A prestigious French cinema has cancelled a screening of Last Tango in Paris after women’s rights groups protested at its infamous rape scene filmed without the consent of the leading actor, Maria Schneider.
The French Cinémathèque in Paris said it had dropped the film after receiving threats.
“We are a cinema, not a fortress. We cannot take risks with the safety of our staff and audience,” said Frédéric Bonnaud, the director of the Cinémathèque, a film archive and cinema funded partly by the state.
“Violent individuals were beginning to make threats and holding this screening and debate poised an entirely disproportionate risk. So, we had to let it go.”
Last Tango in Paris, completed in 1972 by the director Bernardo Bertolucci, was supposed to have been shown on Sunday evening as part of a Marlon Brando retrospective. The film explores the relationship between a widowed American in Paris – played by Brando – and a much younger woman, played by Schneider.
The rape scene was simulated but Schneider, who was 19 at the time, said afterwards it had felt like a violation as it was sprung on her without notice or preparation. Her allegations were first made in the 1970s but were largely ignored.
“I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and Bertolucci,” Schneider said four years before her death in 2011. She said the film had destroyed her life and had driven her to years of drug abuse. Bertolucci later responded to the allegations by insisting the scene had not been improvised on the day of shooting but acknowledging that Schneider had not been informed.
The director admitted he had made an “artistic decision” not to tell her in order to capture her reaction. “I feel guilty, but I don’t regret it,” he said.
Judith Godrèche, an actor and leading figure in France’s #MeToo movement, had been critical of the Cinémathèque’s decision to screen the film without providing context to viewers.
“It’s time to wake up, dear Cinémathèque, and restore humanity to a 19-year-old actor by behaving humanely,” she posted on her Instagram account.
Critics had also attacked the timing of the screening, which would have come towards the end of the trial of the film director Christophe Ruggia, who stands accused of grooming and sexually abusing Adèle Haenel during and after shooting of his 2002 film Les Diables (The Devils) when she was 12. Ruggia has called the charges “pure lies”.
Had it gone ahead, the screening would also have come towards the end of the Mazan mass rape trial, in which verdicts and sentencing are expected later this week. Dominique Pelicot, 72, is facing up to 20 years in jail for drugging his wife, Gisèle, 73, and inviting strangers to rape her. A further 50 men accused of aggravated rape or sexual abuse will also be judged and sentenced.
Given the chance to address the court for the last time on Monday, Dominique Pelicot, who admitted the decade-long abuse of his wife, said: “I wish to salute the courage of my ex-wife who has had to listen the suspicions of complicity … I regret what I have done.”
