The Voyeur (1994)

The Voyeur (L'uomo che guarda) is a 1994 Tinto Brass movie based (loosely) on Alberto Moravia's novel.

Tinto Brass has had a fascinating career. In the 60s he was being hailed as the next Antonioni. His art-movie credentials were impeccable. Then in 1976 he made Salon Kitty and all hell broke loose. It dealt with a subject that obsessed Brass at the time - the links between absolute power and sexual excess. It was not a movie for the faint-hearted. He followed it up with Caligula which ignited an even bigger firestorm.

After which Brass more or less decided to go his own way. He’d make the movies he wanted to make and if the critics hated them then that was their problem. And the movies Brass wanted to make were erotic movies. Intelligent, sophisticated, witty, arty erotic movies.

The 70s had been the heyday of art porn, a period when it really did seem possible (to a lot of people) to make erotic art movies. Some put the emphasis more on art than eroticism and some focused more on the eroticism. The results were mixed but some genuinely extremely good and interesting movies were made. By the 80s the advent of home video and hardcore killed the softcore movie market stone dead. What Brass wanted to do was simply no longer possible. He did it anyway. And made a successful new career out of it.

Tinto Brass made arty erotic movies but do not make the mistake of thinking that these movies are going to be dull, earnest and miserable (as is usually the case when British or American directors try to do arty erotica). Most of Brass’s erotic films contain a great deal of humour and quite a few are in fact arty sophisticated sex comedies. Brass is famous for his love of the female posterior but there’s a lot more to him than that. He has a playful sense of humour. He has the crazy idea that sexuality is a good thing and that sex can be enjoyable. It can also be amusing.

Which brings us to The Voyeur. Eduardo (Dodò to his friends) is a professor of French literature. He is married to Silvia (Katarina Vasilissa). They live with his bedridden father who is also a professor. He is bedridden due to an accident but is expected to recover. Silvia has moved out but she still sleeps with Dodò. She seems strangely distant emotionally. Dodò thinks she may be having an affair.

Dodò is a voyeur, in a sense. It is partly a sexual kink with him but it’s also a professional interest. The main focus of his academic work is voyeurism in art and literature, but voyeurism in a wider sense than the purely erotic. To Dodò the pleasure of observing is one of the keys, perhaps the principal key, to an understanding of art and literature.

He met his wife through his interest in voyeurism - he used to spy on her through her open window. Then he found out that she knew he was watching and it excited her. Silvia is an exhibitionist so they’re well-matched.

Dodò begins to suspect that Silvia is having an affair with his father. His father is certainly very interested in sex, and he receives certain sexual favours from his pretty nurse Fausta (Cristina Garavaglia). Dodò has watched them together.

Dodò becomes increasingly obsessed. He is insanely jealous. He has to find out what is really going on even if it leads to disaster.

This is a movie about voyeurism but it’s also a movie about secrets, and lies, and fantasies. Some of the secret things may be merely fantasies. Some of the lies may not be lies. And when we observe things we can’t always be sure that they’re true, and if they are true we can’t always be sure what they mean. Fantasies can be difficult to distinguish from reality. Dodò may in fact be living in a world of his own fantasies. On the other hand it might all be true.

So there’s lots of artiness here. There is also a staggering amount of both male and female frontal nudity. And lots of quite graphic sex. It goes as far as it’s possible to go while remaining softcore, and then a little bit further. Not surprisingly it did not get a U.S. theatrical release.

Tinto Brass himself has never made any secret of his voyeuristic obsession with the female form so this is a voyeuristic movie about voyeurism made by a voyeur and watching the movie is an exercise in voyeurism, all of which is exactly what Brass intended it to be.

Brass’s later movies tended to be shunned by critics who refused to consider the possibility that such very sexually explicit movies might be intelligent and emotionally nuanced. They also failed to understand that Brass was deliberately provoking them. In addition they could not possibly grasp the idea that erotica might be done with humour.

The Voyeur is a genuine attempt to grapple with subject matter that other directors with his early art-house credentials would never dare to confront. It’s intriguing and it’s highly recommended.

This is one of three films included in the UK Fifty Shades of Tinto Brass DVD set. The Voyeur has since been released on Blu-Ray by Cult Epics.

