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Marcia Fuqua, pictured second row and third from the left, poses for the Goucher College's 1952 International Relations Club picture. Fuqua, who now goes by the name Martha Fouquet in homage to a French ancestor, was a fine arts major and originally from Baltimore. (Goucher College Archives)

 Robert Musser was living at Marcia Fouquet’s Fairfax County home in the early 1980s when, he said, he noticed a tiny painting with an ornate gold frame. It had a small plaque bearing a name he still remembers 30 years later: Renoir.

 He asked Fouquet where she’d gotten the painting. “She said it came from a museum in Baltimore,” recalled Musser, 61, a mechanical contractor who dated Fouquet at the time and now lives in North Carolina. “She said it was a real Renoir, that she owned a Renoir. . . . She never told me how she acquired it.”

 Musser’s account, along with similar recollections from two other former acquaintances of Fouquet, adds to the uncertainty surrounding the “flea-market Renoir,” a painting whose murky provenance has fueled an FBI investigation and an art mystery.

 The 51 / 2 -by-9-inch landscape, “On the Shore of the Seine,” burst into the national news in September when Fouquet’s daughter, Martha Fuqua, tried selling the piece through an Alexandria auction house, which believed it could fetch as much as $100,000. Known then only as “Renoir Girl,” Fuqua told reporters that she had unwittingly bought the Renoir in a $7 box of trinkets at a West Virginia flea market.

 Days before the September auction at the Potomack Company, the Baltimore Museum of Art found internal records showing that the Renoir had been stolen while on exhibit in 1951. The FBI seized the painting from Potomack and opened an investigation into the theft, which a spokeswoman declined to discuss for this article.

 This handout image provided by The Potomack Company auctioneers shows a painting by French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. (AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

 Now a federal judge in Alexandria has been appointed to decide who should keep it: the museum or Fuqua, 51, a Loudoun County driving instructor.

 Fuqua did not return messages. Her attorney, T. Wayne Biggs, wrote in an e-mail to The Washington Post, “Neither my client nor I have any comment due to pending litigation.”

 Fouquet, 84, also did not return phone messages, and her son, Matt Fuqua, demanded that a Post reporter stop “harassing” his family when an attempt was made to speak with her at her home in Great Falls.

 Several weeks ago, someone who identified himself on the phone as Matt Fuqua raised questions about the Renoir’s origins. He told The Post in an interview that his mother had owned the Renoir “for a long time, probably 50 or 60” years. He later conferred with his sister and retracted his statement.

 Musser, 61, said he moved into Fouquet’s home in the late 1970s or early 1980s. At the time, Musser said, he and his wife had separated and he needed a place to live. Musser eventually became more than just a tenant: He dated Fouquet for several years, he said. (People who remembered their relationship suggested that The Post contact Musser.) He also built Fouquet’s studio behind her home, where she held art classes for students and where she reproduced the works of famous masters, including Renoir.

 She had learned much of her technique in Baltimore, where she earned a fine arts degree from Goucher College in 1952 and a master’s degree from what is now the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1957.

 Until his interview with The Post, Musser said he’d been unaware of the controversy surrounding “On the Shore of the Seine.” He couldn’t describe the painting. What sticks in his mind, he said, is the artwork’s tiny size, its gold frame and its “Renoir” plaque.

 Fouquet told him it was an authentic Renoir from a Baltimore museum, he said. If she said which museum, he can’t remember. Nor does he remember if she said how she’d acquired it.

 “She told me it was real valuable,” Musser said. “I didn’t believe it was an original.”

 Musser is not the only one who recalls seeing the Renoir.

 A childhood friend of Martha Fuqua also remembers encountering the painting in Fouquet’s studio in the early 1990s. She contacted The Post in early April after reading a profile of Martha Fuqua, a former physical education teacher who filed for bankruptcy in 2009 after being laid off from her job at a District high school.

 The childhood friend, who lives in the Washington area, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of offending Fuqua and her family.

 One day, the woman said, Fuqua and Fouquet led her into the studio and showed her the painting, which was hanging upstairs.

 “There was a lot of artwork on the walls, but none of it was framed, except this one,” she said. “The frame is unusual, and none of the artwork in the studio had a frame like it.”

 She hasn’t forgotten its size or the “Renoir” plaque.

 “I remember looking at it and saying to them, ‘Is this a real Renoir? And one of them said, ‘Yes,’ ” the woman said. “It looked like it could have been a Renoir, but I immediately dismissed it as preposterous. I didn’t ask where it came from because I just assumed they were lying.”

 She added: “I remember thinking that it was too small to be a Renoir, especially if you’ve been to the National Gallery of Art and you’ve seen Renoir’s “A Girl With a Watering Can.” But the ornate frame and the plaque that said ‘Renoir’ is etched into my memory more than the content itself.”

 Another family friend, Bobby J. Fontaine, recounted a similar story.

 Fontaine, 54, is a Lorton artist who has several criminal convictions, including trespassing, stalking and simple assault, according to Fairfax County court records. A self-described environmental activist, he was also convicted in a Texas federal court in 2004 for sending threatening e-mails to energy executives.

 He once was homeless, and Fouquet, who’d been his middle school art teacher, let him live with her, he said.

 He stopped by Fouquet’s home one day in the early 1990s to borrow some canvases and paint, he said. While he was there, she took him up the studio’s stairway and flipped on the light. At the top of the stairs there was a small painting with a gold frame.

 “All of her paintings on the walls didn’t have frames. But this one had a fancy frame and said, ‘Renoir.’ It had a hangover light on it,” Fontaine recalled.

 He said Fouquet asked him what he thought of the piece. “She says, ‘Do you think it’s real or not?’ ” Fontaine said. “I told her, ‘I guess it’s real.’ ”

 Fouquet didn’t reveal whether it was authentic, he said.

 It has been more than 10 years since he has spoken with anyone in the family, he said. But in early April, after the profile of Fuqua was published, Fontaine e-mailed The Post, saying he was familiar with the painting’s history.

 He also sent Fouquet and her children messages via Facebook.

 “I’ve been reading about you, great story actually, although from your side of it, maybe not so much,” Fontaine wrote in early April. “[R]eally though, [it] may be [one of] the best mysteries to ever come out of Fairfax County . . . call me if you want.”

 No one in the family, he said, has replied. ||||| Months before she dubbed herself “Renoir Girl” and made news as a woman who had found an Impressionist gem at a flea market, Martha Fuqua took the painting to a Falls Church auction house with a different story.

 Fuqua, 51, a driving instructor in Loudoun County, carried the long-missing “On the Shore of the Seine” into Quinn’s Auction Galleries on June 1, according to employees of the family-owned business. She was certain that it had been painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and said that she’d obtained it from an estate. She also believed that the small landscape would fetch $1 million at auction.

 There was no mention of a West Virginia flea market or a $7 box of junk — the story that eventually catapulted Renoir Girl and her artwork into the headlines.

 The new details about Fuqua’s appointment at Quinn’s raise more questions about her at a time when she is fighting in federal court to keep the Renoir, which the FBI seized after it was discovered to have been stolen decades ago from the Baltimore Museum of Art.

 “A lot of people come in here and say, ‘I think I have X, Y, Z — can you verify it for me?’ But [Fuqua] was very adamant she had a Renoir,” said the Quinn’s decorative arts specialist who dealt with Fuqua last June and who asked to remain anonymous. “I immediately asked her, ‘Where did you get this from?’ and she said, ‘I got it from an estate.’ A red flag went up. Typically, an estate would know if it had a high-end painting by such an artist.”

 In 2010, Marcia “Martha” Fuqua was interviewed by The Post as she trained to work as a blackjack dealer in West Virginia at the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races. (Tim Wilson/The Washington Post)

 Matthew Quinn, whose family owns and runs the auction house, confirmed his employee’s account of the encounter with Fuqua, based on his conversations with the specialist last year. The FBI, which is investigating the theft of the art, also interviewed the Quinn’s specialist.

 In a brief telephone interview, Fuqua disputed the auction house’s account but would not discuss many specifics.

 “I don’t care what you write,” said Fuqua, who was profiled in The Washington Post this month after her identity was revealed in court papers.

 She worked as a physical education teacher, first in Fairfax County and Loudoun and then in the District, before being laid off in 2009. She struggled financially afterward, filing for bankruptcy in Alexandria’s federal court with debts of more than $400,000 and assets of about $312,000.

