29 Aug Maria Schneider’s Legacy Continues On and Off Set

BY GISSELLE I PALOMERA

Content warning: this article contains references to sexual violence.

French actress Maria-Hélène Schneider was only 19 years old when she got her big shot appearing on the big screen alongside one of the most influential actors of the time, in a movie that was set to become an instant romance classic. However, after the release of Last Tango in Paris (1972), it was subsequently banned in various countries due to its depiction of sexual assault and rape in a scene between then 19-year-old Schneider and 48-year-old Marlon Brando. 

The #MeToo movement started with Philly activist Tarana Burke almost twenty years ago and gained traction when Alyssa Milano came forward about her experiences. Since then, many more actors and actresses also came forward about the abuse they endured throughout their careers on Hollywood sets and beyond.

Elisabeth Subrin is an award winning director and artist based in New York. Subrin has now directed multiple shorts and has created video installations that have been featured in high profile places such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York. A Woman, A Part had its world premiere in 2016, winning in competition at The Rotterdam International Film Festival. 

Subrin created an art installation titled The Listening Takes, based on Maria Schneider’s #MeToo experience, which Subrin later adapted into an award-winning short entitled Maria Schneider, 1983. The installation presents three portraits of Schneider, accompanied by immersive sound, video, and sculpture. This project is meant to untether Schneider from the film and create a space for her interview to be reimagined within the performances. Subrin uses the different actresses to play Schneider in the film, to reimagine how different women embody the experience.

The short film had its world premiere at the Cannes International Film Festival in Director’s Fortnight and North American premiere at the 60th New York Film Festival in 2022. So far, it has won a 2023 César (French Oscars) in the Best Documentary Short Film category. 

“A lot of my work deals with the political legacy of civil rights movements and liberation movements from the 60’s and 70’s,” said Subrin. “I was born into that era.”

Subrin shifted her career from journalism to filmmaking to redirect her frustrations and create art that highlights the long-standing issues that plague filmmaking in a biographical way. She is currently a Professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University, where she teaches on the history and practices of the film industry during the 60’s and 70’s.

Though Schneider refuses to talk about the scene during the interview featured in the short, the interview with Cinéma Cinémas itself still permeated a level of Hollywood that at the time had never been questioned. 

As time went on, more and more details surfaced about the events leading up to one of the most infamous and controversial sex-scenes in cinema history.

“There’s no estate and no archives about Maria because she died at 58 of cancer,” said Subrin. “I had to figure out why I cared about her.”

Subrin figured out a way to reimagine Schneider’s interview using Manal Issa, Aissa Maiga, and Isabel Sandoval as the people who embody Schneider in the interview.

Schneider passed away in 2011, but shortly before, she confirmed in other interviews that Bernardo Bertolucci, director of Last Tango in Paris, had added the traumatizing scene to the script at the last second and without Schneider’s consent. However, it was Brando who thought of the scene and convinced Bertolucci to add it to the script without telling Schneider. She was left humiliated and traumatized, only to turn around and see many more future opportunities with pornographic content offered to her in her less-than-successful career. The only other movie Schneider really ever had success in after Tango was The Passenger (1975) where she plays an architecture student who flees with the protagonist played by Jack Nicholson.

“In terms of my own personal journey, I am probably in the minority of people that has not gone through sexual abuse,” said Subrin. “But, I think that might be why I am able to do this work without traumatizing myself. I have had trauma in my life, but not that, and so I’m able to think about trauma and learn.”

Subrin always questioned herself about why she was so deeply invested in the violence that was imposed on Schneider on set and all of its residual impact that many more actors and actresses have felt since then.

“I see that in her personal life. She suffered from depression and I did too when I was her age,” said Subrin. “To me, this violence became a metaphor about a much greater [act of] violence.”

*Featured Image: Still from Maria Schneider, 1983. Courtesy of Elisabeth Subrin.

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Gisselle is a Mexican-Colombian multimedia journalist from East Los Angeles, CA. They report on issues affecting QTBIPOC communities and use their own experiences to educate and create safe spaces within media.