The Dark Side of Porn Hunting Emmanuelle (2005– ) Online

It's peculiar that this documentary is part of the "Dark Side of Porn Series" because its subject is not terribly dark. The world is filled with panic merchants who enjoy thinking that everything connected to porn is dark, exploitative, and nasty. It gives them an easy target to get on their high moral horses about, a pretext for emotional, dogmatic outrage. Well, the story of "Emmanuelle", a watershed of cinematic eroticism, is similar to the story behind most films and is not particularly outrageous. Quite simply, the producers wanted to make money. That's no crime. In fact, isn't that that what Disney does? Because these guys were making a film with erotic sequences, they had the kind of censorship problems Disney doesn't usually have, but the other details relating to the production of the film are the usual -- finding a suitable lead, trouble with locations, money passed "under the table" for certain concessions, the standard production headaches. Sylvia Kristal, now based in Holland, is interviewed, and it must be said that she is a candid, lively subject. She was an unknown non-actress (and it showed) when originally cast and she has no regrets about the experience (which is refreshing). She didn't get rich from the film's success, though she did go to Hollywood, snort cocaine, and star in the hit flick "Private Lessons", a hit, unfortunately (but not surprisingly considering Hollywood's hypocrisy), that generated few other offers. The film's producers are interviewed, as is director Just Jaeckin, a first-timer (at the time) whose association with glamorous fashion photography got him the gig. Regrettably for him, his high end clients dropped him like a used, steaming French Letter after the film became a massive hit in his homeland, unspooling for over a year.

By 1974, French film was at one of its periodic crises. What seemed grand ideas only a few years before had proved to lack power, and the general trend was back to sense. Bertolucci — a sort of pretend Frenchie — had reset the stage for exploring couples via sex in what to me seemed quite masterful: "Last Tango." This had followed 68's "Barbarella" which was French in its soul (and redone in more of a retrospective French mode as the massively under-appreciated "CQ."

1972's "Deep Throat" set a sort of outer bound on "mainstream" porn, but at least demonstrated that buckets of money were to be had.

So a sort of Frenchified erotic notion was invented. Its essentially sexual, following the Hugh Hefner model of sexually active women not as whores, but as simply appealing women. No story. No real characters, or anything else except erotic pictures. Much was made at the time of the difference between "erotic" and "pornographic." In retrospect, as this documentary shows, their isn't much difference when measured against exploitation and male fantasy measures. The soft photography and lack of explicit penetration was supposed to matter more then than it seems to today.

And the original film (there have been almost three dozen, which should be damning in itself) features an outrageous shot of preteen pudendal smoking by a poor Thai child.

I thought this documentary did a good job of presenting the background of the film, perhaps leaving out the context I have noted. And it spends enough time with the then unknown woman who starred, and had her life ruined. There is some back and forth between the filmmakers who still defend it as noble film-making and observers who present otherwise.

But it did change things cinematic, at least for a while, and apart from itself, probably for the better in the long run. Put another nail in French cinema, alas.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.