 Fuqua laughed at the description of her encounter with the Quinn’s specialist.

 “I don’t know what to tell you about Quinn’s,” she said. “They’re going to say what they want to say.”

 Then she hung up.

 The appointment

 When Fuqua arrived at Quinn’s for her appointment, the auction house’s specialist quickly brought up the need to verify the Renoir’s authenticity. But Fuqua, accompanied by a middle-aged man, questioned whether that was necessary. (The Quinn’s specialist does not recall if the man introduced himself. In Fuqua’s brief interview with The Post, she said she visited Quinn’s by herself.)

 The auction house’s conservationist inspected the painting and believed it could be real. The specialist asked Fuqua if she would leave the painting for a few days so more research could be done.

 Fuqua refused to leave the painting and seemed dissatisfied with the specialist’s estimate of what the Renoir might sell for: $20,000 to $40,000.

 “She had this sort of fantasy of $1 million,” the employee said.

 As the appointment ended, the specialist offered Fuqua a chance to meet with Quinn, the company’s executive vice president. Fuqua agreed, and the specialist wrote an e-mail to Quinn:

 “Hi, I met with a woman today who has a potential Renoir. I had [our conservationist] take a look at it, and he’s neither dismissing it nor overly confident,” she wrote. “I went through the discussion of the catalog raisonne, but she would feel more comfortable talking to you about the entire procedure. Would you mind calling her? Or can we discuss this further? Her name is Martha Fuqua.”

 Quinn and Fuqua were scheduled to meet June 12. But when the day came, Fuqua didn’t show. The company called her but couldn’t reach her.

 Three months passed. Then, in early September, Quinn came across the burst of news stories about an anonymous woman auctioning off a Renoir at the Potomack Co. in Alexandria on Sept. 29.

 Initially, Quinn said he was disappointed that his company lost out to a rival.

 “I think, as a supervisor, I can be very hard on people when we lose something to a competitor,” Quinn said. “I just wondered, ‘Why did we lose this deal?’ ”

 But as he and his staff read the stories more carefully, the details astounded them. She was now telling Potomack and the media that she had gone to a West Virginia flea market in late 2009 and wound up with the Renoir only because it came in a box holding items she prized more: a Paul Bunyan doll and a plastic cow.

 She said she bid on the box and won it for $7, then stashed the painting in a shed, her car and her kitchen over the next two years. She took it to an auction house at the urging of her mother, who suspected that it might be real.

 “When it came out that Potomack was selling it, and it’s all over ABC News and [other media outlets], my supervisor and I were like, ‘What’s with this $7 flea-market find?’ ” the Quinn’s specialist said. “We spent a lot of time talking about why would she change her story.”

 Eventually they, along with the rest of the world, learned that the Renoir had been stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951.

 Days before the Potomack auction, The Post found documents in the BMA’s library showing that one of its biggest donors had lent the Renoir to the museum in the 1930s. Then the BMA discovered more internal records showing that its staff reported the Renoir’s theft to Baltimore police in 1951.

 According to the 1951 police report, between Nov. 16 and Nov. 17, “some one stole” the Renoir; there was no evidence of forced entry.

 Potomack, which had told reporters and potential bidders that the Renoir could sell for as much as $100,000, canceled the auction and handed the painting over to the FBI.

 The investigation

 In October, Quinn traveled to New Jersey for a business dinner and wound up talking with Robert Wittman, the retired founder and former senior investigator of the FBI’s art crimes team.

 He told Wittman about his employee’s encounter with Fuqua. Wittman, who had been following the case of the “flea- market Renoir,” was intrigued.

 He passed along Quinn’s contact information to the FBI case agent investigating the Renoir theft.

 A few weeks later, the agent met with the Quinn’s specialist.

 “He wanted to know which date she came in,” the specialist recalled. “And he was interested in the ‘estate’ aspect of her story.”

 The FBI declined to comment about its investigation.

 Elizabeth Wainstein, the founder and president of the Potomack Co., said Fuqua has never strayed from her flea- market story since she called the auction house on July 17 to make her first appointment.

 No one at Potomack pressed Fuqua on which flea market she visited, or which vendor sold it to her. Wainstein said she and her staff were more concerned about whether the piece was real and whether it had been stolen.

 That’s why, she said, Potomack contacted Bernheim-Jeune, the Paris art gallery that keeps a compendium detailing the ownership histories of Renoir’s works, and the London-based Art Loss Register, the world’s largest private database of stolen and lost art. The Paris gallery confirmed that the painting was real, and the Art Loss Register reported that it was not on the register’s list of stolen goods.

 In an interview with The Post in early September, when she was still using the Renoir Girl pseudonym, Fuqua said that she’d called a New York auction house earlier but that the firm didn’t seem interested. She also mentioned that she’d visited another local auction house but declined to give any details.

 “As soon as I walked in,” she said, “there was some teenage girl who said it’s probably not real.”

 The next step

 Now, an Alexandria federal judge is set to decide who gets to keep the Renoir. It may come down to Fuqua or the Baltimore Museum of Art, which was lent the painting in 1937 by one of its largest donors, the late Saidie May.

 In court papers, Fuqua argues that the government should recognize her as the painting’s “innocent owner” as defined by federal law.

 She claims that she has only a layman’s understanding of art and that she had no clue the painting she unwittingly bought was a real Renoir and subject to possible FBI forfeiture.

 But Fuqua’s mother, Marcia Fouquet, 84, ran an art studio for decades at her Fairfax home, where Fuqua helped out for several years.

 Her mother, who graduated from Goucher College in Baltimore with a fine arts degree in 1952 and earned a master’s from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1957, specialized in reproducing the works of famous painters, including Renoir.

 Although the FBI is still investigating the case, the statute of limitations on the art theft has expired. But other related charges, such as possession and transportation of stolen property, could be filed, according to Robert Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in art theft.

 Fuqua’s attorney, T. Wayne Biggs, would not comment.

 The Quinn’s specialist still wonders about the unidentified man who came along with Fuqua. All she can recall was that the man was short. He looked middle-aged. He might have worn a ball cap.

 The specialist does remember one thing: During his interview, the FBI agent seemed especially interested in the man as well. |||||

– The case of the Renoir supposedly purchased at a flea market for $7 in 2009 continues to unspool dramatically: Now the Washington Post finds three witnesses who say On the Shore of the Seine hung in Marcia Fouquet's Virginia home in the 1980s and 1990s. That would seem to dispute the story Fouquet's daughter, Martha (or Marcia, depending on which article you're reading) Fuqua, has given about her lucky find. The painting was discovered to have been stolen from a Baltimore museum in 1951, and now Fuqua is fighting to hold onto it. Robert Musser, who dated and lived with Fouquet in the 1980s, recalls the small, ornately-framed painting adorned with Renoir's name on a small plaque attached to the frame. "She said it came from a museum in Baltimore," he says. "She said it was a real Renoir, that she owned a Renoir. ... She never told me how she acquired it." He assumed it was a fake. An anonymous childhood friend of Fuqua's says the mother and daughter showed her the painting in Fouquet's studio in the 1990s and said it was a real Renoir. "I didn't ask where it came from because I just assumed they were lying," she says, but the "unusual" frame and Renoir plaque stuck in her memory. Bobby J. Fontaine, a former student of Fouquet's who lived with the family for a time, also remembered Fouquet showing him the painting in the 1990s. "She says, 'Do you think it’s real or not?'" he recalls. "I told her, 'I guess it’s real.'" But they spoke no more about it. This follows last month's news that a few months before Fuqua claimed to have found the Renoir at a flea market, she took it to be appraised at an auction house—where she reportedly told an art specialist that she had gotten it from an estate.


Article:

We've seen this movie before: a frenzied buildup punctuated by constant speculation. And then Apple actually announces the object behind all the fuss — in this particular sequel the latest iPad, which goes on sale Friday.

 Then the mood shifts. People bummed out by the features that Apple did not put into its freshly baked tablet computer weigh in. No extra storage or expansion options, no smaller-screen model to compete against the likes of Amazon's Kindle Fire. Still no Adobe Flash, and no camera flash, either. Not even Siri, the chatty personal assistant who, depending on where you are coming from, either charms owners of the iPhone 4S or bugs them.

 No big deal.

