Maria Schneider, 1983

 

by Moira Jean Sullivan

The Festival de Cannes Directors fortnight premiere of Maria Schneider, 1983 (16mm) by Elisabeth Subrin will be held May 26 featuring Manal Issa, Aïssa Maïga, and Isabel Sandoval. Together with other filmmakers, Subrin said she was asked to work on an experimental adaptation  for Antonioni's film Technically Sweet  from the 1980's to be shot on video - Sweet Ruin (2008).
Antonioni's film was never made when Jack Nicholson refused to shoot on location in the Amazon. He  instead made 
The Passenger (1983) with Maria Schneider and Nicholson. 
It wasn't until 2014 that Subrin started a blog dedicated to Maria Schneider called Who Cares About Actresses. This was prompted by a media interest in Schneider's negative experience on the set of Last Tango in Paris directed by  Bernardo Bertolucci. The #METOO movement got behind Schneider's story that she was sexually abused by Bertolutcci and the story was brought to international attention along with similar experiences of other women in the film business.

 Maria Schneider was open about her exploitation a long time ago. The truth was well known to the women who knew her and the organizers of Créteil International Women's Film Festival. Schneider was the guest of honor in Créteil 2001 and Movie Magazine International ran an exclusive interview with her in April 2001.

In Subrin's film three actresses repeat word for word a section of an interview made for Cinémas Cinéma with Anne Andreu and Raoul Sangla in 1983. It is also credited to Maria Schneider. It is the same part of the interview interpreted by Manal Issa, Aissa Maiga and Isabel Sandoval (who speaks English). The section is about how being an actress is dangerous, and how she was exploited by Bertolucci and Brando in Last Tango in Paris and that it was a rape on screen. This is a part of a larger film according to the filmmaker.

Maria is not in the film, only her voice in the end credits.

© 2022 - Moira Jean Sullivan: 05/18/22
Movie Magazine International

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