“Of course ‘Last Tango in Paris’ should be shown, but you should consider how to frame it”

On Friday, December 20, as part of the 100^th anniversary of Marlon Brando’s birth, New York‘s Film Forum screened Last Tango in Paris (1972). On its website, prominently displayed, the cinema warned that the film contained a “sexually humiliating” scene for actress Maria Schneider, which she had not been informed about before shooting it. The site encouraged viewers to learn more about what happened.

The same film, in the same context, was due to be screened at La Cinémathèque Française in Paris on December 15. But the Cinémathèque’s page described the film as an “object of scandal.” You have to look a little further to learn, from the text, that during filming, there was a “rape scene” from which the actress “has never recovered.” Outraged by this lack of context, associations in France demanded a debate around the screening. Eventually, the institution canceled the screening due to “security risks.”

That it has come to this is a defeat for art. Of course you have to show this great film. But you’d have to be blind not to see that today it’s also a “damaged” film, one that poses a problem, and that we need to ask ourselves how to frame it.

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