 Apple may have left a few things out. But Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimates Apple will sell up to 60 million iPads this year. And that's on top of the 55 million collectively Apple has sold since the original iPad was introduced in 2010, spawning imitators and redefining an entire category of computing.

 And nearly everyone who lands the brand new iPad on Day 1 — or more likely sometime afterward, since preorders are sold out — will be delighted.

 Apple's latest tablet strongly resembles the iPad 2. At 0.37-inches and 1.4-pounds, it's ever-so- slightly thicker and heavier (though Apple says most cases and accessories should fit). But the new iPad snatches the crown from its predecessor as the finest tablet you can buy. Period. Similar scenes played out last year with the iPad 2.

 So it goes with the tablet born in 2012, which Apple for reasons not altogether clear did not name iPad 3 but simply the new iPad. On the surface, the leap from the second-generation iPad to the third-generation would appear to be relatively modest. But all Apple did was again distance itself from the competition:

 •An overview. The display is spectacular. Apple also improved the camera, added dictation and, on some models, the ability to tap into the speediest available cellular networks. Apple did all this without sacrificing much battery life or jacking up prices. The iPad 2 stays in the lineup and is cheaper.

 An iPad 2 with 16 gigabytes of storage now fetches $399, $100 less than a week ago. An iPad 2 with 3G wireless capabilities from AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless goes for $529, plus a data plan if you choose to add one.

 Meanwhile, new models with just Wi-Fi cost $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB and $699 for 64GB. Same capacity models with Wi-Fi and 4G wireless capabilities command $629, $729 and $829.

 •Fast wireless. The new iPads are the first iPads that access the 4G or 4th generation data networks being deployed nationally (but not everywhere) by AT&T and Verizon Wireless, each with variations on how wireless is delivered.

 The test machine, a Verizon model that taps into the company's 4G LTE network, was really zippy in a week of testing in San Francisco and Austin. Downloading apps was quick, including previously purchased apps that had to be accessed through Apple's iCloud service. Web pages loaded much faster than on an older iPad running 3G.

 The new iPad can work as a personal hotspot that lets you share your speedy wireless connection with up to five other devices, though for now only Verizon has turned on the feature.

 Verizon's monthly data plans begin at $20 for 1 GB, go to $30 for 2 GB and climb to $80 for 10 GB. AT&T offers a 250 MB plan for $14.99; 3 GB for $30; and 5 GB for $50. Keep in mind that with 4G you might well consume more data.

 To some degree, Apple is playing catch-up, because many of the tablets built around Google's Android mobile operating system have had 4G for some time.

 Where Apple continues to claim a huge advantage over Android and other tablet rivals is in the apps ecosystem. The iPad runs almost all of the 585,000-plus apps sold or available free in the App Store, and more than 200,000 apps now are designed specifically for the iPad. Android still has comparatively few tablet-specific apps.

 •A screen to die for. The display becomes your window into all those apps. And the brilliant screen on the new iPad is the thing that will have you salivating.

 You're probably thinking the displays on the first iPad and the iPad 2 were pretty sweet, and you'd be right. Watching movies, reading books, surfing the Web, playing games and admiring photos on the older tablets is not an unpleasant experience.

 But then you have a look at what Apple calls the "retina display" on the new iPad, technology first applied to recent iPhones, and you're blown away.

 Examine the new screen side-by-side with one of its near-10-inch predecessors, and you'll swear you just had Lasik surgery. Text on Web pages or in books is so crisp and sharp that you don't want to go back to reading on an older iPad. Movies and photographs reveal rich detail.

 Apple explains that with a resolution of 2048x 1536, and 3.1 million pixels (four times the number on the iPad 2) the screen on the new iPad is sharper than your high-definition television. The company's marketers are using the word "resolutionary."

 Apple helps drive the spectacular display with a new version of one of its chips, the A5X, with quad-core graphics. Even Apple goes all geeky on you every now and then.

 •Photos and video. Last time around, Apple added those two cameras to the iPad 2; this time Apple souped-up the optics.

 There's an autofocus, 5-megapixel iSight camera, which unlike the camera on the iPad 2 can capture high-definition video up to the 1080p standard. (Movies also play back in full high-def.) The camera has face detection, a sensor that performs well in low light, a fixed f/4 aperture and other optical enhancements.

 Taking a lot of pictures or videos with the iPad is a matter of preference. It's not exactly a point-and-shoot replacement and is a little awkward for shooting. Held a certain way, you can sometimes inadvertently cover the lens when pressing the onscreen shutter button. The alternative is to take pictures by pressing a volume button on the side.

 But the still images and video shot are generally pleasing, despite the absence of a flash. You can do minor edits inside the built-in Photo app and easily tweet images you've shot from within the app. Apple is also pushing a custom $4.99 iPad version of the iPhoto software that is familiar to Mac owners

 If you shoot video and are prone to shake, you'll appreciate the built-in video-stabilization feature that helps steady your footage. And even if you don't plan on shooting much, many apps take advantage of the cameras on the iPad.

 •Dictation. Apple may have kept Siri off the iPad's roster for now, but it did add a dictation feature that lets you use your voice to create notes, e-mails or to write something in Apple's optional Pages word-processing app, or for that matter any Apple or third-party app in which you summon the virtual keyboard.

 You tap a microphone icon and start speaking, then tap again when you're done. The iPad almost always spits out results right away, but doesn't always hear correctly. For example, the word "maybe" was heard as "baby."

 But more often than not the accuracy was decent enough that it wouldn't take long to manually fix errors. Even the commas were typically put in the right places.

 •The battery. Apple claims up to 10 hours for the Wi-Fi-only models, same as before, and nine hours for 4G and about an hour less for Wi-Fi + 4G.

 The iPad got through an entire day of being worked hard with no battery problem. Inside the device is a larger capacity (and physically larger) sealed battery than the one in the iPad 2.

 The third-generation iPad may not be the game-changer that Apple's original tablet was, but you know how this movie is going to end. Apple is going to rake it in on the heels of its latest matinee idol.

 Should you buy the new iPad?

 If you purchased the original iPad all of two years ago and have money to spare, I'd say go for it. Though a tad bigger than the iPad 2, the new iPad is smaller and lighter than the original iPad. You'll appreciate the increased speed, the lovely screen and the presence of cameras.

 If you have an iPad 2, it's a little harder to justify springing for the latest model now, much as you might want to. Yes, the new screen is spectacular, and 4G and the improved cameras are welcome upgrades. But you would have purchased that iPad 2 much more recently and it may be difficult to plunk down extra cash this soon, unless you have a family member who can inherit your current model.

 If you're a tablet newbie, there's no better choice on the market than an iPad, provided — and this is a pretty big if — price isn't an issue and you don't want a tablet that would fit in your pocket, such as the $199 Amazon Kindle Fire.

 The bottom line

 www.apple.com

 $499 on up.

 •Pro. Stunning screen, 4G speeds (on certain models), decent dictation and improved camera optics. Strong battery. Apps galore.

 •Con. Shooting with camera can be awkward. No Adobe Flash. No camera flash. No expanded storage.

 Follow @edbaig on Twitter; e-mail: ebaig@usatoday.com

 Disclosure: Baig is co-author of iPad For Dummies, an independent work published by Wiley. ||||| The new iPad offers fast speed and one of the most spectacular displays ever seen in a mobile device, Walt Mossberg discusses on digits. Photo: Getty Images.

 Apple's iPad could be described as a personal display through which you see and manipulate text, graphics, photos and videos often delivered via the Internet. So, how has the company chosen to improve its wildly popular tablet? By making that display dramatically better and making the delivery of content dramatically faster.

 There are other changes in the new, third-generation iPad—called simply "iPad," with no number, which goes on sale on Friday at the same base price as its predecessor, $499. But the key upgrades are to those core features—the 9.7-inch screen and the data speed over cellular networks. These upgrades are massive. Using the new display is like getting a new eyeglasses prescription—you suddenly realize what you thought looked sharp before wasn't nearly as sharp as it could be.

 Boosting those particular features—the screen and the cellular speed—usually has a negative impact on battery life in a digital device. But Apple has managed to crank them up them while maintaining the long battery life between charges that has helped give the iPad such an edge over other tablets.

 Enlarge Image Close Walter S. Mossberg/The Wall Street Journal Objects, like the trees in this photo of Glacier National Park in Montana that Walt made his screen wallpaper, look sharper on the new iPad.

