When that involves the kind of things Bertolucci did here, or Lynch did on Mulholland Drive, or Kubrick did on The Shining, I start to feel like maybe liking these films makes me complicit in something kind of awful. It's the only profession I can think of where making your staff cry is supposed to be a normal part of the job. The orthodoxy wrt directing film actors seems to be that the way to get a good performance is to get them into the emotional state the character is in, that this is supposed to be a willing collaboration between directors and actors, and it's good to be able to upset your actors. I'm a bit fascinated by the question of what it's OK to do in pursuit of a realistic performance. Obviously that adds some weight to the Bertolluci-was-an-asshole theory. I take Schneider's statement that what Marlon was doing wasn't real as a reassuring indication that an actual literal rape didn't occur on screen and in front of the whole crew.Īdditionally Schneider and to some extent Bertolluci seem to agree that the latter generally humiliated the former in unspecified ways, leading Schneider to loathe Bertolluci for the rest of her life. On the other hand Maria Schneider said the scene itself was unscripted, and the article is kind of written to imply real non-consensual sex occurred. Which doesn't seem to me to be worse than what David Lynch did to Naomi Watts on Mulholland Drive, on paper anyway. It actually seems a bit unclear what happened on Last Tango.Īll Bertolluci seems to be admitting to is introducing a stick of butter into a scripted rape scene without the knowledge or consent of the actress.
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