“The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon in the morning before shooting,” he said before adding that he “wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an Actress”.
Many of you will be acquainted with the long running furore over this story, and I must confess that I am perplexed at the Director's comment that he: "wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an Actress". What does he mean by that?
"Acting", said Sanford Meisner, "is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances". So if an Actress is asked to play the role of 'a girl', she would react as a girl in that moment. To assume, as Bernardo Bertolucci seems to have done, that a nineteen year-old Maria Schneider was incapable of being fully involved in the decision making process with him and her fellow Actor, lest it impinge upon her ability to do her job, seems to me to be patronizing in the extreme. In treating her this way he behaved unprofessionally in conspiring to have a young woman assaulted on set in some twisted and perverted drive towards 'truthful performance'; and whatever the outcome, it doesn't justify what he and Marlon Brando did.
It comes as no surprise to me that his relationship with Ms Schneider was forever soured. He was lucky not to be indicted...
Many of you will be acquainted with the long running furore over this story, and I must confess that I am perplexed at the Director's comment that he: "wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an Actress". What does he mean by that?
"Acting", said Sanford Meisner, "is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances". So if an Actress is asked to play the role of 'a girl', she would react as a girl in that moment. To assume, as Bernardo Bertolucci seems to have done, that a nineteen year-old Maria Schneider was incapable of being fully involved in the decision making process with him and her fellow Actor, lest it impinge upon her ability to do her job, seems to me to be patronizing in the extreme. In treating her this way he behaved unprofessionally in conspiring to have a young woman assaulted on set in some twisted and perverted drive towards 'truthful performance'; and whatever the outcome, it doesn't justify what he and Marlon Brando did.
It comes as no surprise to me that his relationship with Ms Schneider was forever soured. He was lucky not to be indicted...
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