (Jean-Pierre Léaud). While apartment hunting, she runs into a forty-five-year-old American expat named Paul (Brando) in an empty apartment, where they begin a sexual relationship. They meet daily for sex, but at Paul's insistence, they do not learn each other's names or discuss their lives outside these walls. Soon, their relationship becomes emotionally and physically violent. Meanwhile, Tom proposes to Jeanne, and she accepts, deciding to break off her relationship with Paul. Paul tries to stay with her, leading to the romantically desperate ending that gives the film its title.
There's a moment in Being Maria when Maria first meets Bernardo and he asks her if she's worried that, when reading the script, she'll be naked a lot on camera. Her answer is, “It depends,” and she inquires about the script's sex scenes. He explains that they'll be filmed “as artistically as possible. But don't forget that's the theme of the film: intense physical relationships.” Maria accepts the role; because of her age, Marie-Christine must sign a release, and Maria soon witnesses swarms of paparazzi besieging Marlon Brando (played by Matt Dillon) on
Sourse: newyorker.com
