[ Source: BBC ]
Being Maria, a new film starring Matt Dillon and Anamaria Vartolomei, explores the life of Maria Schneider and the making of one of the most notorious films in cinema history.
It may be the most infamous scene in the entire history of cinema. The sexually explicit drama Last Tango in Paris, made by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci and released in 1972, is the story of an affair between a middle-aged man, Paul, and a young woman, Jeanne, in a Paris apartment. The notorious “butter scene” was not in the original script and elements of it were made without 19-year-old actress Maria Schneider’s prior consent.
Warning: This article contains themes of sexual assault that some may find upsetting.
Schneider struggled with drug addiction and her mental health for years after the film’s release, but her story, and the making of Last Tango in Paris, is now being told through the film Being Maria. It stars Matt Dillon as Marlon Brando, who played Paul, and Anamaria Vartolomei as Schneider. The film’s French director Jessica Palud adapted the story from a 2018 memoir by journalist Vanessa Schneider, Maria’s cousin.
“I think we have to look at the context of the time of Last Tango in Paris, it’s now fifty years since the film was made,” Matt Dillon tells the BBC. “That time was a different time, but it’s very important to look at it now from a different perspective.
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