I’ve also reviewed Brass’s excellent Monella (1998) as well as Tra(sgre)dire (2000).

Deadly Sweet (1967)

Deadly Sweet (Col cuore in gola) is a 1967 giallo directed by Tinto Brass.

Tinto Brass’s career has been interesting to say the least. In the 60s and early 70s he was establishing himself as an art-house director, even being hailed as the next Antonioni. Then in 1976 came his first examination of the link between extreme sex and absolute power, Salon Kitty. It ignited a firestorm of controversy. He intended his next film, Caligula, to be a further exploration of the same topic. Caligula of course had a famously chaotic production history and was savaged by critics who had decided they hated the movie even before they had seen it.

Brass responded by totally reinventing himself, as a maker of erotic movies. He wanted to make high-quality intelligent erotic movies at a time when this was commercially impossible. Brass didn’t care and went ahead anyway and carved out a successful career. What’s interesting, considering the extreme nature of Salon Kitty and Caligula, is that his later erotic movies are cheerful and good-natured.

So a giallo from Tinto Brass is a bit of a surprise.

Bernard (Jean-Louis Trintignant) spots a pretty girl at a night-club. She is Jane Burroughs (Ewa Aulin). She’s there with her brother Jerome (Charles Kohler). Their father was killed in a car accident a few days earlier. Bernard goes to see the manager of the club because he has been refused credit. He finds the manager dead. Murdered. And Jane Burroughs is there but she swears she didn’t kill him.

Bernard is now mixed up in whatever it is that Jane is mixed up in, which seems to include both blackmail and murder. There is a photograph that must be retrieved.

We have no idea who Bernard is. He knows how to handle a gun. He could be a private eye, an undercover cop, a spy, a gangster or maybe just a guy who likes to help cute girls in trouble. We eventually find out that he is an actor, and it’s appropriate that Trintignant is an actor playing an actor since this is a movie in which the line between reality and fiction is constantly blurred. This is certainly not a realist film.

There’s plenty of trouble in store. Jane gets kidnapped. There’s another murder. Bernard finds opportunities to use his gun. He gets knocked unconscious by a midget. He and Jane are pursued by heavies.

They do find the time to fall in love and sleep together.

Bernard is determined to unravel the puzzle. And it’s a nicely convoluted puzzle.

This is a movie set in England, directed by an Italian with a French leading man and a Swedish leading lady. In the case of some Italian movies shot in England you find yourself thinking that they could just as easily have been shot in Milan or Rome. In this case however the setting makes sense. This film is going very strongly for a Swinging London vibe.

There are nods to Antonioni’s Blow-Up and some direct references (Jane and Bernard pass a poster for the movie). Deadly Sweet does have some very slight hints of the flavour of Blow-Up. Deadly Sweet is a very 60s very Pop movie with a Pop Art verging on psychedelia visual style. Brass was aiming very much for a comic-book feel (Guido Crepax was a major influence on the film and drew some storyboards for it).

At times this movie is in danger of being too clever for its own good but for the most part Brass gets away with it because he really is clever and visually inventive and he imbues the film with lots of energy and style. We’re never quite sure how seriously he wants us to take this movie. My feeling is that we’re not supposed to take it seriously at all, we’re just supposed to enjoy the ride. And it is an enjoyable ride. There are some truly inspired visual moments.

When I describe Deadly Sweet as a giallo I have to qualify that a bit. The giallo genre can be divided into two phases. The second and better known began in 1970 with Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage - blood-drenched serial killer films with black-gloved killers and lots of spectacular murders. Prior to that, in the late 60s, was the proto-giallo phase - stylish erotic thrillers with often only one or two murders and often with very little blood. Personally I prefer these proto-giallos, such as Lucio Fulci's One on Top of the Other, Umberto Lenzi's So Sweet...So Perverse and Romolo Guerrieri's The Sweet Body of Deborah but that is of course purely a matter of personal taste.

Deadly Sweet fits into the proto-giallo phase, although perhaps it doesn’t fit as neatly as some other movies. It has some of the elements you find in these early giallos - you have a couple who aren’t really sure if they can trust each other, there are other important characters who may be treacherous, there are hints of sexual perversity, there’s an atmosphere of decadence although it’s not quite the decadence one associates with proto-giallos. This is the decadence of the cultural revolution of the 60s. This is pop youth culture decadence, not old money decadence.

