Marquis de Sade’s Justine
Written by Harry Alan Towers (as Peter Welbeck)
Directed by Jesús Franco (as Jess Franco)
Italy/USA/Germany/Liechtenstein, 1969
Justine was the first of 30 Jesús Franco films I watched over the past year. While many have been quite enjoyable (and several have been quite deplorable), this 1969 feature remains my favorite. Others come very close, and there is a solid argument that Justine is in fact a mostly uncharacteristic Franco film, but as a movie that shows the genuine, often untapped talent that this eclectically erratic filmmaker possessed, it is exceptional.
Out now on a new Blue Underground Blu-ray, Justine—officially, Marquis de Sade’s Justine—bears the subtitle, “The Misfortunes of Virtue,” which is indeed the essential theme of the picture. Played by an 18-year-old Romina Power (the character is 12 in de Sade’s novel), Justine is “too good to be true,” according to her dubious sister,...
Written by Harry Alan Towers (as Peter Welbeck)
Directed by Jesús Franco (as Jess Franco)
Italy/USA/Germany/Liechtenstein, 1969
Justine was the first of 30 Jesús Franco films I watched over the past year. While many have been quite enjoyable (and several have been quite deplorable), this 1969 feature remains my favorite. Others come very close, and there is a solid argument that Justine is in fact a mostly uncharacteristic Franco film, but as a movie that shows the genuine, often untapped talent that this eclectically erratic filmmaker possessed, it is exceptional.
Out now on a new Blue Underground Blu-ray, Justine—officially, Marquis de Sade’s Justine—bears the subtitle, “The Misfortunes of Virtue,” which is indeed the essential theme of the picture. Played by an 18-year-old Romina Power (the character is 12 in de Sade’s novel), Justine is “too good to be true,” according to her dubious sister,...
- 12/21/2015
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Between his high profile marriages to Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda, director Roger Vadim engaged in a notable liaison with Catherine Deneuve, just prior to her ascension to international stardom in 1964’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Having brought Bardot to fame with his most notable title, his 1956 debut And God Created Woman, their working relationship would continue across several more titles, even as he married another actress, Annette Stroyberg, who starred in his 1959 version of Dangerous Liaisons and the erotic vampire flick Blood & Roses. Between these flurry of romances, Vadim would return to black and white cinematography (which he seemed to prefer for evoking period) with 1963’s Vice and Virtue a loose adaptation of the Marquis De Sade’s controversial erotic novel Justine for WWII era occupied France, resulting in his only collaboration with Deneuve as the virtuous member of a pair of beautiful sisters surviving on opposite ends of the oppressive Nazi spectrum.
- 3/18/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Spanish director dies following a stroke: Best known for his nearly two hundred underground, "exploitation" films "I think I was born because my father and my mother had sex ... ." Nope, that has nothing to do with the anti-censorship lectured delivered by Oz the Great and Powerful and Interior. Leather Bar's James Franco online. The words above were uttered by another Franco, a Spaniard. No, not the foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing military ruler Francisco Franco, but multitasking filmmaker Jesús Franco, aka Jess Franco aka dozens of other aliases, including those in honor of jazz performers Clifford Brown and James P. Johnson. His oeuvre included about 200 films, among them The White Slave, The Sexual History of O, Macumba Sexual, , Emmanuelle Exposed, Vampyros Lesbos, The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll, and White Cannibal Queen. The director died today in Malaga, a city in southern Spain, after suffering a stroke. According to reports, he had never truly...
- 4/3/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The Marquis de Sade was a French revolutionary politician, writer and philosopher who gifted the world with his libertine novels – Justine, Juliette and Philosophy in the Bedroom. He also produced the 120 Days of Sodom – a masterpiece of transgressive literature – a work that the Marquis spoke of wanting to present to the world – “the most impure tale that has ever been written since the world exists”.
Much speculation has centred on de Sade’s life – that he held orgies in which people were whipped, tortured and depraved. His name gave us the word ‘sadism’ which means cruelty and violence and it is particularly associated with sexual practices that are extreme in nature.
From almost the beginning of cinema, film makers have been applying their Sadean aesthetics onto the silver screen. We can see this in Luis Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou (1929) with the infamous eye razor sequence – pure de Sade. De...
Much speculation has centred on de Sade’s life – that he held orgies in which people were whipped, tortured and depraved. His name gave us the word ‘sadism’ which means cruelty and violence and it is particularly associated with sexual practices that are extreme in nature.
From almost the beginning of cinema, film makers have been applying their Sadean aesthetics onto the silver screen. We can see this in Luis Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou (1929) with the infamous eye razor sequence – pure de Sade. De...
- 3/6/2013
- by Clare Simpson
- Obsessed with Film
After Nikkatsu killed off roman poruno, the studio came back with a softer line of movies under the rubric of Ropponica. One of the early titles in the series was Akio Jissoji’s Marquis De Sade’s Prosperities of Vice, which was released in 1988. As is evident from Mondo Macabro’s new English-subtitled DVD, Prosperities of Vice is a visually arresting film that maintains an artful edge while avoiding the rough bloodymindedness that characterized late-era roman poruno.
In the film, a decadent count in 1920s Japan becomes obsessed with the Marquis de Sade. He creates a theater to stage adaptations of de Sade’s works, including Justine and Juliette, using ex-criminals as actors. The count lures one of the actors into a private fantasy involving his wife, which leads to real-life treachery that mirrors de Sade’s fictional works.
In the film, a decadent count in 1920s Japan becomes obsessed with the Marquis de Sade. He creates a theater to stage adaptations of de Sade’s works, including Justine and Juliette, using ex-criminals as actors. The count lures one of the actors into a private fantasy involving his wife, which leads to real-life treachery that mirrors de Sade’s fictional works.
- 8/6/2009
- by Rodney Perkins
- Screen Anarchy
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