La bête (1975)
(The Beast)
Country: FR
Technical: col 93m
Director: Walerian Borowczyk
Cast: Sirpa Lane, Lisbeth Hummel, Elisabeth Kaza, Pierre Benedetti, Guy Tréjan, Marcel Dalio
Synopsis:
A moribund French aristocratic family attempts to preserve its line by marrying an American heiress to its last male member, a hirsute, taciturn recluse with bestial tendencies.
Review:
The party piece of this overlong erotic tale is a dream sequence wherein an ancestress is attacked by a lascivious beast in the forest but proves more than a match for it when it comes to staying power. This was originally a fifth Immoral Tale (q.v.) which the director decided to extend, inserting into it many of the narrative elements hitherto to have made an impression on the curious American ingénue-heroine (bestial coupling, obscene doodlings, a curious pillar in the woods, snails, and so on). In so doing he was also instrumental in pushing back the bounds of the permissible in French cinema, and in turn ensuring that in future anything resembling pornography would be taxed and therefore confined to the low aspirations of the underground. This, then, is a product of a brief flowering in erotic cinema, and not one that takes itself too seriously either. It is cheaply made in the director's familiar handheld, observer-participator style, and highlights include the chauffeur's 'Shit, trees blocking the road!', a lamb bleating without moving its mouth, off-screen neighing à la Frau Blücher and a final priestly meditation on bestiality. There are some pseudo-literary pretensions during the film, such as Voltaire's 'Les rêves inquiets sont réellement des folies passagères', but you will more likely remember the monster's astonished member and the château's corridors re-echoing to the cry of 'Ifany!'
(The Beast)
Country: FR
Technical: col 93m
Director: Walerian Borowczyk
Cast: Sirpa Lane, Lisbeth Hummel, Elisabeth Kaza, Pierre Benedetti, Guy Tréjan, Marcel Dalio
Synopsis:
A moribund French aristocratic family attempts to preserve its line by marrying an American heiress to its last male member, a hirsute, taciturn recluse with bestial tendencies.
Review:
The party piece of this overlong erotic tale is a dream sequence wherein an ancestress is attacked by a lascivious beast in the forest but proves more than a match for it when it comes to staying power. This was originally a fifth Immoral Tale (q.v.) which the director decided to extend, inserting into it many of the narrative elements hitherto to have made an impression on the curious American ingénue-heroine (bestial coupling, obscene doodlings, a curious pillar in the woods, snails, and so on). In so doing he was also instrumental in pushing back the bounds of the permissible in French cinema, and in turn ensuring that in future anything resembling pornography would be taxed and therefore confined to the low aspirations of the underground. This, then, is a product of a brief flowering in erotic cinema, and not one that takes itself too seriously either. It is cheaply made in the director's familiar handheld, observer-participator style, and highlights include the chauffeur's 'Shit, trees blocking the road!', a lamb bleating without moving its mouth, off-screen neighing à la Frau Blücher and a final priestly meditation on bestiality. There are some pseudo-literary pretensions during the film, such as Voltaire's 'Les rêves inquiets sont réellement des folies passagères', but you will more likely remember the monster's astonished member and the château's corridors re-echoing to the cry of 'Ifany!'
(The Beast)
Country: FR
Technical: col 93m
Director: Walerian Borowczyk
Cast: Sirpa Lane, Lisbeth Hummel, Elisabeth Kaza, Pierre Benedetti, Guy Tréjan, Marcel Dalio
Synopsis:
A moribund French aristocratic family attempts to preserve its line by marrying an American heiress to its last male member, a hirsute, taciturn recluse with bestial tendencies.
Review:
The party piece of this overlong erotic tale is a dream sequence wherein an ancestress is attacked by a lascivious beast in the forest but proves more than a match for it when it comes to staying power. This was originally a fifth Immoral Tale (q.v.) which the director decided to extend, inserting into it many of the narrative elements hitherto to have made an impression on the curious American ingénue-heroine (bestial coupling, obscene doodlings, a curious pillar in the woods, snails, and so on). In so doing he was also instrumental in pushing back the bounds of the permissible in French cinema, and in turn ensuring that in future anything resembling pornography would be taxed and therefore confined to the low aspirations of the underground. This, then, is a product of a brief flowering in erotic cinema, and not one that takes itself too seriously either. It is cheaply made in the director's familiar handheld, observer-participator style, and highlights include the chauffeur's 'Shit, trees blocking the road!', a lamb bleating without moving its mouth, off-screen neighing à la Frau Blücher and a final priestly meditation on bestiality. There are some pseudo-literary pretensions during the film, such as Voltaire's 'Les rêves inquiets sont réellement des folies passagères', but you will more likely remember the monster's astonished member and the château's corridors re-echoing to the cry of 'Ifany!'