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    Why ‘Last Tango in Paris’ Derailed Maria Schneider’s Life

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    “Being Maria” uses the actress’s own words to show how the star’s frank discussion of the experience was an early salvo in the #MeToo movement.In a 1983 interview for a French television show, the actress Maria Schneider was asked whether she would mind if the program broadcast a clip from “Last Tango in Paris,” a film she had made 11 years earlier. “No,” she said, pleadingly. “I’d rather not.”Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, that movie depicts the heated sexual relationship between a young Frenchwoman, Jeanne (Schneider), and an older American expat, Paul (Marlon Brando). What ended up making “Tango” more infamous than famous was a scene in which Paul forces himself on Jeanne, with the help of a smear of butter.That scene would haunt Schneider, who died at 58 in 2011, the rest of her life. In a 2007 interview, she said that the moment had been sprung upon her with no warning: “I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci.”It’s easy to see why this posed a moral and ethical problem for the director Jessica Palud, whose new film, “Being Maria,” stars Anamaria Vartolomei as Schneider and Matt Dillon as Brando.“That was the big question mark when we started writing our film: Do we re-enact the scene or not?” Palud said in a video interview from France. “Everybody I talked to who had known Maria mentioned the trauma caused by that scene, so I just couldn’t avoid it.”“Being Maria” starts with Schneider observing her father, the well-known French actor Daniel Gélin (Yvan Attal) on a set. She is fascinated by the world of filmmaking, and right away we are conscious of the importance of who is watching and who is being watched. When, not long after, the 19-year-old Maria is cast in “Tango” and becomes the focus of attention, Palud felt it was important to continue to concentrate on the woman’s gaze.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Being Maria’ Review: The Muse’s Side of the Story

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      Starring Anamaria Vartolomei and Matt Dillon, this French drama chronicles the life of the actress Maria Schneider after her traumatic experience on the set of “Last Tango in Paris.”When it comes to telling stories about the victims of abuse, filmmakers are often faced with a dilemma: to show or not show the act of violence. Showing could mean exploiting the victim’s pain to satisfy viewers’ curiosity; not showing could mean hedging around a hard truth.Jessica Palud’s “Being Maria” — a biopic of Maria Schneider, a French actress perhaps best known for playing the mistress of Marlon Brando’s character in “Last Tango in Paris” — chooses to show.In 1972, when the 19-year-old Schneider was shooting one of the film’s many sex scenes, Brando (with the director Bernardo Bertolucci’s blessing) improvised without telling her his intentions, using a stick of butter to perform what on-screen looks like anal penetration.“Being Maria” recreates the scene — and it’s a tough watch. Anamaria Vartolomei, who plays Schneider, conveys shock, discomfort, fear and shame in distressing close-ups. When the scene cuts, Brando (Matt Dillon), who had previously been chummy with Maria, looks sheepish. Bertolucci (Giuseppe Maggio) is unapologetic; he tells Maria the scene was meant to be intense.Loosely adapted from the memoir “My Cousin Maria Schneider,” by Vanessa Schneider, the film doesn’t stick around too long on Bertolucci’s set. Benjamin Biolay’s treacly string score adds an unsavory sentimental touch, but the rest of the film is quite sober as it moves through the decade of Schneider’s life after “Last Tango.”Showing how Schneider’s trauma festered over time — and eventually calloused over — the film moodily weaves together scenes of her struggles with addiction, nights at the discothèque and experiences on other movie sets, relying on Vartolomei’s edgy, delicate performance to signal Maria’s underlying anxieties. If the meandering nature of the film makes the psychic fallout seem tonally scattered, it nevertheless conveys the sense that she’s sleepwalking through life — and always fighting to snap out of it.Being MariaNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Book Review: ‘My Cousin Maria Schneider,’ by Vanessa Schneider

