Une collection particulière [Oberhausen-Cut] (1973) - Walerian Borowczyk

 

 The Oberhausen-Cut differs from the final version in a number of ways. There's no spoken narration (and hence no subtitles), the photographs are much more overtly pornographic (in the shorter cut, cunningly-positioned fingers and thumbs are used to censor details, suggesting that Borowczyk planned alternative edits at the time of shooting), and there's the notorious sequence featuring genuine bestiality - although an introductory card explains that to comply with German law, part of the image in this sequence had to be pixilated. Image quality is a fair bit poorer, but given the rarity of this cut that's understandable. [MichaelB - criterionforum]

Cérémonie d'amour AKA Love Rites (1988) - Walerian Borowczyk

“Adapted from a short story by André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Love Rites concerns French fashion designer Hugo Arnold, who has set out on the Paris metro to meet a woman about a batch of dresses he’s interested in. On the metro, he meets a beautiful young prostitute named Myriam. Soon, Hugo has forgotten all about his dresses and is devoting his day to following Myriam around the city. Eventually, the two end up at the apartment of Myriam’s friend, Sara Sand. Anyone who can’t guess what happens from there hasn’t seen the disk’s cover art.

Docteur Jekyll et les femmes AKA The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981) - Walerian Borowczyk

The film takes place before, during and immediately after the engagement party of Dr.Henry Jekyll and Miss Fanny Osborne, attended by numerous highly respectable guests (a general, a doctor, a priest, a lawyer), the last of which informs the company that a child has been murdered in the street outside. While the others watch a young dancer perform, Dr.Jekyll instructs the lawyer to alter his will, leaving everything to a certain Mr.Hyde. Shortly afterwards, the dancer is found murdered, and the guests realise that one of their number must be a maniac with a prodigious sexual appetite...

Contes Immoraux (Reconstruction) (1974) - Walerian Borowczyk

Plot Summary:..
Four erotic tales from in various historical eras. The first, 'The Tide', is set in the
present day, and concerns a student and his young female cousin stranded on the beach by the tide, secluded from prying eyes. 'Therese Philosophe' is set in the nineteenth century, and concerns a girl being locked in her bedroom, where she contemplates the erotic potential of the objects contained within it. 'Erzsebet Bathory' is a portrait of the sixteenth-century countess who allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins, while 'Lucrezia Borgia' concerns an incestuous fifteenth-century orgy involving Lucrezia, her brother, and her father the Pope.

La marge aka The Margin (1976) - Walerian Borowczyk

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La Marge AKA Emmanuelle '77 (1976) - Walerian Borowczyk

Art House Erotica, 23 September 1998
10/10
Author: Stefan Kahrs from Canterbury, England

La Marge is the kind of film conventional film critics hate to review, because it does not quite fit into these little genre boxes they have in their heads.

In its cinematography and story-telling La Marge is very much like an Art House picture: we have emotions, tragedy, laughter, silence, pictures telling a story, plot twists, slow pace, all the ingredients you might expect in the most toffee-nosed productions only people with a university degree are supposed to enjoy. And yet, it is also a piece of erotica, shamelessly exploitative and very effective in its abundant use of (mostly) female nudity and its sex scenes.

Contes immoraux AKA Immoral Tales (1974) - Walerian Borowczyk

Plot Summary:..
Four erotic tales from in various historical eras. The first, 'The Tide', is set in the
present day, and concerns a student and his young female cousin stranded on the beach by the tide, secluded from prying eyes. 'Therese Philosophe' is set in the nineteenth century, and concerns a girl being locked in her bedroom, where she contemplates the erotic potential of the objects contained within it. 'Erzsebet Bathory' is a portrait of the sixteenth-century countess who allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins, while 'Lucrezia Borgia' concerns an incestuous fifteenth-century orgy involving Lucrezia, her brother, and her father the Pope.

