Maria Schneider has just left us, escaped once again, but this time, alas, without return. Still recently, as I made her a knight of the Arts and Letters, I admired her grave beauty, the irony of her gaze, the raucous softness of her voice: all these revealing of the personality of a great artist. Thirty-eight years after the film that revealed her, «Last tango in Paris» by BernardoBertolucci, she was always the seductive, innocent and stern partner of Marlon Brando, who became an icon of cinema.
Among some of the great filmmakers of the 20th century: René
Clément, Antonioni, Rivette or Comencini, she knew how to play and
imposing a paradoxical figure that belonged only to her, while
integrity, poetry and freshness. Enigmatic in “Profession:
reporter” by Antonioni, distant in the “Journey to the Garden of the Dead”
by Philippe Garrel, worrisome in «Merry-go-round» de Rivette,
no one knew how to make the suspended time and
waiting for what will happen.
We had the pleasure of seeing her again recently in The
actors» by Bertrand Blier, in an autobiographical role, and in 2002
in "La repentie" by Laetitia Masson. It should have turned
many films still so much that she remained young, modern and
Allante. She will remain a singularly strong image of the woman
of today, one of those living and tangible relays of the freedom of
women always to win back in a time of exploration and
conquest of which the 7th Art bears witness through it.