The tone is all over the place, veering from being quite serious to being definitely tongue-in-cheek and then veering off into pure spoof territory. That should be a flaw but it adds to the movie’s offbeat quirkiness. Imagine a giallo made as an homage to Blow-Up but in the style of a Guido Crepax comic and you have Deadly Sweet. Surprisingly it turns out to be a lot of fun. Very highly recommended.

The Cult Epics DVD looks good and there’s an excellent audio commentary with Tinto Brass in which he reveals something rather amusing. There are quite a few shots in black-and-white and naturally you assume this has some deep significance. In fact he had to do those shots in conditions where there was no way to get enough light to shoot in colour so he just shot in black-and-white.

Miranda (1985)

Miranda is a 1985 movie by Tinto Brass which you could describe as an erotic comedy/romance.

Tinto Brass has certainly had an interesting career. In the 60s and early 70s he had very respectable art-house credentials, even being compared to Antonioni. Then in 1976 came Salon Kitty which ignited something of a firestorm of controversy. Which was nothing compared to the hysteria which greeted his next film, Caligula. At that point he seems to have decided to make the movies he wanted to make and to make them the way he wanted to make them.

He also decided to concentrate almost exclusively on erotic films. That meant being shunned by critics (especially in the Anglophone world) and losing his respectable art-house credentials. He doesn’t seem to care one little bit.

Miranda takes place in the 1950s. Miranda (Serena Grandi) runs an inn. She is, or was, married but her husband was missing in action during the war and is presumed dead.

Miranda likes men and would like to meet that one special guy with whom to share her life but a girl has to be sure of her choice. The best way is to have affairs with lots and lots of men. Having affairs with three or four men at the same time is no great strain for her.

Carlo, who is more or less the assistant manger of the inn, is very keen on her. She isn’t sure if she’s interested in marrying him. Perhaps when she finds the time to try him out in the bedroom she’ll be in a position to choose.

There’s a wealthy politician who would very much like to marry her. He’s much older but he is rich and he’s rather nice and he’s devoted to her.

The arrival of Norman, a young American in the area temporarily while working on a construction project, offers her another potential choice.

That’s pretty much it for the plot.

It’s played as farce and in a very good-natured way. It’s a fun movie. It has no axes to grind. This is not going to be an exercise in misery or self-pity or guilt.

Brass’s erotic movies from the early 80s on tend to be joyous celebrations of sex. And of the charms of the female body. Brass is notorious for his fondness for actresses with amply-proportioned posteriors but the rest of the female body is certainly not neglected.

The movie opens with a close-up of Serena Grandi’s crotch and she’s not wearing any panties. Brass is laying his cards on the table right from the get-go. He’s saying that if this shot bothers you then you should switch the movie off and go watch something else.

It’s a celebration of the female body but it’s also a celebration of female erotic pleasure. Miranda is very much in touch with, and comfortable with, her sexual desires. She feels no shame about sex and the movie never suggests that a woman should feel shame about satisfying her sexual urges. At no time is she punished for her carnal indulgences. There’s a total absence of moralising about sex. To the extent that there’s any message in this film it’s that sex is normal and healthy. That might seem an obvious point but it’s a point that has never been obvious to censors or to film critics.

Miranda is a movie that revels in its celebration of sex and of sensual pleasures in general.

Brass was always a visually uninhibited director and Miranda looks lush and rich. There’s a lot of very explicit nudity and some fairly explicit sex scenes. It’s softcore, but it’s at the raunchy end of softcore. On the other hand the nude scenes and sex scenes have a lyrical playful quality to them.

Serena Grandi is voluptuous in a way that was already becoming unfashionable but that gives the movie an authentically Tinto Brass feel. That’s Brass’s idea of feminine beauty and if you don’t like it that’s too bad. She gives a wonderful performance. Miranda is a character who might have been played as manipulative in other movies but there’s nothing manipulative about her in this film. She doesn’t want to use men. She wants to share fun times with them. She’s a very likeable character.

