A Degrading Tool of Male Dominance
French actress, Maria Schneider, was only 19 when she was cast to play 48-year-old Marlon Brando’s lover in the film, Last Tango in Paris. Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, the film is a tale of lust involving an older widow and a younger woman. It had such racy sexual encounters that it was banned in several countries, including Italy, France, and Chile.
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But that didn’t stop critics from crowning it as one of the best movies of the 1970s, with the iconic New Yorker critic Pauline Kael stating that it had “altered the face of an art form”, comparing it to Igor Stravinsky’s masterpiece, The Rite of Spring.
Many feminists, however, denounced it as a degrading “tool of male dominance.”