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      In a troubling new memoir, Vanessa Schneider contends that the sexually explicit 1972 film exploited, and irrevocably hurt, her cousin.MY COUSIN MARIA SCHNEIDER: A Memoir, by Vanessa Schneider. Translated by Molly Ringwald.For many actresses, the path of the ingénue can be treacherous. Celebrated for her beauty and youth, the ingénue is defined almost exclusively by her sexuality. An outsize amount of attention is paid to her looks and her body, little interest to her mind. As she grows older, opportunities diminish. Forced to act younger than her age and compete with newer faces, she eventually discovers that her career has hit a dead end. Among the long list of cautionary tales: Jean Seberg, the darling of French New Wave cinema, who died by suicide at the age of 40; Debra Winger, who shocked Hollywood by retiring at the height of her fame at 40; and, of course, the French actress Maria Schneider.Schneider was only 20 years old when she catapulted to fame after starring opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 film “Last Tango in Paris.” In its most notorious scene, Brando, who plays a grief-stricken man named Paul, rapes Schneider, who plays a young woman named Jeanne, improvising with butter as a lubricant. Bertolucci and Brando conspired to film the scene, which Schneider claimed wasn’t in the original script, without her consent. Bertolucci later explained his reason for that decision as wanting Schneider “to respond like a girl, not an actress.” Because of its violence and frank treatment of sex, the film was a sensation, confirming Bertolucci’s status as a provocative filmmaker and cementing the comeback of Brando, who for some time had been seen as a Hollywood has-been.For Schneider, it was her “cross to bear,” writes the French journalist and novelist Vanessa Schneider in “My Cousin Maria Schneider,” a slender memoir composed in second person, directly addressed to the actress and elegantly translated from the French by Molly Ringwald. The book, first published in 2018 in France, is both a beautiful eulogy (Schneider died of breast cancer in 2011) and a much-needed corrective — an opportunity to finally set the record straight for an actress long mischaracterized and unfairly judged.The “Last Tango” scene would define Schneider for the rest of her life, explains Vanessa Schneider. Subjected to unrelenting negative publicity and attention surrounding it (a dairy manufacturer once used Schneider’s image on its packaging; a flight attendant served her a pat of butter without prompting), Schneider acted out. She spoke too candidly to the press about her personal life; she dismissed famous directors and actors; she walked off film sets.That Schneider was also addicted to heroin didn’t help, and Vanessa Schneider wonders if the drugs and partying were ways to avoid the spotlight so instantly thrust on the young actress.Growing up, Maria Schneider was unwanted. Her father, the French actor Daniel Gélin, was not involved in her childhood, and her mother, Marie-Christine Schneider, sent Schneider to live with a nursemaid when she was 8. Her mother’s “sex life was never a secret,” writes Vanessa Schneider. “A story often told … is of the time your mother was in bed with a man and called out for you to fetch her diaphragm.” She also reveals that Schneider’s mother “elected not to take the trip from Nice to Paris” for her daughter’s funeral, “saying she was too tired.”Vanessa Schneider’s parents took in Maria as a teenager. From an early age, Vanessa worshiped her older cousin, saving every clipping of her from magazines and newspapers in a red plastic binder. As a result, this memoir is written with a rare sense of intimacy and devotion. It warmly captures the highlights of Maria Schneider’s life: her enduring friendships with Brigitte Bardot and Nan Goldin, her pride in starring in films such as Michelangelo Antonioni’s “The Passenger” and her later advocacy for women in film.It is also, at moments, unsparing, describing Schneider’s struggles with addiction, financial woes and other embarrassing family drama. At one point Vanessa Schneider questions whether her cousin would like such an unvarnished portrayal of her life, and deletes what she’s written. “I often worry that you won’t approve of the story I’m telling, Maria,” she explains. “You won’t like that I’m speaking of the drugs, of your mother and father and brothers.” Yet in this post-#MeToo era, Vanessa Schneider’s evenhanded portrayal of this daring actress of the 1970s is a refreshing one. For once, a young woman is not placed on an impossibly high pedestal, where she is unfairly worshiped for her beauty and then cruelly defiled for our entertainment. Instead, Maria Schneider is presented with both her faults and her charms. In that way, this is a generous account of a rare and complicated cinematic star.Thessaly La Force is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The New York Times Styles section. Previously, she was the features director at T: The New York Times Magazine.MY COUSIN MARIA SCHNEIDER: A Memoir | By Vanessa Schneider | Translated by Molly Ringwald | 160 pp. | Scribner | $26 More

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      Frank Kimbrough, Pianist With a Subtle Touch, Is Dead at 64