This is also an uncompromisingly Italian movie, a love letter to the Italy of the past.

Miranda is lighthearted and sexy and stylish and Tinto Brass’s erotic movies have a unique flavour of their own. Highly recommended.

Miranda has had numerous home video releases. The version in the excellent Fifty Shades of Brass DVD boxed set offers a lovely 16:9 enhanced transfer. Both the English dub and the Italian language version with English subtitles are provided. Given that the set also includes Salon Kitty and The Voyeur it’s worth buying.

Frivolous Lola (1998)

One of the many sad things about our modern age is the disappearance of erotica. Sure we have porn. Lots and lots it. On demand. But erotica is something different. One of the last living exponents of the art of cinematic erotica is Tinto Brass, and his 1998 movie Frivolous Lola (Monella) is a good demonstration of the reasons why erotica is more fun.

Someone once said that if you watch porn for ten minutes you want to have sex right now. If you watch porn for an hour, you never want to have sex again. One can only take so much of mechanical images of anonymous body parts. The makers of the sexploitation movies of the 60s and the softcore sex films of the early 70s understood that there was more to sex than this.

Of course this was partly because they had no choice. Not being able to get away with the explicitness of hardcore porn they had to include other things in their movies to maintain the audience’s interest. Things like actual characters. Dialogue that was slightly more complex than, “Oh God yes, yes, yes.” Even proper stories. So when you got to a sex scene it meant something because you’d actually got to know the characters. And they had to rely on the art of the tease, just as the old-time strip-tease artistes had done. And the truth is that while anonymous body parts pumping away gets boring very quickly, the tease never gets boring.

Which brings us back to Frivolous Lola. Set in rural Italy in the 50s it tells the story of a young woman who is to be married shortly. Lola (Anna Ammirati) has just discovered her sexuality. And she likes it. A lot. She’s very anxious to try out her new discovery with her fiance Masetto, but he’s an old-fashioned kind of guy. He thinks they should wait until they get married. Well actually he thinks she should wait until they get married. In the meantime he’ll continue to amuse himself with whores. This is not very satisfactory to Lola.

Lola gets her own amusement by flirting shamelessly with every man she encounters. This includes a rather amusing dance routine to a jukebox in a cafe, with Lola taunting Masetto, and three soldiers as well. She also has a little escapade in a taxi-cab that almost lands her in big trouble.

Lola is not the only sex-obsessed person in this town. There’s also André (Patrick Mower), her mother’s boyfriend. Who might be Lola’s father, but her mother isn’t telling. André and another middle-aged pal of his amuse themselves by taking nude photographs of women. There seems to be no shortage of women willing to pose for the photos, and they have quite a collection dating back some years. They like to reminisce over these photos, and especially to reminisce over the more impressive bottoms. This is a Tinto Brass movie, so the female derrière naturally plays a very significant role.

André used to be a sailor on an ocean liner, and looks back fondly on his various ship-board sexual escapades with female passengers. He also likes to relive these escapades with various willing female accomplices, whilst wearing his old sailor’s uniform. While Lola amuses herself by watching. Lola is quite the little voyeur.

The plot is extremely simple, revolving entirely around the question of whether Lola will be able to control herself until her wedding day, or whether she will manage to persuade Masetto (or if not Masetto then some other obliging male) to give her the satisfaction she craves right now. Much of the movie has the feel of a series of fantasy sequences, or at least sequences done in a semi-fantasy style. It’s a technique that works surprisingly well.

Mostly though it’s an ode to the joys of life, love and sex. Especially sex. There are some scenes in which Lola is fully clothed, but they are few and far between. Even when she isn’t naked her clothes just seem to have a way of revealing considerably more than they conceal. The nudity is very contrived, but it’s contrived in a fun way, and while we’re certainly expected to share Signor Brass’s admiration for Anna Ammirati’s very considerable physical charms it’s done in such a light-hearted way that it somehow manages not to seem exploitative.

Even more pleasing is the movie’s tone, which is entirely free from any suggestion or moral judgments. There’s not a trace of mean-spiritedness in this film. Lola is an outrageous flirt, but she’s also a thoroughly likeable high-spirited young woman. André is a lecherous old reprobate, but he’s a warm generous kind-hearted fellow. They recognise each other as kindred spirits. Both believe life is there to be enjoyed, a sentiment that is clearly shared by Signor Brass.