 That doesn't mean there aren't other trade-offs. Mostly to make room for a larger battery, the new iPad weighs about 8% more and is about 7% thicker than the prior model. That means the company can't claim to have the thinnest and lightest tablet, as it boasted last year with the iPad 2. (It's still thinner and lighter than the original iPad.)

 I've been testing the new iPad, and despite these trade-offs, its key improvements strengthen its position as the best tablet on the market. Apple hasn't totally revamped the iPad or added loads of new features. But it has improved it significantly, at the same price.

 It has the most spectacular display I have ever seen in a mobile device. The company squeezed four times the pixels into the same physical space as on the iPad 2 and claims the new iPad's screen has a million more pixels than an HDTV. All I know is that text is much sharper, and photos look richer.

 If you already own an iPad 2, and like it, you shouldn't feel like you have to rush out to buy the new one. However, for those who use their iPads as their main e-readers, and those who use it frequently while away from Wi-Fi coverage, this new model could make a big difference.

 The optional, extra-cost, 4G LTE cellular-data capability made it feel like I was always on a fast Wi-Fi connection. I loved the photos and videos I took with the greatly improved rear camera. And the battery life degraded by just 11 minutes, a figure that is still much better than on any tablet I've tested.

 Along with the unmatched collection of 200,000 third-party programs designed for its large screen, and the large catalogs of music, books, periodicals and video content available for it, I can recommend the new iPad to consumers as their best choice in a general-purpose tablet.

 The exceptions would be people who prefer a smaller size for one-handed use, or those who find the weight a burden. While the weight gain was noticeable, I didn't find it a problem even for long reading or video-watching sessions. The extra thickness was barely discernible.

 For the weight conscious, and for those who can't swing the $499 entry cost, there is an out. Apple for the first time is making and selling the prior iPad model at a reduced price. The iPad 2 will now be available starting at $399, with just one choice of storage capacity—16 gigabytes. The new iPad can be bought in 16, 32 or 64 GB capacities, at prices up to $829. The optional cellular capability costs the same as the slower 3G capability, both up front and in monthly fees from Verizon and AT&T .

 The Display

 It's not as if people are complaining about the screens on their iPads, a device so attractive and useful that Apple sold about 55 million of them in two years. But this display is a big leap forward.

 Enlarge Image Close Apple Letters that seemed sharp on the iPad 2, far left, suddenly felt fuzzier when compared with the new iPad's 'retina' display, left. (It's hard to reproduce on a web page.)

 It's hard to illustrate on a Web page or in print how brilliant this new display is. You have to see it. Apple calls it a "retina" display because, at normal viewing distance, there are so many pixels per inch, the human eye can't pick them out individually. This display packs 264 pixels into every inch, twice as many as on iPad 2. Overall, the resolution is 2048 x 1536, versus 1024 x 768 for the iPad 2.

 My epiphany came when I placed my iPad 2 next to the new model, with the same text on the screen. Letters and words that had seemed sharp on the older model five minutes earlier suddenly looked fuzzier.

 As I tested the new model over five days, I found I was able to use smaller font sizes to read books and email. The same photos I had enjoyed on the older model looked much better on the new one, not only because of the increased resolution, but because Apple claims it increased color saturation by 44%. One thing Apple hasn't fixed: like all glossy, LCD color displays, this one still does poorly in direct sunlight.

 The Speed

 Walter S. Mossberg/The Wall Street Journal The new iPad's 4G LTE cellular speeds are faster than many home Internet connections, as seen in this speed test showing how fast it would take to download data.

 The new iPad is hardly the first device to use 4G LTE cellular technology, but it marks a huge difference from the iPad 2. On Verizon's network in Washington and Austin, Texas, I averaged LTE download speeds of over 17 megabits per second, faster than most home wired networks. A colleague using a new iPad on AT&T's LTE network averaged over 12 mbps. My iPad 2 running Verizon's 3G network averaged just over 1 mbps. Of course, you can get a Wi-Fi only model, at $130 less. The base $499 model is Wi-Fi only.

 There is another dimension to speed: the overall responsiveness of the device. The new iPad is just as buttery smooth to use as the iPad 2. Apple beefed up the processor, especially its graphics capabilities.

 The Battery

 Apple claims up to 10 hours of battery life between charges, and up to nine hours if you are relying strictly on cellular connectivity. In my standard battery test, where I play videos back to back with both cellular and Wi-Fi on, and the screen at 75% brightness, the new iPad logged 9 hours and 58 minutes, compared with 10 hours and 9 minutes for the iPad 2. Other tablets died hours sooner in the same test. In more normal use, the new iPad lasted more than a full day, though not as long as the iPad 2 did.

 The Rear Camera

 Like the iPad 2, the third-generation iPad has front and rear cameras. The front camera, meant mainly for video chats, hasn't changed. But the rear camera, which was awful for photos on the iPad 2, and was estimated at less than a single megapixel of resolution, has greatly improved. It's now a 5-megapixel shooter with improved optics. I loved the photos and videos it took, indoors and out.

 Other features

 The new iPad is the first that can be used, like many smartphones, as a personal hot spot—a base station to connect laptops and other devices to the Internet. In my tests, this worked fine.

 It also allows you to dictate, rather than type, emails and other text. I found this surprisingly accurate. And Apple now has a brilliant new version of its iPhoto software that has been rewritten for the iPad.

 Bottom Line

 Since it launched in 2010, the iPad has been the best tablet on the planet. With the new, third-generation model, it still holds that crown.

 — Find all of Walt Mossberg's columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com. The Personal Technology column will return to Wednesdays next week.

 Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com ||||| But apps that haven’t been rewritten don’t benefit as much. In most apps, text is automatically sharpened, but not in all of them. After enjoying the freakishly sharp text in Mail and Safari, you’ll be disappointed in the relatively crude type in, for example, the non-updated Amazon Kindle app. (Amazon says that a Retina-ready update is in the works.)

 Similarly, high-definition videos look dazzling. This is the world’s first tablet that can actually show you hi-def movies in full 1080p high definition. But Netflix’s streaming movies don’t come to the iPad in high definition (yet, says Netflix), so they don’t look any better.

 There’s another price you’ll pay for all this clarity, too: in storage. Tests performed by Macworld.com revealed that the graphics in Retina-ready apps consume two to three times as much of the iPad’s nonexpandable storage than pre-Retina apps. To update their apps for the new display, software companies must redo their graphics at much higher resolution, which means much larger files.

 (Worse, each app is usually written in single, universal version for all iPad models. So those apps will eat up the same extra space, pointlessly, on older iPads, too — and even on iPhones, since many apps are written to run on both the tablet and the phone. In other words, iPhone owners, too, will wind up losing storage space because of this graphic-bloat ripple-down effect.)

 The resolution revolution isn’t the only change in the iPad That Shall Not Be Numbered. Another big change is 4G LTE.

 That is, the cellular iPad models can now hop onto the very fast 4G wireless networks for data that Verizon and AT&T have built in big American cities.

 (Apple has not changed the prices and configurations for the new iPad. The base model still costs $500, has only Wi-Fi and holds 16 gigabytes. The top-of-the-line model still costs $830, has 64 gigabytes of storage and can also get online via a cell network. You have to choose either the AT&T or the Verizon model, in that case, and pay a monthly fee — $15 to $50 a month, no contract required. These iPads can also get online overseas, although only at 3G speeds; LTE uses different frequencies in other countries.)

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 Being on LTE flavor of 4G is really, really nice. Apps download quickly. Web pages appear fast. You don’t have to wait for videos to load before they start playing. The Verizon iPads offer tethering — a feature that converts that cellular Internet connection into a Wi-Fi hot spot — so nearby laptops can now enjoy the same high Internet speeds. (AT&T says it’s working to get tethering.)

 My Verizon test unit got download speeds ranging from 6 to 29 megabits a second in San Francisco, Boston and New York — in many cases, faster than home cable-modem service. According to tests by PC Magazine and others, AT&T’s 4G network is smaller, but often faster. No doubt about it: life begins at 4G.

 Photo

 Now, 4G is a notorious battery hog. It scarfs down electricity like a football team at a hot dog eating contest.

 Apple, however, was determined to keep the iPad’s battery life unchanged from the last model: nine to 10 hours on a charge. In my all-day nonstop-usage test, it did manage nine hours.

 To pull that off, Apple adopted a three-prong strategy. First, it developed or adopted components that use less power (Bluetooth 4.0, for example). Second, it came up with various software and circuitry tricks.