Dzieje Grzechu AKA The Story of Sin (1975) - Walerian Borowczyk

Walerian Borowczyk has become largely forgotten. This is partly due to a lack of availability (though at the time of writing there are currently four discs of his films on release in the UK) but primarily because his career hit a decline in the seventies that eventually led to a stint directing Emmanuelle 5. Yet both the man himself and his career are utterly fascinating. Starting out as an animator, producing a number of classic shorts including 1963’s Renaissance, Borowczyk moved into features with the distinctive Goto, Isle of Love and his masterpiece Blanche which earned him a place on the BFI 360 Film Classics list. His works from this point onwards, however, exist in a strange critical limbo as there is much debate as to whether they are art or simply soft porn with high production values and pretensions. As a result, the likes of La Bete and Docteur Jekyll et les femmes have never moved beyond a cult audience. This particular effort, The Story of Sin, the only film Borowczyk was able to make in Poland is one of his more popular works, especially in his home country, and in many ways it makes the perfect introduction to his work. By no means an exceptional film, and certainly not the director’s best, it does however allow for a succinct demonstration of his strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, the erotic content for which Borowczyk has become best known is relatively low-key, especially in comparison to, say, Behind Convent Walls or Immoral Tales, which will perhaps make it more accessible.

La Bête AKA The Beast (1975) - Walerian Borowczyk

Plot: The head of a failing French family thinks that fate has smiled down on him when the daughter of a wealthy man agrees to be married to his son.
The daughter and her aunt then travel out to the French countryside to meet with the family, unaware that a mysterious beast is stalking the vicinity.

Interno di un convento aka Behind Convent Walls (1977) - Walerian Borowczyk

Before it became possible (in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) to imprison young heirs and heiresses in mental institutions in order to gain control of their inheritances, greedy families had for centuries "given" their daughters to convents without the girls' consent. Usually, such nunneries were only nominally religious, and their involuntary inhabitants lived a life of relative ease and luxury compared to their genuinely religious (or poorer) sisters. In the film Interno di un Convento, a zealous, handsome priest, who is the confessor for a convent full of such women, encourages the equally zealous abbess of one such institution to enforce the same strict rules on these unfortunate women that are applied to others. In doing so, they uncover a snake pit of sexual couplings, both lesbian and heterosexual, as well as many tools for masturbation. At the same time, a particularly disturbed inmate manages to poison herself and many of the other novitiates in yet another scandal which is covered up by church authorities.

Private Collections AKA Collections privees [+Extras] (1979) - Just Jaeckin, Shuji Terayama, Walerian Borowczyk

Quote:
"For legendary producer Pierre Braunberger (Shoot The Piano Player), it was the most enticing of challenges: Invite the three most controversial directors in modern erotic cinema to indulge their fantasies in one daring film. The result remains one of the most uniquely sensual motion pictures of our time.

In the first story from director Just Jaeckin (Emmanuelle, Gwendoline), a castaway sailor is rescued by a tribe of succulent native women - led by the stunning Laura Gemser of Black Emmanuelle fame - who soon reveal their most unusual appetites. Then director Shuji Terayama (Fruits Of Passion) explores the haunting tale of a Japanese boy seduced by the riddle song of a village madwoman. And in the bold adaptation of a short story by De Maupassant, director Walerian Borowczyk (Immoral Women, The Beast) reveals the torrid liaison between a Parisian gentleman, a Follie Bergere prostitute and an unexpected surprise that hides in the night."

Ars amandi aka The Art of Love (1983) - Walerian Borowczyk

Plot / Synopsis
In his 2006 obituary, The New York Times called Walerian Borowczyk “the internationally known filmmaker described variously as a genius, a pornographer, and a genius who also happened to be a pornographer.” And for the final film in his ‘Immoral Trilogy’, Borowczyk created one of the most lushly bizarre erotic tales of our time and perhaps the most ambitious work of his entire career. The setting is Rome, 8 A.D., where the poet Ovid watches over an epoch of forbidden seduction and unnatural acts among maidens, centurions, servant girls and the occasional farm animal. Marina Pierro , Laura Betti, Milena Vukotic and Massimo Girotti star in this sumptuous art/smut classic, now fully restored and presented uncensored.

Les Heroines du Mal AKA Heroines of Evil AKA Three Immoral Women (1979) - Walerian Borowczyk

Each of the three women in this film shows a tendency to kill their human lovers, and two of them evince a sexual attachment to their pets. In the first story, the model for artist Raphael seduces and kills Raphael and another man. In the second, a girl with a suspiciously satisfying relationship with her pet rabbit murders her parents for killing her bunny. Finally, Marie has a dog whose unusual means of effecting her rescue not only saves her from a kidnapper, but gets her out of an unhappy marriage.
-All Movie Guide