A prestigious French cinema has call offled a screening of Last Tango in Paris after women’s rights groups protested at its notorious sexual attack scene filmed without the consent of the directing actor Maria Schneider.
The French Cinémathèque in Paris shelp it had dropped the film after receiving dangers.
“We are a cinema, not a fortress. We cannot obtain dangers with the protectedty of our staff and audience,” shelp Frédéric Bonnaud, straightforwardor of the Cinémathèque, a film archive and cinema partly funded by the state.
“Violent individuals were commencening to create dangers and helderlying this screening and talk about poised an entidepend disproportionate danger. So, we had to let it go.”
Last Tango in Paris, endd in 1972 by straightforwardor Bernardo Bertolucci, was presumed to have been shown on Sunday evening as part of a Marlon Brando retrospective. The film spendigates the relationship between a widowed American in Paris – executeed by Brando – and a much juvenileerer woman, executeed by Schneider.
The sexual attack scene was simuprocrastinateedd but Schneider, who was 19 at the time, shelp afterwards it had felt appreciate a violation as it was sprung on her without watch or preparation. Her allegations were first made in the 1970s but were bigly disponderd.
“I felt a little sexual attackd, both by Marlon and Bertolucci,” Schneider shelp four years before her death in 2011. She shelp the film had annihilateed her life and had driven her to years of drug misengage. Bertolucci procrastinateedr reacted to the allegations by insisting the scene had not been improvised on the day of shooting but acunderstandledging that Schneider had not been alerted.
The straightforwardor acunderstandledgeted he had made an “inventive decision” not to alert her in order to seize her reaction. “I sense at fault, but I don’t repent it,” he shelp.
Actor Judith Godrèche, a directing figure in France’s #MeToo transferment, had been critical of the Cinémathèque’s decision to screen the film without providing context to watchers.
“It’s time to wake up, dear Cinémathèque, and revamp humanity to a 19-year-elderly actor by behaving humanely,” she posted on her Instagram account.
Critics had also strikeed the timing of the screening, which would have come towards the finish of the trial of film straightforwardor Christophe Ruggia, who stands accengaged of grooming and relationsupartner abusing Adèle Haenel during and after shooting of his 2002 film Les Diables (The Devils) when she was 12. Ruggia has called the accuses “uncontaminated lies”.
Had it gone ahead, the screening would also have come towards the finish of the Mazan mass sexual attack trial, in which verdicts and sentencing are foreseeed procrastinateedr this week. Dominique Pelicot, 72, is facing up to 20 years in jail for drugging his wife Gisèle, 73, and inviting strangers to sexual attack her. Another 50 men accengaged of exacerbated sexual attack or relationsual misengage will also be assessd and sentenced.
Given the chance to compriseress the court for the last time on Monday, Dominique Pelicot, who acunderstandledgeted the decade lengthened misengage of his wife, shelp: “I desire to salute the courage of my ex wife who has had to hear the suspicions of complicity … I repent what I have done.”