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 Third, it incorporated a fatter, heavier battery. The new iPad is one millimeter thicker, and 1.8 ounces heavier, than the iPad 2. It’s a very slight difference, but fingers used to handling the old iPad will feel it, and that’s too bad.

 Interestingly, you can turn off the LTE antenna in the Settings app. Without that power hog, you’ll probably get even better battery life.

 So what else is new? A 5-megapixel back camera that takes far better photos than the iPad 2 did. (Which isn’t saying much.) You can capture 1080p hi-def videos now, and a stabilization feature lends a hand when yours is shaky or moving.

 A tiny microphone now appears on the on-screen keyboard. Tapping it lets you speak to type, exactly as on the iPhone 4S.

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 For most people, that’s a huge blessing; typing on glass has never been a joyous activity. The recognition is fast and accurate, at least when you have a strong Internet connection (the transcription is actually performed by faraway servers).

 Weirdly, though, speech-to-text is the only piece of Siri, Apple’s smart voice-control software, that the new iPad inherits from the iPhone 4S. You don’t get the rest of Siri’s features: the ability to set alarms, send text messages, look up calendar appointments and snag facts from the Web just by asking out loud. That the full Siri isn’t available smacks more of a marketing department holdback than technical limitations.

 The world has changed since the iPad 2 came out. Stripped-down, smaller and far less magical rivals like the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet cost only $200. (That, probably, is why Apple still sells the iPad 2 at $100 less than the new models.)

 Dozens of would-be iPads have come — and, in many cases, gone. (Shall we have a moment of silence for the Hewlett-Packard TouchPad and the flailing BlackBerry PlayBook? Nah.)

 But the surviving rivals still sell in minuscule numbers compared with the iPad, and that’s not likely to change now.

 The new iPad doesn’t introduce anything that we haven’t seen before, either in the iPhone or in rival tablets. There’s no Steve Jobs “one more thing” moment here; Apple just took its white-hot iPad and added the latest screen, battery and cellular technologies.

 If you’re in the market for a tablet, here’s the bright side: For the same price as before, you can now get an updated iPad that’s still better-looking, better integrated and more consistently designed than any of its rivals.

 And if you already have the iPad 2, here’s an even brighter side: At least this time around, you don’t have to feel quite as obsolete as usual. |||||
What is a summary?

– Tech reviewers are seeing the light when they check out the eye-popping high-definition display of the new iPad. Lucky columnists with preview models of the iPad's third version are gushing about the screen's brilliant display—with a million more pixels than HDTV—and its processing speed. "These upgrades are massive," writes Walter Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal. "Using the new display is like getting a new eyeglass prescription—you suddenly realize what you thought looked sharp before wasn't nearly as sharp as it could be. It has the most spectacular display I have ever seen in a mobile device." The new iPad even manages to keep its long battery life despite the upgrades. Some of the tradeoffs? The new iPad weighs about 8% more, and is about 7% thicker than the last version. And the high-def displays eat up lots of storage. But it hardly seems to matter. "The display is spectacular. Apple also improved the camera, added dictation and, on some models, the ability to tap into the speediest available cellular networks," notes Edward Baig for USA Today. If you still don't get the picture, here's what the New York Times' David Pogue says: "It's a very, very sharp screen, four times as sharp as the iPad 2," making maps, photos, videos, and text in apps rewritten for the new device look "jaw-droppingly good." The public was sold even before the reviews: Apple expects to sell at least a million new iPads the first day.


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Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain. ||||| Outside Bernardo Bertolucci’s apartment in Rome there is a large goods lift. Once it carried supplies and shopping from floor to floor but now the goods it carries are Bertolucci and one of his three wheelchairs.

 Ten years ago, Bertolucci had what he was told would be routine back surgery on a herniated disc. After the first operation, he was told that there had been a bit of a problem but this could easily be sorted out by another operation. He was told exactly the same thing after his second operation. After his third, he realised he would never walk again.

 Since then he has become a recluse – at least that’s how he describes himself. He seldom goes out, and hardly ever to the cinema, where he once spent almost all his free time. Instead, one wall of his living room is taken up with an enormous white screen. Right now it’s showing a live broadcast of the Papal enthronement taking place half a mile away. Every so often snatches of the Pope’s voice drift in through the open window from one of the PA systems that have been set up all over the city.

 After a few minutes Bertolucci appears, carefully manoeuvring his wheelchair around the furniture. He was always an imposing man: as a teenager I remember seeing photos of him when Last Tango in Paris came out in 1972 and thinking that's exactly how a film director should look. At 73, he may have thickened out and lost some hair but he’s still imposing, even if, as he observes drily, he’s half the height he once was.

 However grim the past few years have been, he is, he insists, feeling a lot better these days. Having been told that he would almost certainly spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, Bertolucci plunged into deep depression, convinced that his career as a director was over.

 “For a long time I was very negative,” he says in thickly impasted English. “The total frustration of not being able to move. Not being able to do anything for myself. As far as I was concerned, I was finished.” But then, in the midst of his depression, he was sent a copy of a novel by Niccolò Ammaniti called – in English – Me and You. As soon as he read the book, Bertolucci decided he wanted to make a film of it.

 “Immediately, it awoke… my desire, you know. I soaked it up like a sponge,” he says. “At that moment, it really felt as if my life depended on that book. And the whole process of making the film was the most fantastic therapy for me. I directed this film with the same passion I’ve directed all my other films. The only difference was that I was sitting down the whole time so my eye line was lower.”

 Me and You is hardly an obviously cinematic novel – it’s set almost entirely in a very gloomy basement. But all the things that might have put someone else off made it ideal for Bertolucci. “There was just one room, only two main characters. I could direct it from my wheelchair without having to move about much. It was perfect.” In fact, he’s always been drawn to enclosed spaces as a director, most famously in Last Tango where Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider seldom ventured outside, mainly because they were far too busy having sexual intercourse.

 Me and You is about a teenage boy who’s supposed to be going on a school skiing trip but who bunks off and spends a week living in the basement of his mother’s apartment building. Although it’s a simple enough story, you don’t have to peer too closely to unearth a metaphor about Bertolucci’s own life. The boy goes down into the depths, essentially puts himself back together again and emerges a lot happier. “I really didn’t think about it like that at the time,” he says. “It was only afterwards that I realised that maybe there’s a kind of similarity.” As he always does, Bertolucci encouraged his actors to improvise a good deal, something he learnt from the great French director Jean Renoir, whom Bertolucci met in Los Angeles in the early Seventies. “My wife [the screenwriter, Clare Peploe] and I went round for dinner and there he was in a wheelchair, surrounded by flowers.” Nearly 40 years on and it’s Bertolucci who’s sitting in a wheelchair surrounded by flowers. It was his 73rd birthday two days earlier and a lot of his friends seem to have sent vast bouquets.

 Jacopo Olmo Antinori as Lorenzo and Tea Falco as Olivia in 'Me and You'

 “I know, I know,” he sighs. “It’s very strange, isn’t it? I remember Renoir gave me this fantastic piece of advice. He said that when you direct you should always leave the door open because unexpected things can come in. In other words, don’t structure everything too rigidly because then there won’t be room to experiment.” It’s advice that has sometimes got him into hot water, most notably in Last Tango when he failed to inform Schneider beforehand that Brando was going to be anally raping her.

 The scene, in which Brando anointed himself with butter, caused a sensation when the film came out. It was also cited by Schneider as the main reason why her life fell apart. She went to her death in 2011 still furious about what she saw as appalling exploitation on Bertolucci’s part.

 Schneider may well have had a legitimate beef. But having interviewed her not that long before she died, I got the feeling that she’d lit on Last Tango as the source of all her woes because it enabled her to shift the blame for the appalling mess she’d made of her life on to someone else.

 When I ask Bertolucci if he thinks he exploited her, he gives another, even longer, sigh. “Did Manet exploit the model for Olympia?” he asks rhetorically. “Did Courbet exploit the model for L’Origine du Monde?” (The painting shows a close-up of a woman’s vagina.) I’m not entirely sure if these are appropriate analogies as neither model was painted being anally raped, but Bertolucci plainly thinks so.

