“Her death came too soon, before I managed to hold her tenderly and tell her that from the day we met I had felt close to her and that I wanted to ask her for forgiveness at least once.” These were Bernardo Bertolucci’s words after Maria Schneider’s death. She had to forgive him because at the set of The Last Tango in Paris he treated her sadistically, even though it was nothing compared to Brando’s sadism in the film as he swept up the floor with her in an old Parisian dance hall. Such a reaction from the director is not surprising since beside Brando, Maria never had a chance, whether we like to admit it or not. Bertolucci himself was not too interested in her. Even though she will be remembered for two brilliant films - the aforementioned Tango and Antonioni’s Profession: Reporter in which she did not even have a name but was simply known as a Girl - that damned stick of butter lubricated her future as an actress and our wet dreams forever.

Like Maria Schneider, who also happened to stumble upon a Serbian filmmaker in her career (a role in Sezona mira u Parizu / Peacetime in Paris by Predrag Golubović), the great Annie Girardot also had a short field trip in the ex-Yugoslav film industry with the nutty film by Aleksandar Petrović Biće skoro propast sveta. Also like Schneider, Girardot often accepted roles of submissive women (let us remember her tragic portrait of a prostitute Nadia in Rocco and His Brothers, in which she ended as a victim of the jealous Simone). However, Girardot’s androgynous short hair and warm deep voice were the polar opposite to the afro hairstyle of the erotic Schneider. These film roles were a big contrast in comparison to her theatre roles played on the stage of the Comedie Francaise. The legendary Cocteau, who gave her a role in the theater play La Machine a ecrire, described her as “the finest dramatic temperament of post war Paris”. She proved her acting talent in old age when Alzheimer’s disease came over her in the unforgettable acting duel with Isabelle Huppert (La pianniste). In Hidden Michael Haneke symbolically placed her back in a bed…

The third actress to have left us in recent days, the exquisite Susannah York, encountered her portion of humiliation through a dance marathon (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?). Her acting career began in the1960s when she became one of the icons of Swinging London. Film programs pay her respect with the “invisible” and unfairly understated Irish field trip by Robert Altman (Images) in which she brilliantly portrays a nutty lonely woman haunted by hallucinations of sex and death.

We also say goodbye to the great Peter Yates with the charming kammerspiel The Dresser, starring two acting giants – the energetic Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay. The hommage to the recently deceased Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis takes us back to strong female characters, from his sensual wife Silvana Mangano (Riso Amaro), to the psychedelic Jane Fonda in space (Barbarella) and the feverish sexuality of the space woman Ornella Muti (Flash Gordon). Laurentis had a series of more ambitious production projects, borne out by the fact that he produced Bergman’s not-so-successful and quite pretentious author transfer from Sweden to Berlin with a taste of Grand Guignol (The Serpent's Egg). The program that celebrates the hundredth anniversary of Nino Rota’s birth also has De Laurentis’ production stamp and brings us unforgettable female characters such as the mythic Cabiria and Fortunella (Giulietta Massina) and the playful Delia Scala under the watchful eye of the great Edoardo de Filippe. (Dragan Rubeša)