Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris

Bertolucci pushes Brando and Schneider to a limit where they were forced to surrender themselves to the director's wishes. About the sodomy scene depicted in Last Tango in Paris, Schneider confessed that

it was not revealed to her until just before it was filmed and that

she

felt humiliated and raped, both by Brando and by Bertolucci. She said, "E

ven though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears.

Even Marlon with his charisma and class, felt a bit violated, exploited a little in this film. He rejected it for years. And me, I felt it doubly." Both Bertolucci and the cinematographer have denied it vociferously. As for

Schneider she paid the price for living in a pre-MeToo age where she never really got a chance to put up a strong fight against powerful men.

Last Tango in Paris, however, not only fetched her international recognition but also went on to become her signature, as she struggled for the rest of her career to break out of the image of a

femme fatale

.

Renowned film critic Pauline Kael bestowed the film with the most ecstatic endorsement of her career, writing, "Tango has altered the face of an art form. This is a movie people will be arguing about for as long as there are movies." American director Robert Altman expressed unqualified praise: "I walked out of the screening and said to myself, 'How dare I make another film?' My personal and artistic life will never be the same." Eminent critic Roger Ebert has added the film to his "Great Movies" collection. Unfortunately, at the time of its release

Last Tango in Paris

was banned in many countries being branded with the taboo of obscenity.