 “No,” he says carefully. “No, I don’t feel guilty, but when she died I thought, God, I’m so sorry that I can’t apologise for what Marlon and I did with that scene and we decided not to tell her. Her sense of humiliation was very real, but I think what really offended her was that she didn’t feel she’d been allowed to prepare for the scene as an actress. But I wanted her reaction as a person, not as an actress.”

 Off the set, Bertolucci has a rather courtly, old-fashioned air – he’s charming, considerate, apparently unflappable. As he admits, though, he’s apt to get carried away when he’s directing, sometimes to the point of ruthlessness. “When you make a movie it’s not always very clear how far you can go. The result is the first thing I am looking for, I have to confess that. I remember when I was directing The Last Emperor, we needed to make the little baby who was playing the emperor cry when he was taken away from the woman playing his mother. We got him to cry in the end” – he gives a throaty chuckle – “but I’m not going to tell you how.”

 Strangely, it wasn’t just Schneider who felt she’d been exploited by Bertolucci – Brando did too. For years afterwards, the two men didn’t talk, much to Bertolucci’s distress. “He wouldn’t return my calls or anything. It was very odd because I thought we were really good friends. We really loved each other. All I could think was that he’d revealed much more of himself than he was comfortable with in the film. Then in about 1992 or 1993, I called him up again and this time he did answer. He said, ‘Where are you?’ I told him I was in LA and he said, ‘Come round. Right now.’” Brando told Bertolucci that his life had fallen apart after his son murdered his daughter’s boyfriend. Subsequently, his daughter committed suicide. “He said, ‘I was dead a few years ago but now I am alive again.’ We ended up talking for hours and hours into the night. After that everything was fine.”

 American actor Marlon Brando with actress Marie Schneider and Bernardo Bertolucci in Bertolucci's film 'Last Tango In Paris'. (Getty Images)

 Bertolucci grew up in what he describes as “a universe of poetry”. His father was a poet, art historian and film critic. “My father basically had two ways of judging anything. Either something was poetic or it wasn’t.” Having published a slim volume of verse in his teens, Bertolucci was thinking that he too might devote his life to poetry when one day the doorbell rang at their family home near Parma.

 “A very sinister looking man was standing there in a black hat. He asked for Professor Bertolucci. I went and woke up my father who was having a nap and told him there was a man outside who looked like a thief.” The man, it turned out, was the film director Pier Paolo Pasolini. Bertolucci ended up dropping out of university and going to work for him. At 22, he directed his first feature film. Eight years later he won a Golden Globe for The Conformist, his adaptation of an Alberto Moravia novel about an Italian fascist in the Thirties who is told to kill his former teacher. And then came Last Tango.

 “I remember when I showed the film to my parents, at the end my mother was smiling with pride and my father, who was normally very supportive, was looking furious. When I asked him what the matter was, he said, ‘This film is obscene. We’ll all be put in prison for it.’” He wasn’t far wrong. At an ensuing obscenity trial, an Italian court revoked Bertolucci’s civil rights for five years and gave him a four-month suspended prison sentence. Not that he was too fussed. Last Tango made him the most famous director in the world.

 “It was crazy, you know. I remember going to Singapore and they presented me with all this butter. For a while I think it went to my head; I thought I could do anything I wanted.” He was rapidly disabused of this idea after making 1900, a five-hour period epic about struggling farmers in Emilia-Romagna. “I had this dream about bringing this big socialist story with lots of red flags to the United States.” Perhaps not surprisingly, it wasn’t a vision the film’s US producers shared. After forcing him to make cuts, they gave it a very limited release, leaving Bertolucci “battered and depressed”. However, he bounced back in a big way with what he calls his three “faraway films”: The Sheltering Sky, his adaptation of the Paul Bowles novel, The Last Emperor, which won nine Oscars, and Little Buddha.

 These days, inevitably, his horizons have shrunk. Although he still travels – he has a flat in west London – it’s an awkward business. “I need a little platoon of people to help me.” A lot of the time he stays in his Rome apartment watching box sets on his vast white screen. “The best work being done now is for television,” he says. “Breaking Bad – a masterpiece. House of Cards – very, very good.”

 For large chunks of his life, since his mid-twenties, Bertolucci has been in analysis. I ask him what he thought he got out of it. “I feel it nourished and enriched me as a person. And I feel it nourished and enriched my work. I feel it gave me another lens to my camera, if you know what I mean.” A lens that allowed him to see more deeply into people? Bertolucci smiles. “I think I would feel a bit ridiculous saying that.” He pauses. “But I love that you say it.”

 It’s time for me to head back outside, to where the streets are full of ecstatic-looking Roman Catholic priests streaming out of Vatican City. As I go, I see Bertolucci framed in the doorway. He has one arm raised in farewell.

 Then he lowers his arm, bends forward and pushes himself away.

 'Me and You' is released in cinemas today

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 Los Angeles ||||| CLOSE A newly resurfaced video of acclaimed Italian film director Bernardo Bertolucci has sparked outrage regarding the controversial rape scene in 'The Last Tango in Paris.' Time

 Marlon Brando (right) and Maria Schneider in 'The Last Tango in Paris.' (Photo: AP)

 That notorious rape scene in 1972’s Last Tango in Paris wasn’t real, but it wasn’t consensual, either — and Hollywood is reacting with belated outrage.

 Video of a 2013 interview with the movie’s Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci has resurfaced, Yahoo reports, in which he acknowledges that he and the late Marlon Brando, in his late 40s at the time, thought up using a stick of butter to rape Jeanne, the character played by the movie’s 19-year-old star Maria Schneider, just prior to the shoot.

 “There was a baguette, there was butter and we looked at each other and, without saying anything, we knew what we wanted,” says Bertolucci, now 75, in footage filmed at La Cinematheque Francaise in Paris. “I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress. I wanted her to react humiliated.”

 “I feel guilty,” the director added, but said he didn’t regret shooting the scene the way he did.

 News that the scene was a surprise came out well before Bertolucci’s interview: Schneider, who died in 2011 at age 58, told The Daily Mail in 2007 that the rape wasn’t in the script and she found out about it right before the cameras rolled.

 “I was so angry,” she said, specifying that the sex was simulated. “I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can’t force someone to do something that isn’t in the script, but at the time, I didn’t know that. … I was crying real tears.”

 Celebs reacted with disbelief as the story spread after footage from Bertolucci’s interview was uploaded to YouTube on Nov. 23. Some had the impression a rape occurred on camera; others noted that the actress hadn't agreed to the traumatizing scene.

 To all the people that love this film- you're watching a 19yr old get raped by a 48yr old man. The director planned her attack. I feel sick. https://t.co/qVDom2gYf6 — Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) December 3, 2016

 I second that. This is heartbreaking and outrageous. The 2 of them are very sick individuals to think that was ok. https://t.co/Ft4SArjcgd — #EvanRachelWould (@evanrachelwood) December 3, 2016

 All copies of this film should be destroyed immediately. It contains an actual rape and sexual assault. #disgusting#disgracehttps://t.co/pKKdSlBDbU — Jenna Fischer (@jennafischer) December 3, 2016

 You're a director & want to film real pain? Real terror? Real shame? Do documentaries. Don't put your actors thru surprise hell w/o consent. — Zelda Williams (@zeldawilliams) December 4, 2016

 Were this a rape scene in a script when an actor was hired, or one that was planned & could be practiced, that'd be a very different story. — Zelda Williams (@zeldawilliams) December 4, 2016

 Wow. I will never look at this film, Bertolucci or Brando the same way again. This is beyond disgusting. I feel rage https://t.co/uvaLogvv7I — Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) December 3, 2016

 Maria Schneider, who checked herself into the psych ward for a few days so she could be with her committed lover Joan Townsend. Even there they were harassed and photographed. RIP beautiful lady. I'm so sorry that art became pain rather than release for you. (Image courtesy of Old Loves Tumblr) A photo posted by Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) on Dec 4, 2016 at 12:55am PST

 The erotic drama, originally rated X, is the tale of an American widower (Brando) who embarks on a sexual relationship with a young French woman (Schneider) whose name he doesn’t know. Last Tango had its U.S. release in 1973; Brando was nominated for best actor and Bertolucci for best director at the 1974 Academy Awards.

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2h3E9Va ||||| Jessica Chastain Retweetade ELLE Magazine (US)

 To all the people that love this film- you're watching a 19yr old get raped by a 48yr old man. The director planned her attack. I feel sick.https://twitter.com/ELLEmagazine/status/804910484587773952 … ||||| Chris Evans, Jessica Chastain and more have spoken out about a recently resurfaced interview in which Bernardo Bertolucci admitted Maria Schneider wasn't made aware of details of the crucial scene prior to the day of shooting.

