This is a sad one. The French actress who, along with Marlon Brando and director Bernardo Bertolucci, created a worldwide sensation/scandal in “Last Tango in Paris” has died much too soon at age 58. She later claimed to have been exploited on the film, which indeed was something of a scandal at the time in many quarters. The film today, however, plays much more as psychodrama than soft-core porn.
In any case, she went on to co-star with Jack Nicholson in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “The Passenger” and continued to work, but she was apparently troubled in various ways and it affected the rest of her career. Via David Hudson at MUBI, which as usual has a lot more on Schneider’s legacy, I was just reminded of her walking out of Luis Bunuel’s “That Obscure Object of Desire,” which sparked something of a creative coup when the great surrealist decided to replace her with two actresses.
Below is a clip from “Last Tango,” it’s somewhat NSFW, but not as much as you might expect. Considering her feelings about being naked in the film, I considered not using it, but the nudity is not explicit at all here and her acting here with Brando is just too lovely not to use. Also, I couldn’t find any other embeddable scenes. I’m not the biggest fan of “Last Tango,” but I’m sorry she couldn’t take more pride in her terrific performance in it.
