Marquis de Sade: Justine (1969)
(Justine ovvero le disavventure della vertù)
Country: IT/GB/SP/GER
Technical: col 105m
Director: Jesús Franco
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Romina Power, Maria Rohm, Akim Tamiroff, Mercedes McCambridge, Jack Palance, Sylva Koscina
Synopsis:
Imprisoned, the Marquis is visited by figments of his fevered imaginings and sets to work on his scandalous text...Two sisters, Justine and Juliette meet very different fates when they are orphaned and obliged to leave the convent where they have been educated: the former's virtue has every misfortune heaped upon it, while the latter's vice meets only with prosperity.
Review:
Allowing for the fact that de Sade's writings are practically unfilmable, this hamfisted adaptation shears away much of the philosophising content, wherein vice actually serves nature's purpose as well as being its honest reflection, and even closes with a conventional happy ending, with virtue rewarded in this life and vice professing its own emptiness. Not only this but the makers are a long way from portraying anything of the unnaturally sexual, sadistic, much less the coprophiliac tendencies of the author, and the appalling acting makes a joke of much of the peril encountered by our heroine. We are left with a hoary melodrama boasting some titillating nudes, most dreamily shot through drapes or wine glasses, an incredible, piss-taking contribution from Palance, and in the English dubbed version the most bewildering array of accents imaginable, ranging from Italy to Georgia USA.
(Justine ovvero le disavventure della vertù)
Country: IT/GB/SP/GER
Technical: col 105m
Director: Jesús Franco
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Romina Power, Maria Rohm, Akim Tamiroff, Mercedes McCambridge, Jack Palance, Sylva Koscina
Synopsis:
Imprisoned, the Marquis is visited by figments of his fevered imaginings and sets to work on his scandalous text...Two sisters, Justine and Juliette meet very different fates when they are orphaned and obliged to leave the convent where they have been educated: the former's virtue has every misfortune heaped upon it, while the latter's vice meets only with prosperity.
Review:
Allowing for the fact that de Sade's writings are practically unfilmable, this hamfisted adaptation shears away much of the philosophising content, wherein vice actually serves nature's purpose as well as being its honest reflection, and even closes with a conventional happy ending, with virtue rewarded in this life and vice professing its own emptiness. Not only this but the makers are a long way from portraying anything of the unnaturally sexual, sadistic, much less the coprophiliac tendencies of the author, and the appalling acting makes a joke of much of the peril encountered by our heroine. We are left with a hoary melodrama boasting some titillating nudes, most dreamily shot through drapes or wine glasses, an incredible, piss-taking contribution from Palance, and in the English dubbed version the most bewildering array of accents imaginable, ranging from Italy to Georgia USA.
(Justine ovvero le disavventure della vertù)
Country: IT/GB/SP/GER
Technical: col 105m
Director: Jesús Franco
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Romina Power, Maria Rohm, Akim Tamiroff, Mercedes McCambridge, Jack Palance, Sylva Koscina
Synopsis:
Imprisoned, the Marquis is visited by figments of his fevered imaginings and sets to work on his scandalous text...Two sisters, Justine and Juliette meet very different fates when they are orphaned and obliged to leave the convent where they have been educated: the former's virtue has every misfortune heaped upon it, while the latter's vice meets only with prosperity.
Review:
Allowing for the fact that de Sade's writings are practically unfilmable, this hamfisted adaptation shears away much of the philosophising content, wherein vice actually serves nature's purpose as well as being its honest reflection, and even closes with a conventional happy ending, with virtue rewarded in this life and vice professing its own emptiness. Not only this but the makers are a long way from portraying anything of the unnaturally sexual, sadistic, much less the coprophiliac tendencies of the author, and the appalling acting makes a joke of much of the peril encountered by our heroine. We are left with a hoary melodrama boasting some titillating nudes, most dreamily shot through drapes or wine glasses, an incredible, piss-taking contribution from Palance, and in the English dubbed version the most bewildering array of accents imaginable, ranging from Italy to Georgia USA.