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFrank Kimbrough, Pianist With a Subtle Touch, Is Dead at 64He could hold the spotlight in everything from a trio to Maria Schneider’s 18-piece big band. He was also a passionate educator.The pianist Frank Kimbrough in performance at Jazz Standard in New York in 2014. He had an understated style that fit well in many different settings.Credit…Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesJan. 12, 2021, 6:09 p.m. ETFrank Kimbrough, a deft and subtle jazz pianist known for his work in the Maria Schneider Orchestra and other prominent groups, and as the leader of his own small ensembles, died on Dec. 30 at his home in Queens. He was 64.Ann Braithwaite, his publicist, said that the cause was not yet known but that it was believed to be a heart attack.Casual of gesture but deeply focused in demeanor, Mr. Kimbrough had an understated style that could nonetheless hold the spotlight in trio settings, or fit slyly into Ms. Schneider’s 18-piece big band.In many ways, his playing reflected the Romantic, floating manner of his first jazz influence, Bill Evans. But his off-kilter style as both a player and a composer also called back to two of his more rugged bebop-era influences: Herbie Nichols and Thelonious Monk, both of whom he eventually paid tribute to on record.In 2018, Mr. Kimbrough put forth “Monk’s Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk,” the most ambitious recording of his career, a six-disc collection on Sunnyside Records spanning Monk’s entire known songbook. Mr. Kimbrough’s loose and generous spirit as a bandleader permeates the record, driving a quartet that features Scott Robinson on saxophones and other horns, Rufus Reid on bass and Billy Drummond on drums.All told, Mr. Kimbrough released well over a dozen albums as a leader, starting with “Star-Crossed Lovers” (1986), a cassette-only release for Mapleshade Records, and including the celebrated recordings “Lullabluebye” (2004), “Play” (2006) and “Live at Kitano” (2012).Since 1993, he had appeared on every album except one by Ms. Schneider, a Grammy winner and National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, including last year’s widely acclaimed double disc “Data Lords.”In a New York Times review of the trumpeter Ron Horton’s sextet in 2000, Ben Ratliff wrote, “Part of Mr. Kimbrough’s originality takes the form of an almost passive or Zenlike approach to an active situation; his solo in an urgent piece called ‘Groveling’ was a sustained rubato rhapsody, and otherwise he plays cloudlike chords where you would normally expect rhythmic stabs.”Frank Marshall Kimbrough Jr. was born on Nov. 2, 1956, in Roxboro, N.C. His mother, Katie Lee (Currin) Kimbrough, was a piano teacher, and he always said that he had been playing since before he could remember. His father was a florist. Frank took piano with a local Baptist minister, then briefly studied at Appalachian State University before dropping out because the school’s curriculum didn’t have a place for jazz.By his mid-20s he was a known bandleader on the Chapel Hill scene, and in 1980 he relocated to Washington, where he gigged with a number of local stalwarts and came under the wing of the pianist and vocalist Shirley Horn. It was through her that he eventually signed with Mapleshade, after moving to New York City in 1981. His mentors there included the pianists Andrew Hill and Paul Bley, as well as the drummer Paul Motian.“They were all very kind to me, and we’ve spent a lot of time together,” he said in a 2019 interview with jazztrail.net. “So their influence was not just musical. I observed how they worked and we spent time talking about music, but other things too.”Mr. Kimbrough himself went on to be an educator known for his commitment to his students. He taught piano at New York University in the 1990s and in 2008 became a music professor at the Juilliard School, where he taught until his death.“I think it’s my responsibility to pass all the information I’ve learned from these great musicians on,” he said in 2019. “This music is not taught in books, it’s taught person to person, and I try to give all that away.”In addition to his wife of 31 years, the vocalist Maryanne de Prophetis, Mr. Kimbrough is survived by his mother and four younger brothers: Conrad, Mark, Edwin and David.In 1985, he won the Great American Jazz Piano Competition, held annually at the Jacksonville Jazz Festival in Florida. In the early 1990s he and the bassist Ben Allison founded the Jazz Composers Collective, whose members often played and recorded together. Their work in that organization led to the Herbie Nichols Project, an effort that was led by Mr. Allison but that featured Mr. Kimbrough prominently.Mr. Kimbrough listened to a wide array of music, in jazz and well beyond, often leaning toward ruminative composers like Morton Feldman or folkloric sources from around the world.His favorite place to compose, he said, was on a park bench by the East River, overlooking Manhattan.“I write things that are sketches, one page long. I like to write simple pieces that are easy to play,” he told DownBeat in 2016. “There is a park across the street from my house, and I go over there at night, maybe around 11:00, and I sit there. And if an idea hits me, I may walk around the park with the idea bouncing around my head for six months, and then I might write 16 bars of music.”A patient, deliberate process suited Mr. Kimbrough, and he was uninterested in any approach that valued physical skill over earnest expression. “Music is not athletics,” he said. “I am tired of hearing clever athletic music.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More