Secrets of a Call Girl (1973)

Secrets of a Call Girl is a movie that has suffered from being stuck with hopelessly inappropriate titles. It’s also been released as Anna, The Pleasure, The Torment and the Italian title Anna, quel particolare piacere (which translates as Anna, a Particular Pleasure) is equally bad. This is most definitely not an erotic movie, nor is it really a crime thriller. It was originally conceived as a romance, and that’s probably the most accurate description.

The basic framework of the plot certainly contains crime thriller elements but it’s perhaps closest in spirit to some of the 1940s Hollywood movies about gangster’s women (the 1950 Joan Crawford vehicle The Damned Don’t Cry being a good example). This is very much a film about a woman.

Edwige Fenech is Anna, a slightly naïve small-town girl working as a cashier in a cafe in Bergamo. Her life changes completely when a mysterious and darkly handsome stranger walks into her cafe. She is swept off her feet but what she doesn’t know is that Guido is a mobster. And a particularly nasty one. She is obsessed and when he offers to take her to Milan with him she jumps at the chance of seeing the bright lights of the big city and sampling the high life.

She does find glamour and wealth in Milan, but at a price. Guido is violent towards her and is quite prepared to force her into working as a part-time call girl to further his ambitions. He and his boss Riccardo Sogliani have a stable of beautiful girls who are used to make connections with rich powerful men. Anna is horrified at having to prostitute herself and she is disturbed by the criminal activities of Guido. But he’s so good-looking, and the sex is great. Anna has a bit of a taste for rough sex and she has difficulty in persuading herself that she really needs to get out of this situation.

Things come to a head when she falls pregnant. Guido knocks her about and demands that she have an abortion. She flees, but once you’re involved with mobsters you’re involved for life. She meets a nice man, a doctor, but her attempts to establish a new life for herself are complicate by the fact that she was a witness to a murder committed by Guido. Guido and Riccardo are not inclined to allow her to escape them.

When this movie was made in 1973 Edwige Fenech was anxious to prove she was more than just a hot body. The role of Anna was her big chance to show she could really act and she does a pretty fair job. Corrado Pani is excellent as Guido. Despite his viciousness he has enough charm, sexiness and glamour to make it entirely understandable that Anna would have fallen for him.

The standout performer though is Richard Conte as mob boss Riccardo. Conte had been a minor star in Hollywood in the 40s and 50s. This performance makes it all the more inexplicable that he never became a major star.

Giuliano Carnimeo’s direction is difficult to fault. It was a reasonably big budget movie (as these sorts of movies go) with quite a lot of location shooting. There’s a nice contrast between the provincial innocence of Bergamo on the one hand and the glamour and wickedness of Milan and the world of big-time criminals and gambling on the other.

The excellent NoShame DVD (now sadly out of print since the company went bust) includes interviews with the director and screenwriter as well as star Edwige Fenech (looking every bit as stunning than she did back in the 70s). The movie has been re-released on DVD by Mya DVD but without the extras. Im told their DVD looks pretty good but the NoShame release is obviously the one to go for if you can still find a copy.

This is a movie that works equally well as a crime thriller and as a romantic drama about a woman who has made a terrible mistake and is now desperately trying to extricate herself. Highly recommended.