 One of the most notorious scenes in cinema history, the Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider butter rape scene in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, is making headlines once again, 44 years after the film's debut.

 In a recently resurfaced video interview from 2013, Bertolucci confirms that Schneider, who died in 2011, did not know the details of the rape scene ahead of time, and that the graphic nature of the scene was improvised on set.

 “We were having, with Marlon, breakfast on the floor of the flat where I was shooting. There was a baguette, there was butter and we looked at each other and, without saying anything, we knew what we wanted,” the director said then. “I had been, in a way, horrible to Maria because I didn’t tell her what was going on.”

 Bertolucci said he felt guilty about how he treated Schneider, but does not regret the scene.

 Nothing in the resurfaced video is news as the director has been very vocal about his filming of the scene and how it affected Maria Schneider in multiple interviews over the years, most recently during a press tour for his last film Me and You, during which the YouTube video interview was shot.

 Bertolucci expressed roughly the same sentiment in a 2013 interview with The Telegraph: “No, I don’t feel guilty, but when she died I thought, God, I’m so sorry that I can’t apologize for what Marlon and I did with that scene and we decided not to tell her. Her sense of humiliation was very real, but I think what really offended her was that she didn’t feel she’d been allowed to prepare for the scene as an actress. But I wanted her reaction as a person, not as an actress.”

 Celebrities voiced their disgust at the resurfaced news on Twitter. Jessica Chastain said of the revelations, “The director planned her attack. I feel sick," while Chris Evans tweeted that Bertolucci and Brando "should be in jail.” Ava DuVernay wrote, "As a woman, I am horrified, disgusted and enraged by it."

 See more reactions below.

 To all the people that love this film- you're watching a 19yr old get raped by a 48yr old man. The director planned her attack. I feel sick. https://t.co/qVDom2gYf6 — Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) December 3, 2016

 I second that. This is heartbreaking and outrageous. The 2 of them are very sick individuals to think that was ok. https://t.co/Ft4SArjcgd — #EvanRachelWould (@evanrachelwood) December 3, 2016

 Inexcusable. As a director, I can barely fathom this. As a woman, I am horrified, disgusted and enraged by it. https://t.co/voGRhafy9K — Ava DuVernay (@ava) December 4, 2016

 Wow. I will never look at this film, Bertolucci or Brando the same way again. This is beyond disgusting. I feel rage https://t.co/uvaLogvv7I — Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) December 3, 2016

 @AnnaKendrick47 @colliderfrosty had no idea. Woulda felt rage then too. They should be in jail. — Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) December 3, 2016

 Anna Kendrick noted that Schneider's lack of knowledge of the scene prior to the shooting day was nothing new. “Ms Schneider stated this several years ago. I used to get eye-rolls when I brought it up to people (aka dudes),” she tweeted.

 "I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can't force someone to do something that isn't in the script, but at the time, I didn't know that,” Schneider said in a 2007 Daily Mail interview.

 She continued, "Marlon said to me: 'Maria, don't worry, it's just a movie,' but during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears. … I felt very sad because I was treated like a sex symbol — I wanted to be recognized as an actress and the whole scandal and aftermath of the film turned me a little crazy and I had a breakdown."

 Schneider added, "I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci.”

 The actress claims that the late Brando also felt taken advantage of by Bertolucci, so it was easy to imagine how the experience affected the young actress. “Marlon said he felt raped and manipulated by it and he was 48,” she said. “And he was Marlon Brando!"

 It’s also well known that Schneider, who struggled with drug addiction and mental health issues, has blamed the infamous film for the downhill trajectory of her life. She went on to star in renowned films including Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger, but said she was unable to get past the notoriety that came with starring in Bertolucci’s film.

 Last Tango in Paris was critically lauded but surrounded in public controversy. Bertolucci was put on trial for obscenity in Italy after the release of the movie. Copies of the film were destroyed at the time and Bertolucci was served with a four-month suspended sentence and denied his civil (including voting) rights for five years. Last Tango earned Brando a best actor Oscar nomination and Bertolucci a best director nomination. ||||| Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Bernardo Bertolucci sparks outrage after 2013 interview surfaces in which he says he ‘wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress’

 Comments by the director of the film Last Tango in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci, that he conspired with Marlon Brando to film a graphic rape scene without the consent of 19-year-old actor Maria Schneider have prompted outrage in Hollywood.

 Speaking in a video from 2013 that surfaced recently, Bertolucci said he and Brando came up with the idea to shoot the infamous scene depicting assault, in which Brando’s character uses a stick of butter to anally rape his lover, played by Schneider.

 “The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon in the morning before shooting,” Bertulocci said at an event held at La Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 2013. He said he “wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress”.

 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bertolucci speaks about the infamous scene depicting assault

 “I think she hated me and also Marlon because we didn’t tell her that there was that detail of the butter used as lubricant,” he said.

 Although he admitted that not telling her the plan was “horrible”, Bertolucci said he didn’t regret how he decided to direct the scene.

 Last Tango in Paris – which was made in 1972 and tells the story of a man who enters into an anonymous affair after his wife takes her own life – shocked audiences when it was released due to its graphic depictions of sex and rape and is still considered to be controversial. At the time of filming Brando was 48, while Schneider was 19.

 Schneider, who went on to have serious drug addiction problems and depression, said in 2007 that she felt humiliated and “a little raped”. During the interview Schneider confirmed the scene was simulated and there was no real sex.

 Last Tango in Paris rape scene claims 'not true at all', says cinematographer Read more

 She said she was told about the contents of the scene shortly before the shoot and that it wasn’t in the original script.

 “I was so angry, she said. “I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can’t force someone to do something that isn’t in the script, but at the time, I didn’t know that,” she told the Daily Mail.

 “Marlon said to me: ‘Maria, don’t worry, it’s just a movie’.”

 “After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologise. Thankfully, there was just one take,” she said. Schneider died from cancer in 2011.

 Bertolucci’s comments prompted outrage on social media, with celebrities among those calling for the director to be stripped of his awards or to be prosecuted.

 Jessica Chastain said the comments made her feel sick.

 Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) To all the people that love this film- you're watching a 19yr old get raped by a 48yr old man. The director planned her attack. I feel sick. https://t.co/qVDom2gYf6

 Evan Rachel Wood retweeted Chastain’s comments, adding, “I second that. This is heartbreaking and outrageous. The 2 of them are very sick individuals to think that was ok.”

 Chris Evans wrote: “Wow. I will never look at this film, Bertolucci or Brando the same way again. This is beyond disgusting. I feel rage,” which prompted a response from Anna Kendrick.

 “Ms Schneider stated this several years ago. I used to get eye-rolls when I brought it up to people (aka dudes),” Kendrick tweeted. Evans replied that the men should be in jail.

 Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) @AnnaKendrick47 @colliderfrosty had no idea. Woulda felt rage then too. They should be in jail.

 Australian Associated Press contributed to this report

  ||||| by LINA DAS

 Last updated at 22:45 19 July 2007

 As the star of Last Tango In Paris, Maria Schneider took part in the most infamous sex scene ever. In this rare interview she reveals the devastating consequences

 Last Tango In Paris was undoubtedly one of the most influential - and controversial - films of the last century. Starring Marlon Brando, then aged 48 and exuding aggressive masculinity, and Maria Schneider, a 19-year-old French unknown, it featured one of the most infamous movie sex scenes ever filmed.

 Denounced as obscene, the film - a tale of lust between an older man and younger woman who meet for anonymous and increasingly racy sexual encounters -was banned in many countries, including areas of Britain. It also scandalised the remaining movie-goers who actually got to see it.

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 Now Last Tango In Paris is being re-released to mark the 35th anniversary of Bernardo Bertolucci's iconic movie. Despite its notoriety, the film won Oscar nominations for both Bertolucci and Brando and catapulted Schneider to worldwide fame.

 Brando's performance was notably intense and described as verging on the autobiographical.

 Yet, while Last Tango brought Schneider immediate recognition, the fall-out from the movie for the young actress was spectacular.

 Unprepared for the worldwide attention the film brought, she soon embarked on a path of self-destruction with fraught romantic entanglements, suicide attempts and a lapse into drug addiction.