The great revelation of the move is Patrick Mower. He’s an absolute delight. It’s a tricky role, since there’s the danger that the character could end up seeming merely sleazy, or pathetic, or be overly sentimentalised. Mower gives a perfectly judged performance, and appears to be reveling in the opportunity to play a likeable comic role. Having to play quite a few scenes with a completely naked Anna Ammirati was probably not too much of an ordeal, and we all have to make sacrifices for our art.

Frivolous Lola is sexy good-natured fun. What more can I say?

Trasgredire (2000)

Tinto Brass is a director who has spent the last 30 years totally and cheerfully ignoring everything that has happened in the world of cinema. He makes the sorts of movies that conventional wisdom says can’t be made any more - classy erotica, politically charged erotica and sex comedies. And since people continue to give him money to make his movies one can only assume that he’s doing reasonably well at it. Trasgredire (also released under the titles Cheeky and Transgessions) is a 1970s sex comedy made in 2000, and it’s a pretty good one.

Carla is a rather high-spirited and uninhibited Italian girl just arrived in London. She finds a rather nice flat, but she’d have to sleep with the lesbian real estate agent in order to get it. But it’s a very nice flat, and Carla is open-minded, so her accommodation problems are soon solved. Moira (the real estate agent) believes in giving her clients lots of after-sales servicing, but since Carla’s boyfriend Matteo is still in Venice and Carla doesn’t like to go for really long periods (say more than two or three hours) without having sex the arrangement suits them both. When Moira makes it obvious that she’s looking for more than just casual sex complications do seem likely to ensue, but Carla’s appetites

Meanwhile back in Venice the boyfriend is starting to worry that perhaps Carla isn’t being completely faithful to him while she’s in London. He becomes even more worried when his best friend points out to him something he hadn’t known - that women are often quite fond of sex so it’s quite likely that Carla has found alternative outlets for her desires. Matteo’s jealousies become really inflamed when he goes around to her house in Venice to pick up a few items she’s asked him to send on to her, and he discovers a stack of very steamy love letters she’s written to a young Frenchman she met on holiday shortly before, while he and Matteo were already dating. The letters are accompanied by a nude photo of Carla on the beach, apparently taken by her young Frenchman.

Matteo is soon on a plane to London, determined to confront Carla with the evidence of her betrayals. But Matteo has made an interesting discovery. Jealousy acts as a powerful aphrodisiac. The more jealous he is, the more he wants her. The Italian title of the movie was rendered as Tra(sgre)dire, incorporating the Italian word for betrayal within the word for transgression, but the interesting thing about the movie is that it suggests that betrayal is not always a bad thing, and of course transgression can always be fun. And infidelity can do wonders in spicing up your sex life.

Yuliya Mayarchuk is likeable as Carla, while Francesca Nunzi is fairly sympathetic as the obsessed lesbian Moira. There aren’t any villains in this movie - everyone is basically decent even if completely and joyously amoral.

Tinto Brass’s famous obsession with the female derrière is certainly very much in evidence. This is a very erotic movie with lots of nudity and lots of sex, and could be described as being at the harder end of the softcore spectrum. It’s also a very good-natured movie. It’s a celebration of sex, and it’s a celebration of love as well. As Brass himself famously out it, pornography is there to give you an erection while erotica is there to give you emotions. By that definition this is definitely erotica.

If you think all modern softcore porn is badly and unimaginatively photographed with little attention to lighting and filmed on digital video so it looks awful then Trasgredire will come as a revelation. This is the way erotic movies such as Emmanuelle were made back in the 70s, with style and class, by someone who actually cares about how the movie looks and not just about how much flesh is on display, with competent actors and a script that consists of more than just excuses for having everyone taking their clothes off. They do take their clothes off, and they do so very frequently, but at least there’s some semblance of a reason for it.

I don’t want to give the impression that Trasgredire is the Citizen Kane of the 21st century, but it’s fun and it’s sexy and it leaves you feeling reasonably well disposed towards one’s fellow humans and also feeling that life is not such a bad thing after all. And that’s more than most movies these days can offer.