The leaders of the Cinémathèque française tried to put an end to criticism who suspect them of not having taken the measure of the #MeToo wave, by outlining a mea culpa before the National Assembly on Thursday which did not convince parliamentarians.
Rape scene
The institution of cinephilia, with its international influence, has been in turmoil since December and the programming of Last Tango in Paris without putting it in context. This 1972 film by Bernardo Bertolucci includes a scene depicting a rape committed by Marlon Brando's character without the consent of actress Maria Schneider.
Faced with outcry from feminists, the screening was canceled 24 hours before, officially for security reasons. On Thursday, the National Assembly commission on violence committed in the artistic and media sectors summoned four of its leaders to explain it.
The programming of this film without context “has provoked a considerable number of reactions”, recognized the filmmaker and president of the Costa-Gavras Cinematheque, in front of the president of the commission, the ecologist Sandrine Rousseau, and her rapporteur MoDem, Erwan Balanant.
“Our will was far from provocation”
“Our desire was far from provocation, it was to present an important work with a legendary actor”, namely Marlon Brando, he added. “The film should have been the subject of a very detailed and in-depth session presentation because (it had) serious consequences, indisputably, on the life of Maria Schneider”, who died in 2011, he continued.
“I take my responsibility in this refusal” to contextualize, he added. “I deeply regret that we did not plan to accompany the presentation of the film with a specialist. […]. It’s a lesson for the future.”
“A piece of the past”
Also interviewed, the general director of the Cinémathèque, Frédéric Bonnaud, and his programmer, Jean-François Rauger, shared this mea culpa. Frédéric Bonnaud announced that the board of directors of the Cinémathèque had just decided to “take greater account when presenting certain films of the retrospective light that the passage of time and the evolution of society cast on these works and the respect due to the victims.
-But the two men also defended at length the desire of the Cinémathèque, much criticized by feminists, to screen films which belong to “the history of cinema”, despite their filming conditions or the actions of their directors.
Bertolucci, on The Last Tango in Paris“for the sake of false realism and by using manipulation to film Maria Schneider's unacted surprise made her undergo a situation of extreme violence against her will,” declared Frédéric Bonnaud. “Nevertheless, the film belongs to the history of cinema because it was able to capture a piece of the past, the spirit of the times and the evolution of society.”
“Make good films without raping the actresses”
More broadly, regarding directors accused of violence, “we are on a narrow path, a difficult ridge,” he argued. “On the one hand, there is (their) artistic importance and the duty to show them, and on the other hand there are the facts and the evolution of society.”
Frédéric Bonnaud and Jean-François Rauger were also put in difficulty over past comments. The first, who had described, in 2018 on Mediapart, feminists who opposed the programming of a retrospective of the filmmaker Jean-Claude Brisseau as “half crazy”, said that he was then debating “a little heatedly” and that his words had “far exceeded his thoughts”.
The second, who had wondered if we “can make good films without raping the actresses”, explained that the verb rape had to be taken in the “symbolic” sense. The commission, which has been conducting public hearings for months with dozens of officials or players in the sector, and giving voice to many victims, did not seem convinced.
« Résistance »
Its president said she was “very circumspect”. “You have to understand that cinema is changing, because society is changing. […] The resistance of which you are one of the pillars, obviously, will not last very long because society is well ahead of you,” she said. The hearings are expected to conclude at the end of January or early February and his report is expected in early April.
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