 That she is alive - and seemingly at peace these days - is testimony to her fortitude.

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 "It's amazing. I've made 50 films in my career and Last Tango is 35 years old, but it's still the one that everyone asks me about," she says.

 Schneider lives in Paris, and at 55, retains the enviable figure that she so magnificently paraded, mostly nude, in Last Tango.

 The baby-faced prettiness is still there, if a little more knowing these days, her long, curly hair is pinned up and her face devoid of make-up.

 "Marlon was shy about his body, but nudity wasn't a problem for me in those days as I thought it was beautiful," she says, her voice husky and smoke-tinged.

 "People still recognise me in the street and say I haven't changed, which is good.

 "However, I never went naked in a movie again after Last Tango, even though I was offered many such roles. People today are used to such things but when the film opened in 1972, it was scandalous."

 Watching the film now with its over-wrought score, its scenes replete with meaningful silences and its sexual content, much of Last Tango, unlike Schneider, has aged.

 "I watched it again three years ago after Marlon died and it seems kitsch," she exclaims.

 "I think Bertolucci is over-rated and he never really made anything after Last Tango that had the same impact.

 "He was fat and sweaty and very manipulative, both of Marlon and myself, and would do certain things to get a reaction from me. Some mornings on set he would be very nice and say hello and on other days, he wouldn't say anything at all.

 "I was too young to know better. Marlon later said that he felt manipulated, and he was Marlon Brando, so you can imagine how I felt. People thought I was like the girl in the movie, but that wasn't me.

 "I felt very sad because I was treated like a sex symbol - I wanted to be recognised as an actress and the whole scandal and aftermath of the film turned me a little crazy and I had a breakdown.

 "Now, though, I can look at the film and like my work in it."

 In the film, Schneider plays Jeanne, a girl engaged to a somewhat annoying filmmaker, Tom (Jean-Pierre Leaud), who goes to view an apartment in Paris. There she chances upon Paul (Brando), an American expatriate whose wife has committed suicide.

 They have a passionate affair knowing nothing about one another (Paul insists they don't even reveal their names), with a tragic ending.

 They engage in some steamy clinches, the most famous involving Schneider face down on the apartment floor while Brando applies butter to her nether regions and performs a sex act on her.

 "That scene wasn't in the original script. The truth is it was Marlon who came up with the idea," she says.

 "They only told me about it before we had to film the scene and I was so angry.

 "I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can't force someone to do something that isn't in the script, but at the time, I didn't know that.

 "Marlon said to me: 'Maria, don't worry, it's just a movie,' but during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears.

 "I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn't console me or apologise. Thankfully, there was just one take."

 Many believed that the sex scenes between Brando and Schneider were for real, but she insists: "Not at all. There was no attraction between us. For me, he was more like a father figure and I a daughter.

 "Marlon said to me: 'You look just like Cheyenne (his daughter, who subsequently committed suicide in 1995) with your baby face.'

 "He gave me advice about the movie industry.

 "When I celebrated my 20th birthday during filming, my trailer was filled with flowers and there was a note saying: 'From an unknown admirer.'

 "We stayed friends until the end, although for a while we couldn't talk about the movie. Undoubtedly, my best experience about making the film was my encounter with Marlon.

 "I almost refused to do the film. I had an offer to star in another film, with Alain Delon, but my agency, William Morris, said: 'It's a leading role with Marlon Brando - you can't refuse.'

 "I was so young and relatively inexperienced and I didn't understand all of the film's sexual content. I had a bit of a bad feeling about it all."

 Her instincts were right. Together with the scandal the film created, the media interest in Maria was huge.

 "To be suddenly famous all over the world was frightening. I didn't have bodyguards like they do today. People thought I was just like my character and I would make up stories for the press, but that wasn't me."

 The whole circus, she says, "made me go mad. I got into drugs - pot and then cocaine, LSD and heroin - it was like an escape from reality. It was the Seventies and at that time, it was all going on.

 "I didn't enjoy being famous at all and drugs were my escape. I took pills to try and commit suicide but I survived because God decided it wasn't the time for me to go.

 "I suppose it was like a suicide when I overdosed two or three times on drugs, but each time I woke up when the ambulance arrived.

 "I was very lucky - I lost many friends to drugs - but I met someone in 1980 who helped me stop. I call this person my angel and we've been together ever since. I don't say if it's a man or a woman. That's my secret garden. I like to keep it a mystery."

 Schneider's "angel" is likely to be a woman.

 She has admitted relationships with women before and, in 1975, went to a mental hospital in Rome and committed herself as a voluntary patient in order to be with her then lover, photographer Joan Townsend.

 "She was schizophrenic," Schneider explains. "I wanted to help. She eventually went back home to the States but now, I don't know what has happened to her."

 Schneider never married, nor did she have children.

 "It just wasn't in my destiny and I have no regrets," she says, although she admits to a deep distrust of men.

 "Even before my experiences on Last Tango, I found it hard to trust men. I only met my father when I was 15 (French actor Daniel Gelin, who had an affair with Schneider's mother Marie Christine when she was 17) and all the role models in my family were women."

 She grew up near the Franco-German border and after an argument with her mother, ran away from home at 15.

 Maria moved to Paris, making ends meet by working as an extra and a model and lived alone despite the fact that her father was in Paris - he was unwilling or unable to take in his daughter.

 It was Brigitte Bardot, a former co-star of her father's, who came to her rescue. Bardot was horrified that his daughter was left to fend for herself.

 "She gave me a room at her place," Maria says, "and it was through her I joined the William Morris Agency. Sometimes, I call her now to see how she is and she is very bitter at the movie industry."

 After Last Tango, Schneider's career didn't fare as well as she might have hoped.

 In 1975 she made The Passenger with Jack Nicholson, but otherwise, good roles have been sparse. She was due to film Caligula alongside Peter O'Toole and Helen Mirren but walked off when she realised its pornographic content.

 She was offered the role of Mary in Franco Zeffirelli's TV spectacular, Jesus of Nazareth, but turned it down - a decision she regrets.

 One expects Schneider to be embittered by her experiences, but she is extremely chatty and giggly, although her animosity towards Bertolucci remains undimmed.

 "I've not really forgiven him for the way he treated me and although we met in Tokyo 17 years ago, I ignored him," she says cheerfully. "Plus, he and Marlon made a fortune from the movie and I made about £2,500. And Bertolucci was a Communist, too!"

 Schneider now runs The Wheel Turns, an organisation which helps ageing actors and performers who suddenly find work drying up.

 Schneider herself continues to work, mainly in France and Italy, although she says: "It is not so easy for actresses over 50, and the irony is that when a woman gets old enough to have something interesting to say, people don't want to hear her speak."

 She says her pleasures these days are very simple.

 "I like to see friends and go to the market and cook. But I never use butter to cook any more," she laughs. "Only olive oil."

 • For details on cinemas screening Last Tango In Paris, go to: www.parkcircus.com |||||

– Last Tango in Paris was released in 1972 to critical acclaim, but people are now "sick" and "enraged" after a 2013 interview resurfaced in which director Bernardo Bertolucci admitted the infamous rape scene in it was a little too real. In the interview, which was uploaded to YouTube on Nov. 23, Bertolucci said he and Marlon Brando, then 48, decided a stick of butter should be used as lubricant to rape the character of Jeanne without telling actress Maria Schneider, who was then 19. "I had been, in a way, horrible to Maria because I didn't tell her what was going on," Bertolucci said, per the Hollywood Reporter, noting he wanted Schneider to react "as a girl, not as an actress. I wanted her to react humiliated." Bertolucci also made similar comments to the Telegraph in 2013, only to then be described as "charming." This isn't exactly breaking news: Schneider, who died in 2011, recounted the scene to the Daily Mail in 2007, saying "even though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears" and felt "a little raped both by Marlon and Bertolucci." Brando and Bertolucci were later nominated for best actor and best director Oscars, respectively, for their work on the film, reports USA Today. "I feel sick," Jessica Chastain tweeted Saturday, per the Guardian. Evan Rachel Wood said the admission was "heartbreaking and outrageous," while Chris Evans said Bertolucci and Brando "should be in jail." Anna Kendrick said she "used to get eye-rolls" when she mentioned Bertolucci's comments to people, particularly men. Added Ava DuVernay, "As a director, I can barely fathom this. As a woman, I am horrified, disgusted and enraged by it."